Swampwater Debutante

Day Two.

(can you spot Spiral’s hoop in this one? it took me a few minutes to figure out where it was…she is so, so fast)

Despite my exhaustion, sleep was spotty thanks to the fact that I am generally allergic to hotel rooms; I always end up with a stopped up nose and insomnia.

So I was a bit out of sorts today, and I had trouble with getting into flow very often. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy myself or that I didn’t learn anything, because I very much did. Where yesterday had been (usefully, because I need a lot of work on these) isolation and break heavy, today focused on spinning, stalling, and flowing in a sequence of movement (what I use most, but which always can use a good tidy-up).

I have to take a moment to say that the person who suggested to Rich and Spiral that they do a project together – well, that person is totally a genius. Their styles are very different, but complementary, and when you learn what they have to teach you, it makes you a very, very well rounded hooper. Again, so much of hooping is focused on fitness or general entertainment, and not on the fact that is is part of the art of dance. The Hoop Technique curriculum focuses exactly on that concept, and I can’t imagine two more perfect guides for it.

In fact, here’s a video of the two of them just tearing it up during a break in the action, so you can see how their styles work to the same piece of music. She’s flow, he’s punctuation, and it’s just…yeah. Wow.

(Flickr and Vimeo compressed this funkily, so there are wacky extra sped up moments…not sure how to fix. It looks fine on my phone.)

So! We did learn a few more breaks today (one very cool one that reminded me so strongly of color guard work that I was instantly able to switch from practicing the break on my right side to performing it on the left – left is the dominant direction for color guard) and were introduced to something Rich calls “micro accelerations,” which…I can’t explain it. It involves the idea of performing a maneuver at normal speed and then at some point inserting a quick burst of punctuating speed and an abrupt stop. It’s a very cool thing that I look forward to working with more. Well, once I re-tape my small hoops – duct tape is killer on your hands, I’d like you to know. I taped them when I was first learning how to make hoops and hardly used them, so I had no idea. Ouch, though.

At any rate, Spiral then took the floor for sustained spinning, which for some cracked out reason had completely slipped away from me as something that we’d be learning. It should have been absolutely a no-brainer that we would (it is, after all, the defining characteristic of her hooping) and yet…I don’t know. I blame work, it’s clearly eaten my brain.

I have played with sustained spinning in small doses, but it is still pretty new for me. My hoop style tends to be very expansive because of my ballet and jazz background – I use a hell of a lot of space when I dance. I probably need exposure to any technique that keeps me in one space, therefore this was useful to me.

But when Spiral gave a demo of the concept, I didn’t care about learning it. I would have been happy to have come down to Austin for the weekend just to watch her perform sustained spinning for four minutes. I promise you, it would have been worth it to me, just for that alone.

She had just given us a small talk on the importance of sustained spinning in her practice, explaining how it rather instantly opens up this powerful spiritual conduit in her and completely connects her to a deep joy and bliss in her hooping. Which in and of itself was valuable and interesting. Then she picked up her hoops and had Rich cue up a song for her.

It seemed to surprise her at first. “This?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow and a half-smile at Rich, who grinned back and nodded. She shrugged and took the floor. For the first few measures the spinning was pretty, slow and deliberate movement.

Then the heavy bass beat kicked in, and there was a transformation.

You could see it, right away. A smile bloomed across her face, she tipped her head to the ceiling, and it was instant, magnetic and electric; in two massive electronic thuds she was clearly transported to wherever it is she goes when she is spinning. We were fascinated.

No video you ever see of Spiral will prepare you for seeing her so completely in her element in a live setting. Ever. It is hands down the most absolutely mesmerizing thing you will see in your life. Her love and joy of hooping – of this specific aspect – radiates from her and leaves you in awe.

As I say, that would have been worth the cost of the weekend in Austin alone. If you’re on Facebook, there is a video of it, but I am not sure if it is part of Laura’s public profile. Still, if you can view it, do, it’s wonderful.

But then it was our turn to try. Jess loves sustained spinning; I am still dubious about it from a me-doing-it standpoint. However, I gamely gave it the old college try.

Yes. Comical. I say this not because it was bad, but because I delightedly spun much too fast, so fast that when I finally stopped, I couldn’t actually stop.

I tried my normal anti-dizzy method of popping a quick squat and hopping back up, which usually resets my balance fairly quickly. No soap. Actually, I couldn’t really get down: my body flatly refused.

I tried turning in the opposite direction. Nope.

Desperately, I tried to just stop moving. Aaaaaaaand…no. Instead, I staggered off helplessly to my right, and fortunately was stopped by a sofa that was between me and the wall with which I would have inevitably collided.

I collapsed onto it and silently begged my eyes to please please stop twitching. Rich – alerted, I think, by the giant gaping hole in the crowd where there had just been a hooper – came around the half wall partitioning the sofa away from the rest of the floor and peered at me curiously.

“I fell down,” I offered lamely.

He smiled. “Yeaaaaaah. That happens.”

So that was fun. And funny. I’m not sure how much sustained spinning I’ll use in future, but I am pleased to have learned it, and to see a live demo from the woman who originated the concept.

The rest of the day was dedicated to flow – we were asked to pick three things we do and know well, and then connect them in sequence. Then Rich would shout out to change the sequence. It was a very effective way to jumpstart flow if you were having trouble getting into it. I chose shoulder hooping to vortex to my hoopweave footwork that I love so, and was astonished to find it all worked together no matter what order I scrambled it into.

We closed the practical part of the workshop with five minutes of flow hooping, and I wish I’d brought my proper camera, because the sight of so many blissed out hoopers and their gorgeous sparkly hoops is one of the most awesome moments of my life. I’ll carry it with me for a long time.

All in all, I am pleased to have been a part of the test run for Rich and Spiral’s baby. They admitted they had been nervous about finally going live with this thing that was so important to them, that they’d been working on for so long. They seemed gratified that it had gone over so well, and we of course were grateful for the privilege of working with them. It was so well put together and structured that had I not been present at the post-workshop coffee klatsches/feedback sessions, I would never have known that they were ever uncertain about how it would pan out.

I cannot express how fun and wonderful and deeply fulfilling this entire weekend has been. I’ve written so much, but I feel I’ve barely scraped the surface of what it all was. I encourage again – if the Hoop Technique tour comes near you, jump on it, it’s a priceless opportunity. And buy the DVD when it comes out.

This will transform your hooping experience, will shake you out of that god-I-feel-so-stale rut, will add a lot to you as a hoopdancer in general.

Thank you, Jess, for being a kickass hoop travel buddy. It really made the weekend so spectacular.

Thank you to everyone who came up and said such lovely things about my video. I’m sorry I am still sort of a goober about gracefully accepting them. I am still getting used to having face and name recognition in the community, getting used to having SO MANY people know who I am. I am coming to terms with having made any kind of significant impact. I am still working to accept that I can not only love dance deeply and intensely, but I can be good at it. Actually, I am going to blog about this more tomorrow.

Thank you, Rich and Spiral, for this wonderful weekend, for giving me more tools to make me into a better hooper and dancer, for sharing your wealth of knowledge and for your general lovely natures. It was a complete joy to experience Hoop Technique with you.

The marvelousness of everything was only capped off by this random but perfect tchotchke that I found in an Austin antique shop that had an enormous plaster rabbit over the door:

Yeah. Awesome. The end.