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9/9/09– together with hoopers around the planet celebrating hooping on this day, we Bay Area folk (over a hundred of us) met up at San Francisco’s Civic Center–right in front of (back of?) City Hall. (Maybe Gavin was watching.) There were Santa Cruz, NY, Austin, even Canadian and French hoopers there! What a treat. I caught the free tutorials from Nicole Wong of Cherry Hoops, Miss Rosie of Hero Hoops, Christabel of HoopGirl, Rich of isopop. I hope I caught something symbiotically from talking, hanging, and just a tiny bit of hooping with Fraulein Spiral and Brecken, too.
While on the platform in Oakland waiting for the train to SF, a woman approached me and asked about the hoop, whether I’d been to Burning Man…She–Susanne–is a photographer, and wound up coming with me to City Hall and shooting us for a bit. Turns out she collected me as a “stranger” in this cool “100 Strangers” project. Someone posted a comment on the Flickr page saying I look like a mermaid.
photo by Philo Hagen
This photo here is by my wonderful friend Philo Hagen, who covered World Hoop Day beautifully here.
My tank top, by the way, is from Hoopla Berlin (“guaranteed to make your hips smile”), 
and arrived the day before World Hoop Day as a surprise gift from my bestest Berlin girlfriend (bbg?) Uta. It seemed obvious I was supposed to don it for WHD. Since it’s yellow with day-glo orange, I decided to go all the way with the kawaii candy colors.
It was a nice way to go out with the hoopers of the Bay Area.
(See Part I, Part II, and Part III here.)
You’re probably wondering what this image of Richard Simmons is doing here. He’s here because he’s what popped into my mind every time I came across the word buns in the manuscript of the HOOPING book.
Buns, you see, is HoopGirl’s preferred word for the rear end. Well, after booty, but booty’s one of those words you have to use sparingly. For moves like BOOTY BLITZ or BOOTY BUMP, there’s no using booty in the step-by-step instructions. See how overwhelming it gets to have booty six times in a single paragraph? Booty! (Seven.)
Myself, I’m partial to the word ass, rhyming as it does with sass and slithering sexily off the tongue. Butt we both knew that asses (or their british cousins, arses) would never fly with our publisher. Then there’s rump, of which I’m also a fan(ny), but it’s just not right for a fitness book. And bum: too British, with that confusing other meaning in American. Bottom: clearly too infantile. Cheeks, trunk, backside, posterior, badonkadonk : none quite appropriate. So, with all the juicy ones benched, that left your standard collection: rear, behind, butt, and buttocks. All of which, even the last, I prefer to buns by a wide-ass margin.
So I’d send a draft of a chapter to Christabel and she’d send it back, and the butts and rears had been transformed into buns, buns and more buns. Richard Simmons, Richard Simmons, and more Richard Simmons! In bright blue spandex, he was, each time, there in my head. I shuddered, replaced the buns with behinds and buttocks.
And so it went, back and forth, the battle of the backsides, with Cbel claiming buns was cute and sexy. And me feeling as uncomfortable as if Richard Simmons was down on bended knee proposing to me each time she spoke the odious thing.
Finally we more or less agreed to divide the sum of all instances between us, and she used her buns in her half, and I peppered my half with my rear and behind and butt. Because that’s how collaboration goes.
And now that it’s all said and done, do I still shudder and picture Richard Simmons each time I see buns in the book? You can bet your bottom dollar on it.
Richard showing off his buns
Countdown, takeoff, wheeeee! I haven’t come down yet, and the book (and Christabel) will be flying for some time yet…
What a gorgeous night we had at the ever-so-festive Make-Out Room in San Francisco’s Mission district to celebrate the birth of our baby. I kept on whirling around to see yet another body I had to run and wrap my arms around!
From half a lifetime ago, representing my high school days, there was Cruz DeWilde, a mad genius who spends his spare time questioning whether the prevailing model of gravity is, in fact, correct. What better place to contemplate gravity than from within a hoop? He got a special copy of the book that was not only signed but kissed by yours truly, to make up for that time some 20 years back when I was too much the awkward nerdgirl to get to it in the passenger seat of his car.
Then there was the crew of writers from the San Francisco Writers Grotto (where a chunk of the book was written, and where guinea pigs Marianna and Helena tested drafts of the step-by-step instructions for complex moves). There was the superheroic hottie former firefighter turned novelist, Caroline Paul, who is thanked under my Acknowledgements in the book. That’s because when I was at my wit’s end with how to resolve any one of the many crises that arose during the writing, Caroline could be relied upon to provide steady, calm, logical advice. This is a woman who’s good in a crisis. She had John M and Steve M in tow, too, and the latter bought a book for his cute wife Denise cuz he’s hoping she’ll do some gyratin in this Jose Cuervo bikini he got her a while back. Other notable Grotto-ites in attendance were the pretty frackin phenomenal writer Peter Orner, and kindred spirit Chris Colin with his wife Amy Standen. Don’t worry: the two of them left their infant safely in the trunk of the car just so they could come check out the hoopenings without that nagging worry.
My bestest girl Antonella was there, of course. I didn’t get to tell this story in the book, but alongside everything else that hooping brought into my life, it brought me Antonella. We met at my very first HoopGirl hoop class back in August 2006. (If I’m not mistaken that was also Miss Rosie’s first. I remember her tiny dog Romie(?) shivering in the corner, watching the hoops fly.) And it was Antonella who insisted we check out the Bay Area Hoopers, and, once we were there, dragged my butt out of the bushes and into my hoop when I was too shy and overwhelmed by all the hooptalent to do anything but wide-eyed watching. My Antonella. She was there with her husband Roi, who happens to be the talented photographer who shot these back in March.
My worldchanging/sustainability peeps were also in da house: shiny-spirited Erica from the mighty mighty Free Range Studios (creators of The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff) and Quentin who’s supporting folks in the Tenderloin and Deborah who asks Should You Really Be A Lawyer and the remarkable Chid Liberty with the Liberian Women’s Sewing Project and the powerhouse Matt Lewis, whose feet you’ve gotta kiss for keeping the planet from melting.
And then there were the hoopers. Gobs of gorgeous hoopers: Annie, Claudia, Satise, the breathtaking Rich, Michael (whom I also Acknowledged on account of his generous loving and patient ways as one of my most influential hoopguides), Khan, Victor, Rosie, Heather, Jennaluna and Jenny, Corinne, Paige… so many I must be forgiven if I’ve left any off the list. See some stills of the hoopers here.
I think there were between 60 and 70 people who came out, all told, although by the midway point I’d consumed enough champagne that counting got hard … (Thanks to Obid, my friend Sue’s companion, who kept handing me those cute single-serving bottles of the stuff all night, and which by the end I was chugging beer-style, no glass required. Thank goodness my momma was tucked away in Berlin and couldn’t see her daughter commit such an abomination.) The bubbly made my second hooperformance especially exciting, as the hoop went flying out into the audience and towards the bar. Again and again. But everyone just cheered. Oh, joyous shining hooping community, I’ve missed you, while I’ve been off writing about you….
The book’s out and about now. I’ve eagerly showed my first copy off to anyone who seems interested, in all my worlds (writing, family, hooping, worldchanging). Folks frequently comment on the JOY emanating from its pages. It is a happy-feeling book, isn’t it. One diligent peruser flipped through every single spread, studying the pages. When he finished it he turned to me: I was looking to see if there were any photos where people didn’t look as though they were having the Time of their Lives. Everyone looks SO HAPPY.
Well, that’s how hooping makes you feel. So that’s what the photos reflect.
That said, the step-by-step photos that accompany the instructions for moves are not necessarily smile-inducing shots. So let’s give a lot of credit where credit is due– to the whole crew that made those shiny faces possible. (Of course I don’t mean literally shiny, dear Danica, our wonderful makeup artiste…)
We booked the studio where those photos were shot on two separate occasions, for two and three day sessions, respectively. First came the test shoot. The models (Dawn, Natasha aka Silverstar, Jennaluna, as well as Christabel and myself) were supposed to treat it just like the real shoot: come fully rested, having hydrated and slept well for at least days if not a week before the shoot, with radiant skin, well-groomed finger- and toenails, and a lot of energy. Scott the photographer and Kramer the producer kept busy trying different effects to show the publisher (Workman Publishing). We only did a sampling of the moves that would be covered in the real shoot/in the book, and we had a blast, producing some of the images you’ll find here on the Outtakes page of the book site.
Then came the real shoot, a 3 day affair in November (2008). Here’s the logistics email that Christabel sent out to the models:
Hi ladies,
Now is the time to get pumped with excitement! Your super hot images are going to inspire thousands of women to hoop! Yahoo! We have a wonderful makeup artist named Danica for those who have not met her yet. Below you will find a list of the studio location, times, what to bring and a tentative timeline with your daily arrival times. Each of you also have an excel document with your name on it with the images we will be taking of you. There is also a master document with all 420 itemized images for Scott and Netta from Workman.
If you have any questions, call me! You are all going to do fantastic and look gorgeous.
xoxo
Christabel
TO BRING
Your beautiful self! Smiley, mani-pedi-ed (extra important for those close up foot and hand shots!), NO TANS per Workman request, esp Dawn
Reading material/hobby/cellphone to keep yourself occupied during wait times
Snacks for yourself and to share
Beverages of your choice and water
No earrings please, or jewelry. If you have stretched lobes please put in neutral plugs.
TENTATIVE SHOOT TIMELINE
SUNDAY
7am arrival Netta, Christabel, Kramer and Scott for prelighting, equipment check, complete wardrobe selection
8:30 am arrival Danica
9am arrival Ariane
8:30-9:15/30 makeup/hair/first wardrobe for Christabel
10am-1pm Christabel photos (Images 100-146)
1-1:45 lunch break
1:45-4:30 Christabel photos 100-146
3:30-430 Hair makeup for Ariane
430-7pm Ariane photos
MONDAY
7am arrival Netta, Jenna, christabel, Kramer, Scott, Dawn, Danica
7-8:00 Hair/makeup/wardrobe for Dawn, Jenna
8-10 Dawn photos
10-1 Jenna photos
11:45 Natasha arrival
11:45-12:45 Natasha hair and makeup
1-1:45 lunch break
2-5 Group photos
5-7 Natasha photos
**At the end of the day on monday we will assess what kind of progress we have made and if this schedule actually worked! So everyone needs to make themselves available on tuesday until we know for sure what has been completed by monday night.
TUESDAY
7am arrival Netta, Christabel, Kramer, Scott, Danica
7-7:45 Hair and makeup Christabel
8-11am Christabel (Images 146-200- Routines)
9am arrival Ariane, Natasha, Jenna, Dawn??? TBC for overflow….
****everyone else should plan on arriving at 10am for hair and makeup and being available until 7pm. Again, we won’t know our progress until monday night.
* * * * * * *
Phew!, right?!
Of course everything took longer than expected. With the very first model we went at least an hour and a half longer than we’d budgeted for. It turns out that taking a move that you usually do in a matter of seconds (like lifting the hoop from your waist to above your head, called “Float” in the HoopGirl lexicon) and breaking it into its component parts for a series of still shots is really hard. We’d decided to use regular size beginner’s hoops throughout the instructional pages, too, which weigh several ounces more than the ultralights that all of us are regularly using to hoop with these days. Try using just one hand to hold a hoop like that flat on the horizontal plane (parallel to the ground), without letting it droop. It’s almost impossible! Then do it again and again and again, while radiating joy and beaming a huge smile. And do it for hours under hot lights in clothing that you may not feel totally comfortable in. Can we give it up for our tirelessly smiley models, please?
In the evening hours of the final day of the shoot, after we’d let all the other girls go, I was assisting Christabel to get through all of her shots. We were racing against the clock, madly trying to finish all the routines at the back of the book and then shoot a cover image, and Christabel was pulling out shot after shot like the pro she is. Oftentimes she’d get it in a single take. (Compare that to as many as 15 takes for a single shot of the rest of us models! Hey, we’ve had way less experience.)
And then: technical meltdown. Honestly I can’t even remember whether it was the flash sync cable or the lens or what that needed to be replaced, but things basically imploded on the set (and oh, did I mention the deafening clap earlier that day when one of the lights or something exploded? For a split second we thought Scott might have, well, exploded along with it– before he emerged from behind the backdrop, a little dazed but unharmed.) Christabel, in full makeup and outfit, just laid down on the couch and practiced deep breathing. I fidgeted and ran calculations in my head about what it would cost if we had to return to the studio for another day, and how long we could extend the night that night without paying for it in crappy shots.
About an hour later Scott and Kramer returned with the necessary parts. Christabel turned on a laughter yoga track to raise her energy and her spirits– a recording of different people laughing hysterically. I had to giggle; I can’t help it–the laughter tracks always work infectiously upon me. Not so for the boys: Kramer rolled his eyes and looked pained; Scott gritted his teeth: whatever the model wanted, the model got. After a bit of shooting, though, Scott was like: I can’t take it any more. We switched over to some peppy dance music.
In the last moments of that grueling last day, Christabel nailed it. Bright, radiant, expressive shot after shot after shot. I was in awe. Really, check out the book and then guess if you can tell which photos are from after the meltdown. I dare you.
Then we broke out a bottle of champagne and got real silly, the few, the proud, the photovictorious.
Writing a how-to book is harder than it looks.
Before starting in on HOOPING!, I skimmed a bunch of books on stretching, bellydance, yoga, NIA (one of my faves), Swiss ball exercises, punk rock aerobics (very fun), and striptease workouts. One thing that differentiates hooping from all but one of these movement forms is that it involves object manipulation. And although the ball is an object, it’s the same from every angle, and there are a limited amount of ways your body can interact with it.
The hoop, meanwhile, exists on multiple planes (perpendicular and parallel to the ground, for instance) and levels (at the height of your shins, or above your head). You can grip it from the outside and the inside, with your hand and wrist twisting to every conceivable angle; it can be maneuvered with your torso, shoulders, elbows, neck, feet, knees, thighs, and bum as well. The possibilities are almost limitless.
I was a pretty ideal writer to partner with Christabel because I’d taken nearly every class HoopGirl had offered at the point when we started on the book, and I’d mastered every move we decided to cover in its pages. I already knew the vocabulary: one of HoopGirl’s trademarks is her sassy names for moves. She calls hooping around your waist, for example, “Pump,” and around your legs,“Spunk.” While this is the object of derision among some folks in the hooping community, I’ve always thought it was fun, and a smart business decision. In fact, I’ve had a hand in naming a number of HoopGirl moves, like “Dolphin” and “Pearl.”
So our raw materials at the outset of the project were Christabel’s years of teaching and explaining moves to students, combined with my experience of HoopGirl (and, um, writerly prowess), plus her HoopGirl teacher manuals. Sounds like we had an ample head-start, don’t it?
Being able to explain to students how to move the hoop and their bodies to achieve a desired effect is a gift, as you’ll know if you ever tried to explain a move, especially a more complicated one, to someone else. Christabel definitely has that gift. Even so, translating her explanations to the page was complicated.
Phrases like “bring the hoop down over your head” may make perfect sense when your teacher is simultaneously demonstrating it a few feet away, but for the lone reader squinting over the page in her living room, even with the help of a photo, it just wasn’t going to fly. At first we erred on the side of excruciating levels of detail (“your palm will be facing the floor, thumb on the outside of the hoop, as you keep the hoop parallel to the ground and swing it through the air”) and multiple visual images (“imagine the hoop as ascending a spiral staircase, or a waiter brandishing a plate from behind his back with a flourish”), but ultimately the text had to be pared down to the simplest, most evocative language.
Too much explanatory verbiage on the page, and the reader runs screaming, fearing they’ll never ever be able to master this. Worse yet, it’ll mean the book gets left in the bookstore and never brought home at all.
As a righty hooper (meaning, my hoop naturally rotates to my right; we righties seem to be the equivalent of lefties in the regular, non-hooping world, based on my casual observation, with one or two righties generally present in every class or group of 15-20 hoopers), I felt strongly that the instructions should be worded in such a way to enable hoopers of both persuasions to understand without needing to reverse everything in their heads. That led to a lot of sentences that had Ruth, our editor, cringing, such as “Use the hand opposite the direction the hoop is traveling around your body.” We spent long hours trying to make those phrases as simple and elegant as possible, and I think and hope we mostly succeeded.
…
(More on the Making of HOOPING! to come)
The long-anticipated book– the world’s first English-language book on contemporary hoopdance (Japanese hipster-hoopers released one not long ago) — is on its way!!!! The stork will be dropping it into bookstores in 2-3 month’s time. Stay tuned.
NB-This isn’t quite the final cover: notably, the final agreement between myself and my co-author will place my name under hers, to be preceded by a “with,” and thus identify my role as more writerly and less hoop-guruly.
Back in mid-December, Kahunahula posted a thought-and-then-dialogue provoking rant on the HooppaiN site–essentially bemoaning the growing homogeneity in hooping, and basically placing blame for the lack of creativity on hooping’s gurus. Khan responded by vindicating the guru slash teachers and shifting the blame to the shoulders of students–the many who lack the curiosity or drive to develop their own style, moves/tricks, or other innovations.
Khan
Kahunahula
I was just about to skip town when I read it, and made a mental note to respond upon my return. Life edged in, and I forgot all about it.
Until today…for as I was researching consumerism for my latest book project, I was reminded of the great Kahunahula vs Khan debate and my original reaction. Which is: we Nordamerikanos in particular, and we capitalism-participants in general, are highly incentivized not to be original. In work settings, the majority of people are discouraged from original actions, if not original thought. Non-work for most people consists of ingesting various iterations of the same message– the one about how one needs to live and what one needs to buy so that one finally feels contentment. And fits in.
So I’d excuse both the teachers (and, yes, in the interest of full disclosure, I did just collaborate on a book project with one of the unnamed but surely-intended gurus, HoopGirl herself) AND the students, and point instead to a systemic problem. (Granted, maybe I’m removing individual blame because I’m having a hard time finding/reclaiming my hooping style after feeling it meld into the HoopThink.)
But without question we find ourselves today with the sad state of affairs that humanity’s dominant central organizing system(s) primes and then rewards us –even us “alternative” groups like peace protestors or Burners–for becoming a consumer target group. And for sacrificing original thoughts and actions.
The happy thing is that people made this system, and that means people can unmake it. We just have to take the little red pill to be able to see clearly, and to be and think and hoop with originality. Either that, or wait for the system to collapse, which seems to be beginning to happen. As my friend Annie Leonard says, would you rather be at the wheel of the truck, or would you rather be mowed down by it. Because the changes are coming either way.
Personally, HoopGoddess would advocate for the red pill,right *now*, to get cracking on a new structure that values and has reverence for all life and for creativity. Amen.
