Hoop Dance Classes at The Last Carnival
Hoop Dance class is a great form of fitness, fun, dance, and so much more. Anyone can do it! Wow your audiences. Wow your friends. In hoop dance lessons you will learn the fundamental techniques to get your body moving in, around, outside, and through the hoop. You will work torwards learning tricks that will culminate in a finished routine, ready to perform. If you are not new to hoop, this is your chance to level up by learning movement from a professional performer. Not only will you learn new tricks but you will learn how to use them with style to accentuate the music you are dancing to. We will focus on artistry, routines, and improvisational dance to music.
Hoop Dance is now taught on a private lessons basis in person or online . I the online option you will still receive live demos and feedback from our instructor, but now you can do it from anywhere in the world!
WHAT IS HOOP DANCE???
Hoop dance is a unique, artistic movement involving dancing with one or more hoops through prop manipulation, rotation, and sustained spinning. Hoop dance combines sequential, complex tricks and smooth, flowing transitions while moving the body rhythmically to accentuate music. Hoop dance has been described as a mixture of circus arts, belly dance, modern dance, meditation, and yoga.
The circle is one of the most ancient symbols known to man, representing unity, oneness, wholeness, infinity, and the goddess. The hoop can be considered a holistic tool since the many benefits of hoop dance influence the mind, body, and spirit. Not only is hoop dance an excellent fitness tool giving you a full body workout, it also aids as a new form of meditative practice. Hoop dance has even been used in rehabilitation of all types, such as physical injury and emotional rehabilitation. And the wonderful thing about Hoop Dance is anyone can do it. The full extent of the benefits of hoop dance is impossible to be expressed solely through words but can only be experienced by oneself inside of the hoop.
History of Hoop Dance
Hoops have been used for performances for quite a long time now. Hoop dancing is a form of storytelling for Native American Indians dating back to the 1400s. With no beginning or end, it symbolizes the never-ending circle of life. A Hula Hoop Craze hit the states in the 1950’s and by 1980 World Hula Hoop Championship was held in more than 2,000 cities with an estimated two million 
participants. Judging was done on compulsory moves, including the Knee Knocker, Stork, Hula Hop, Wrap the Mummy, Alley Oop, as well as freestyle dance routines. More recently the jam band The String Cheese Incident is widely credited with spurring a renewed interest in hooping. Band members have been throwing hoops into their audiences since the mid-90’s, encouraging their fans to dance, spreading the word and the fun. One of The Last Carnival’s hoop instructors, Ziggy, can be seen performing hoop dancing onstage with The String Cheese Incident on YouTube. Also in the 1990s, The Cohen Brothers’ fictionalized the invention of the hoop in a film called The Hudscker Proxy. Since the early 2000s, the annual Burning Man festival of arts and freedom in the northern Nevada desert has been a hotbed (literally!) of hooping, providing an uninhibited forum for hoopers from all around the world to share tricks, techniques, and energy. Fire Hooping is encouraged!
To no surprise the circus world picked up on this prop manipulation act and it became part of many shows around the globe, and the circus hoop was born. Hoops became part of the circus world in the 1960’s with Russian and Chinese acrobats in particular incorporating multiple hoops into their acts. Cirque du Soleil has several shows (Alegria, Quidam and Wintuk) featuring contortionist hoop acts.
