This past weekend, I attended the Northwest Hoop Gathering in Bend, OR, which had about 100 hoopers, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, come together in a high school gym for eight different workshops put on by some of the hoop community's foremost experts on flow.
To me flow is that qualitative aspect of hoop dance that is difficult to be able break down into component parts or describe precisely, but you know it when you see it in others -- and you also know it when you're able to get into your own personal hooping zone. If I were to pick one moment that best demonstrates flow, then I'd think Anah "Hoopalicious" captured it the best.
What's notable to me is that there isn't really a lot of technical moves or "tricks" that Anah is performing here, but the differentiating factor is her flow. She has a fluidity in her movement that is really captivating and beautiful. It's something that's come from 12 years of hooping experience, and it's not something that can easily picked up just by watching YouTube videos.
The common thread throughout almost all of the Northwest Hoop Gathering workshops was that there are certain psychological states of mind that makes it easier to achieve flow. And while getting the fundamental hooping techniques down is certainly crucial, flow goes way beyond just a series of technical moves.
As such, there was very little teaching of specific moves, and each workshop tended to focus on putting their own framework around describing and achieving this elusive flow state. There were all different types of experiential exercises for keeping a principle in mind while hooping to a music track that in some way reflected that principle. The intended states of mind ranged from a specific intention, an external awareness of space, a specific focus of internal feeling or hooping with some type of constraint.
I'll be digesting and sorting through my experience for a while, but I just wanted to jot down some key moments from each of the classes.
Baxter and Ann kicked of the weekend with a mini Hoop Path workshop, which turned out to be the perfect ice-breaking workshop. Everyone put on blindfolds and heard a lot of coaching from Baxter to help us let go and do things to go outside of our normal boxes of hooping. There was a lot of core hooping, and trying to get the entire body involved with hooping. Ann also talked about the power of myth, and did some more exercises that helped everyone really loosen up for the weekend.
Spiral's workshop had a framework for flow structured around seven different aspects of flow as described to her by a performer who spoke to her circus training class in Vermont. My recollection was that the aspects were effort, intention, shape, weight, space, time, flow, and each of them had a polarity. I remember breaking out of my normal hooping ruts a number of times. There was a lot of different interesting theory that was both rich and dense. What was particularly notable was the wide range of music that invoked these different principles.
Rich Porter's workshop was by far the most technically challenging one for the weekend. Rich has pioneered the style of isopops and isobreaks, which involve the combination of isolations, slides, breaks and 360 degree rotations. Rich made up a cheatsheet of his workshop which can be found here and the content of this workshop is probably best shared by watching a few clips of Rich doing a brief demo of some isopop and isobreak combinations.
Candice's workshop was more of a group therapy session exploring the various different aspects of how the cultural expectations of what we "should" be doing can block our own psychological states of mind while hooping. And as such, I was inspired by her talk to break the rules of the NO HOOPING dance party and bring my own set of mini hoops. :) But I think this workshop resonated with me more after the conference more than in the moment as I was reflecting my own feelings of where I fit in within the larger context of the "hooping community." And it's notable to mention that Candice ended her workshop with some some really fun circle dances with the last one having a particularly tribal feeling to it.
Christabel "Hoop Girl" Zamor had a two-part workshop where we went through a lot of the exercises that she's been doing lately in order to keep her hoop practice interesting. There was a lot of mindful movement as well as some rolling around on the ground while hooping (aka "floorwork").
The second part of Hoop Girl's workshop involved her latest work with her Zoom hoops which she places on her body and spins around. There was also some work with interlocking two hoops in various patterns and moving them around her body. When Christabel mentioned that these were designed to open up Divine Feminine energies I knew that these might be more tailored for the 90% of the audience that was female. But I tried it out for a bit, and ended up watching the rest of it after getting dizzy from spinning.
Khan's workshop was by far the most philosophical and comprehensive framework for flow. He talked about his personal path from poi to contact juggling to hooping, and provided some interesting quantum physics metaphors stemming from the famous Double-slit experiment in that the wave/particle duality represents the set of all potential hoop moves (wave) and your actual hoop move (particle). Thinking in this way helps open up your mind to think about the the set of all potential moves in any given moment -- as opposed to doing the same linear combination of moves all the time.
Khan also had the most strict taxonomy of flow, and had some really helpful exercises to explore the 6 different planes of movement, and what he calls the different plane 'modifiers' (same plane) and 'key moves' (changing planes). Khan also believes that you need a minimum of 3 different moves (which includes dancing and moving around) in order to achieve a flow state. There was an interesting exercise at the end to pick three of your favorite moves, and then try to work out every single combination of those moves. All in all, this workshop probably gave me the most to work with in my own practice with regards to flow -- specifically constraining myself to a limited set of moves or planes to move around in past the part of initial boredom.
Philo gave a fascinating and entertaining history of hooping.org and the early days of hooping in the Bay Area. He then went on to talk about the Siberia of flow, the legs. The legs are often a dead zone in many hoopers, including mine, and so we did some basic drilling of the different leg hooping moves and innovative pick-ups. There was also an show and tell for leg tricks at the end highlighted by Revolva's headstand leg hooping.
Finally, Anah provided a lot of really insightful exercises to get into the flow. This is something that she's clearly been working with for a long time, and it was interesting to get to hear how she approaches it. Her emphasis seemed to be on consciously being aware of your hoop and having a lot of dynamic range when it comes to hooping in any on position. There were some fun exercises in her involving weaving between people while walking and keeping a beach ball in the air while hooping designed to help you forget about the hoop. I think Anah's session had the most specific hooping tips geared towards piecing together flow combinations, and conscious tips for flow hooping. Again, I think the evidence of her approach to flow can be seen in the video above.
So that's my impressions from my memory of each workshop, and I know there were others who were taking a lot more detailed notes. I'd love to see more specific notes and track lists from the teachers to chew on.
I walked into the Hoop Gathering without really having much of a vocabulary for talking about the flow of hoop dance, and it's something that's really intrigued me when watching videos online. It's also something that seems to be cultivated starting with a specific focus or constrain in mind and going through any given number of experiential exercises.
So thanks to Molly of Hoop Dazzle for taking care of the logistics in order to provide a really rich group learning environment for the weekend.
Here's three more Jam Videos from the weekend: