Rockin' On With Hula Hoops

You'd think, being a bellydancer, that using a hula hoop would be sort of second nature--all those hip circles and all.

Alas, it is a childhood sorrow that I've never mastered the art of the Hula Hoop. The hoop goes round my middle once or twice, wobbles past my kees, and clatters disappointingly to the floor.

Enter Moira, a woman I met at a party last night. She brought her hula hoops along because she's been taking a six-week course to learn to Hula Hoop with the best of them. Yes, where I live hula-hooping is a performance art, seen on stage and much admired by simple non-hula-hooping folk like myself.

Her teacher is a woman named Tracy, locally made famous by a sort of reverse strip-tease she performed at the Wild Women's Cabaret not so long ago. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it could be done.

Tracy came out on stage at the Abbey clad only in tasteful white panties and brassiere. She starts her hoop spinning. Then she produces an old-fashioned suitcase and opens it, pulling out long silk stockings, garter belts, silky negligees, long evening gloves, and a feather boa. She proceeds to dress herself in these items in a saucy manner accompanied by va-va-voom music.

She is hula-hooping as she does this. The hoop is circling her neck, her knees, one arm, both arms...it is circling...circling...circling.... Then she adds a second hula hoop to the mix!

I am stupefied with a combination of envy and admiration. A woman who can do this could do anything it seemed to my amazed eyes. And she seems so shy in person!

Well, Moira, the woman at tonight's party, can not do all this after only a few weeks of lessons, but she did show us some nifty tricks, like how to make the hoop that is circling your waist sail up to orbit your arms as they stretch above your head. Or hula that hoop around your knees. Crazy fun.

Now I, as I mentioned earlier, am seriously challenged in the hula-ing department.

But I made a breakthrough tonight. With a lot of hooting and encouragement from my fellow party-hoopers. And by spinning that darn thing around and around again, and picking it up off the floor and trying again. It is all in your hips. The main idea is to refuse to spasmodically move your upper torso around as you feel the hoop lose momentum.

No. Banish the arm flail as demonstrated last night by Spider Girl. It's ALL in the hips. And the legs. Bend your knees. Relax. If it slips, try to get under the silly thing.

And it's a funny thing--once you've got it, you feel how right the movement is.

Another tip is to drink a glass of excellent blackberry wine first. It really improved my technique anyway. I couldn't guarantee individual results.

That wild-eyed look I have in the accompanying photograph is the heady thrill of victory.

The hoops that Moira brought are from Tracy's class, specially made from PVC piping and fancy electrical tape. But my friend Jordan was such a dear and rummaged around in her garage until she found hula hoops enough for all to practice with. And she let me take one home. Now I just have to make it heavier by weighting it with sand or something and spiff it up with duct tape.

Seriously, if I see that class offered again, I am so there!