My sister and I recently had a discussion about poetry and hooping. In particular, line breaks and punctuation in poetry and how they are translated in the reading of a poem. We came up with a translation of line breaks, whitespace, commas, periods, etc. in terms of breaks, reversals, stalls in hooping, then set a challenge: to hoop a poem. I chose "The door" by Miroslav Holub, a favorite poem of mine. She's hooping this poem too.



In the end, the translation of the punctuation became…  

Just taking stock again of the tricks I've learned along the way. An (*) indicates new. What I know as of today, August 24th, 2010:



Tricks I Know:



waist hooping (left current solidly, right moderate*)

maintaining the hoop

saving the hoop

hip hooping

barrel rolls (still clumsy with this!)

revolving door

Hooping Above the Head

Front Lift

Front Down

Drop On (left and right current*)

Foot Pick Up

The…  

A woman posted a passive aggressive status update to her Facebook page not long after I posted a video of some of my recent hoop practice. The spirit of it was, well, negative. I won't repost it here.



Now, it could totally be coincidental and I've got my hackles up for no reason. But she likely saw my video since we're friends. There is no way for me to comment to her wall, which is probably good.



I do feel I need to work more on my dance. I'm trying, really trying. I…  

I've gotten into the habit of practicing an hour or more each day. Most days I go to the park and dance under a big maple tree full of cicadas, some days I stay home and practice in the yard. For some reason, practice at home is never as fun or rewarding as practice elsewhere. Maybe it's the pull of domestic duty? I don't know.



An hour a day is really helping me to progress. I'm not fabulous, but passable. I'm getting there. Baby steps.



Today I had an "off" day of…