Sometimes the most beautiful, most exciting traditions arise out of stories of pain and exile.
Dancing is no exception.
We dance for all sorts of reasons: celebratory, ceremonial, honorific, memorial. Sometimes it’s historical and very, very contemporary simultaneously.
So it is with the hoop dance.
It’s actually a tradition that is very old, but it’s undergone a revival over the last generation of so, one that has swept Indian Country.
I have no doubt that numerous traditions have origin stories claiming credit for it. In my own, it arises from the story of one of the spirit beings, outcast as a child. His great crime? Preferring the company — and the teaching — of the animals to that of his fellow spirit beings.
Reduced to a human level, I understand the impulse even now; I understood it at a visceral level as a child.
The child found his name changed to reflect his outcast status, and so he elected to live up to it, refusing to participate in the activities expected of him, going instead to live among and learn from his animal brothers. It was they who revealed to him the knowledge that life is a sacred hoop, cycle and circle alike, infinite, with neither beginning nor end.
Eventually, he sought ways to manifest and transmit this knowledge, and he settled on the notion of dancing. He fashioned a hoop of willow and began to work with it. He made another, and added it to his practice; and another; and then another. Soon, he had a collection of willow hoops, each exemplifying the very nature of existence, and he began to use them to tell the story (or, more accurately, these stories, plural), to pass on this wisdom from the animal world, through dancing.
He lived a solitary life, if one defines community as existing only in the company of one’s peers. The old stories are rife with incidents between him and his brothers, an endless hoop of tricksterism and practical jokes and angry responses. In this way, he seems to have played a role similar to that of the sacred clowns found in many other Native traditions, a being possessed of spiritual powers whose function is to tweak our humanity and deflate our egos when required.
In the process, he also gave our peoples a beautiful tradition, a dance known for its technical complexity, its dazzling spectacle, and its beautiful storytelling. In most traditions, hoop dancers are male, although today you will occasionally see young women enacting the old stories, as well. They wear colorful regalia, which includes a number of hoops that are incorporated directly into the dance itself. Beginners start out with one hoop; once they’ve mastered that (no easy task itself), they gradually add hoops one at a time until they have enough to perform a dance that tells the stories properly. I’ve seen hoop dancers using a dozen or more simultaneously, and I’ve seen reports of dancers who can use as many as 45 at once without a misstep or a single dropped hoop.
As always, it’s tradition, lesson, reminder, celebration, all rolled into one. Today’s featured piece, in the photo above, symbolizes that complexity seamlessly. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Let your spirit dance in this unisex twinned hoop of solid sterling silver. Like the dancers of the old days, it celebrates the cycle and circle of life itself, carrying with it on either side miniature hoops stamped into its very being: on one side, a random scattering, reflecting the the joyous complexity of the dance itself; on the other, an even dozen in the pattern of each of the moons of the year. Sizeable.
Sterling silver
$145 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a tradition that deserves widespread revival, and a story that needs broader remembrance.
For those of us who have ever had reason to feel outcast, it’s a reminder that we do have a place.
~ Aji
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