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StudentPermalink Reply by Tilly Whirls on July 7, 2011 at 12:35am

I've sort of jumped into performing solo recently, and there aren't really any hoop troupes near me. I'm not an amazing hooper, and I haven't been hooping all that long, but I've got enough skill that people watch and go "whoa!" (Hooping isn't widely known in my town so people are pretty impressed with my intermediate level hooping.)

I've gone out and hooped at local community concerts and other community events as much as possible, I've practiced publicly and I'm going to start teaching at the local community center in the fall. The community center asked me sort of out of the blue about a week and a half before the 4th of July if I'd perform there to promote my classes, so I did that on Monday night. It went pretty well. It was basically me hooping along with 30 kids for a big crowd.

Last week I found out that the local town festival that's taking place this weekend near my condo is having street performers and I happen to know the chair of the event so I mentioned if they still need street performers I'd love to do it, so now I'm busking/street performing this weekend. The reason I asked in the first place was because I was going to go down and hoop to the bands anyway but didn't want to take away from any performing hoopers if they had any as street performers already—they didn't! I was in luck and they asked me to join.

I'm taking any opportunities I see, talking to event organizers to see if they're interested in having me, and thinking ahead to how I can eventually get paid for this. I'll probably get a small stipend (and tips) for street performing this weekend. And I know it's important to charge for performances so your services don't get abused, but until I have a larger performance portfolio, I'll probably just continue street performing randomly and I figure it might be good to do "pro bono" performances at fundraisers. That way I can say "this is my rate, though I didn't charge for this event (here's the video!) because it was a fundraiser for the organization and I donated my time."

 

Good luck! Here's the video from my very first performance on Monday:

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StudentPermalink Reply by Tilly Whirls on July 7, 2011 at 1:02am

Oh — one more thing. Your music. When you perform, make sure you pick music that you LOVE to rock out to with your hoop, that also happens to be event appropriate (no swearing if it's a community thing, etc.). I picked a song mostly on how appropriate I thought it would be for the event and it took A LOT to get me really into hooping to it. I was so blah about it but couldn't change my mind since I'd already given that song to the DJ. Going forward I'm definitely paying more attention to make sure the songs I choose are appropriate and I LOVE hooping to them.

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Permalink Reply by Calypso Moon Hooper on July 7, 2011 at 3:21am

Very nicely said Tilly! I am doing alot of the same performance stuff right now. I do have an un official hoop group too. It is just me and a few of my very close friends that picked up the hoop after me. I always keep it open to whoever wants to meet up. no rules, or schedule just a little hoop group. I guess we are most likely the only hoop group in my area. If you are in an area where hooping groups are already astablished you could contact them and find out or just make your own group . It is so easy to get other people hooked. I know my friend sent an audition video to a hoop group in Michigan some groups might require advanced hooping. Good luck!

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