[dance music]
>> It's just a really beautiful
thing.
You have the heat from it
and you have the flame from it.
For some people, hoop dance is
an escape, and they're just
doing it to like have some time
to themselves.
For some people it's an art
and they want to do it
performance-wise.
One of my friends made me a hula
hoop for my 27th birthday.
I couldn't keep it up.
To keep a hula hoop up you need
two points of contact.
You need a front and
a back point of contact,
and you want to push back
and forth.
It's basically just
understanding what that rhythm
is in your body to keep
the hoop up.
And once you get it,
your muscle memory takes over.
It took me a week to figure out
how to keep the hoop around
my waist.
And from that moment forward
I was hooked.
Yeah, I fell super into it.
I started performing within
three months.
I started going out of the state
to go to hoop gatherings.
I am really passionate about it.
And so I think that people are
like, "Okay, well yeah, you're
going to go to North Carolina to
hula hoop for 4 days, that
sounds like something you'd do."
When I'd be somewhere hooping,
people would ask me
where I taught.
We're going to work on the
corkscrew and getting
the timing--
I was in college when I got my
hoop, and I was going to teach
English in high school.
I realized the thing that I
really wanted to teach was
hoop dance and not English.
I typically go from this to
this, from this move--
I love teaching hoop dance.
I love sharing what I've
learned.
I want to teach hoop dance
to everybody.
I drive through Milwaukee and
think about how many hula hoops
they need.
[laughs]
That is where I'm at in
my journey.
Modern hoop dance is like,
it's dance and it's circus art
and it's this state of flow
all in one.
To me, it's a dance form.
The hoop is your partner.
But the people around you
are involved in your dance too.
It's shared, because everyone is
learning together.
Everybody is at least
fractionally obsessed with
hoop dance.
Having that space where I could
come and like share what I've
learned and see what other
people are working on,
really gave me this awesome
sense of community.
[tattoo gun hums]
>> It feels great, don't it?
[laughs]
>> Yeah, I could have picked a
fleshy spot.
It's been really
transformational for me.
'Yet' is a possibility creating
word.
You can have a negative
statement and then put yet on
the end of it, and then you've
created possibilities.
So we always, when we're
hooping, we try to do a trick
and we wouldn't be able
to do it.
But then we started saying,
oh yeah, I can't do that trick
yet.
I want this work with me
in my heart.
[indistinguishable]
Jugglers of fire!
I started playing with fire,
like fire hoops,
within six months.
There's actually a picture of me
from that night lighting up
for the first time and
I look petrified,
like really, really scared.
You have to be really aware of
where the fire is.
And where it's going to go.
I have three and a half inches
between my fire and my hoop.
I've burned myself twice
in four and a half years.
You just learn to keep your
hands on the inside of your hoop
while you're fire hooping.
With hooping, it's not
really like any sort of
adrenaline rush.
But when you have like
five or 10 or 15 wicks of fire
circling your body while
you do this dance
then you had an element
of adrenaline and I really
enjoy that.
It really is an art form that
crosses boundaries.
[cheers]
Hoop dance is my passion.
It's still the best thing
that I do.
And it's my favorite thing,
so I'm super lucky.