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32
june 2010
healthy living
» ftness
HOOPflThikig
By Stefana Serafina
A
n eccentric, colorul species is claiming an ever-larger section at urban parks and musicestivals with each passing season. Hula-hoop acionados, commonly known as “hoopers,”and their shiny circular toys are spreading hoop ever with the speed o an epidemic.Hoopers aren’t exactly the new kids on the block. Ancient Greeks and Egyptians made hoopsrom wood or grapevines, and American Indians used them in ritual dance and storytelling ormillennia beore toymaker Wham-O sold more than 100 million plastic ones during the crazeo the ’50s. In this latest remarkable renaissance, the hula hoop hasn’t come a ull 360. Tis timearound, the ad has taken o in a dierent direction, sparking a new dance orm and giving birth toa vast subculture with its own credo, orums, celebrities, vernacular, and gatherings. Te master-ul spinning o the hoop on the shoulders, neck, or knees that seemed revolutionary a ew yearsback has now evolved into an elaborate dance style in which the hoop changes planes, manipulatesspace, bounces, gets tossed, and travels miraculous orbits in skillul hands. O-body hooping, iso-lations, isopops, and breaks are only some o the concepts that make up the complex language o hooping. With their dizzying numbers and their novel ways to move with the hoop, modern-day hoopers are causing heads to spin and worlds to shit.
Hoopg Up
Much like being a grati artist or a skater, to be a hooper is more than being someone who likes torock the hoop. It is an identity, a belonging, a way o lie.Film director Amy Goldstein has documented that way o lie in a recently released eature-length documentary called
Te Hooping Lie
. Te lm ollows the adventures o several youngmavericks transormed by their passion or hooping and their struggle to make it a ull-time job.Te lm weaves the intimate real-lie stories o its stars (modern hoop dance pioneer Anah “Hoo-palicious” Reichenbach o LA, the Bay Area’s dazzling Christabel “HoopGirl” Zamor, and Baxtero North Carolina, among others) with top-quality hoop dance rom the world’s club scene. Teresult, Goldstein says, is a “universal story o risking it all to dance to the beat o your own drum.”“When I started lming in 2004, hooping was mainly seen at music estivals and nightclubs,”
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she recalls. “Tere are now close to two mil-lion results on Google or ‘hooping’ and ‘hulahoop,’ hundreds o thousands o Youube videos about hoop moves and hoop making,thousands o Facebook groups, and websitesrom around the world.”It’s di cult to say what kindled the contem-porary obsession with hooping that has now spread ar beyond the U.S., conquering citieslike Sydney, okyo, and London. Te Colora-do-based band Te String Cheese Incident iswidely credited or spurring the revival o thehoop in the U.S. In the ’90s, band members be-gan throwing hoops into the audience to bet-ter engage ans during concerts. “People wouldgrab the hoops and start spinning. It just madethe experience so much more un,” remem-bers Shakti Sunre, who admits she was oneo the band’s “biggest groupies.” Recognizedtoday as a topnotch hoop perormer, Shaktirediscovered the hoop in 2007 while workingas a brand consultant in Denver. Within sixmonths, Shakti (known at the time as LauraBlakeman) quit her corporate gig to establisha small hoop business and turn up the volumeon the “community hoop buzz.”“Hooping has given us the opportunity orunique sel-expression, but also or radicalsel-acceptance. It has been our unique way o embracing the evolution o our surround-ings, a way o saying we’re sick o the corporatestructure, the retirement plans, the processedood, and ear-based society. It is a tool or ourempowerment against all o that.”Shakti recently moved to San Francisco, joining a wave o popular hoop dancers whohave relocated to the Bay Area. An establishedinternational hooping hub, the bay is home toone o the largest hooper communities, doz-ens o hoop businesses and instructors, andnonprots like World Hoop Day, which bringshoops to children in inner cities and poor coun-tries around the world. Te Bay Area Hoopers,a group that throws weekly hoop jams in urbanparks, turned seven this spring, with a soaringmembership o more than 600.As hooping claims new ground as an ex-pressive art orm, there comes a deepening inits exploration. Kandice Kower-Kaus, “holis-tic hoopologist,” also studies and teaches thehoop’s potential as a tool or personal trans-ormation.“I noticed how I would pick up my hoopwhenever I was sad or elt stressed, and sud-denly I elt well again,” she says. Her previousstudies in psychology and philosophy came inhandy when researching the “proound andlasting physical and spiritual benets” o hoopdance. “Once you begin to understand thehoop’s movements and become one with its
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