Augusta Hoops

NEW HOOP CLASS!

2016-05-11T08:16:00.003-07:00

I'm excited to announce that I will be hosting a new hoop dance fitness class at the Jessye Norman School of Art starting May 31. Register online at www.jessyenormanschool.org

Rachael Lust in Augusta, Georgia

2016-05-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Rachael Lust workshop here in Augusta was a resounding success!! We had 16 participants that came to the Le Chat warehouse at 10 in the morning to learn from her- a couple all the way from Florida! So pleased with the turn out and inspired by all of the knowledge that Rachael imparted on us. Once my body recovers (currently covered in bruises), I'm ready for another workshop! Join our group, Augusta Hoopers Anonymous to learn about more hoop workshops and jams.

Rachael and I after the class, just before she jetted off to get home! Thank you for coming out, Rachael!!

Check out her Youtube page for more of this amazing hooper.

Rachael Lust is coming to Augusta, GA!

2016-03-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

RACHAEL LUST IS COMING TO AUGUSTA!!

She will be hosting a workshop on May 7 on breaks, which she does expertly and with amazing speed. I am so excited for this opportunity to learn from such a skilled hooper and teacher!

Details here

If you're not familiar with her hoop style, get some inspiration from one of her most well-known videos, "Groove."

Hooping in the christmas Parade!

2016-01-06T11:26:00.003-08:00

The Christmas Parade is becoming a tradition for the Augusta Hoop crew! This year it was a lot sunnier and there were holiday smiles all around. Thanks JT McAvoy for capturing the fun :)

Arts in the Heart 2015: Hoop Takeover

2015-10-06T10:53:00.001-07:00

Ashley Gills during Eastwind Under Flame. Photo by Rhian Swain of RedWolf Marketing

Hoop dancers once again made a strong showing at Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival! With four performance spots dedicated to flow arts- The Augusta Fire Collective, Augusta Flow Artists, Eastwind Under Flame, and the Augusta Hoopers, plus many more dance groups that welcomed hoopers and even an appearance or two from Lunatrix Arts from Columbia, SC, this year was one of the best for hoopers at the annual festival. I can't wait until next year!

Donna Savage performing during the Augusta Flow Artists performance spot. Photo by JT McAvoy

The Augusta Fire Collective rocking out their video-game themed fire set! Photo by Fox Si Long studios

Jess Lankford, Ashley Gills, Erin Patch and yours truly in an epic duel while performing during the Augusta hoopers set. Photo by Emily Moore

And for a little treat, here's some video of the act pictured in the last photo

Maggie Brown featured on Hooping.org!

2015-07-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

Augusta Hooper Maggie Brown was featured on Hooping.org! Check it out :)

Hooping at Augusta Pride 2015

2015-07-09T13:21:00.001-07:00

Augusta Pride was a blast this year! Ashley Gills, Jessica Lankford and I performed at Beats on Broad on Friday night, then on Saturday morning a group of us hoopers and flow artists got together for the parade. Check out the video above for some epic video of the Beats on Broad hoop performance!

Springtime hooping vid!

2015-04-27T12:30:00.001-07:00

Just a fun video I put together with clips I snagged of Emily, Erin and Jess at a practice a couple weeks ago. The soundtrack is "She's A Loud Thinker" by Chris Hardy and His Four-String Little Friend, a local Augusta musician. Springtime hooping is the best!

Teaching at FLAME 2015

2015-04-17T06:46:00.001-07:00

This weekend I taught at FLAME festival 2015- my third year in a row! Flame is held every April at Cherokee Farms, a venue a little outside Lafayette, Georgia. Flow artists from all over gather for three days of nonstop spinning, education, and my favorite part: fire! If you're ever curious about flow arts community and need a great vacation that will inspire you, I highly recommend this festival.

This year I was voted to teach three of my workshops- Hoops 101, Hoopsicality, and Smooth Moves: Hoop Transitions. They are all subjects that I absolutely love to teach, so I was super grateful to have the chance to bring them to Flame. The photo above is from Hoopsicality, where I led hoopers in exercises to help connect them to the music in new ways in order to dance with more musicality. In Hoops 101 I had some of the freshest hoopers at the festival. It was super fun to give them the foundations for hoop dance and we rocked it out at 9:30 in the morning despite the threat of rain. My last class of the weekend, Smooth Moves: Hoop Transitions, is pretty self explanatory. I shared my thoughts on crafting hoop transitions with a great group of talented hoopers. If you want to check out the video descriptions I made for the workshop voting, check out my Youtube channel here- Scunshine

Hoop Dance by Christina featured in the Aiken Standard!!

2015-03-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

Photo by Stephanie Turner of the Aiken Standard

Stephanie Turner of the Aiken Standard did a great writeup about my classes at Sho Fusion Dance Arts Studio. Big thanks to Stephanie for coming out and writing a great article about Hoop Dance and Fitness! Click on the photo above to check out the article!

NEW IN AUGUSTA: HOOP FITNESS TUESDAYS

2015-03-22T12:37:00.002-07:00

Starting in April, I will be teaching a Hoop Fitness class at Sho Fusion Dance Arts Studio. It will be Tuesday nights at 6:30. We'll cover the absolute basics of hooping and then get into some great fitness workouts using the hoop! It'll strengthen your core, help your balance and put a smile on your face. Please check out the registration form below for details, this class requires pre-registration and payment.
Loading...

Spin jam with Nick Minton

2015-03-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hoop instructor Nick Minton visited Augusta, GA in his travels and the Augusta flow arts community turned it out for him! We had a fun informal skillshare and jam, with poi, jugglers, and slackliners all making an appearance alongside a great group of hoopers. It was great to connect with a teacher from outside our usual sphere. I'd say Augusta's ready for some more hoop workshops!

Katalin Lightner featured on Hooping.org!

2015-03-12T13:17:00.003-07:00

Local hooper and circus performer extraordinaire Katalin Lightner made her second appearance on Hooping.org yesterday, this time with a video of her slackrope hoop skills. Check it out!

Hoop Fitness at Sho Fusion Dance Arts Studio

2015-02-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

HOOP FITNESS CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT!! MARCH 15, 2015

I'm excited to be starting up a Hoop Fitness class at Sho Fusion Dance Arts Studio in April. To introduce everyone to Hoop Fitness, I'll be offering a basics workshop on March 15, 2015 at Sho Fusion Dance Arts Studio from 2-3:30PM.

It will be a great introduction to waist hooping where you will learn how to use hula hoops for fitness and have a great space to get comfortable with hooping before we get into it for the regular class.

To register for the class, follow this link. $15 will be due on the day of. Thank you, see you there! Invite your friends!

Regular Hoop Fitness classes will be offered on Tuesday nights at 8:15-9:15 starting in April.

Augusta Hoopers in the Holiday Parade

2014-12-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

Augusta's cutest hooping elves made an appearance in the 2014 holiday parade in downtown Augusta, Georgia! Join us next year! Can't hoop yet? You've got plenty of time to get some hoop skills in 2015 :)

Brecken Workshop in Charleston

2014-12-17T05:16:00.001-08:00

Augusta hoopers represented once more at a workshop hosted in Charleston by the incomparable Brecken Rivara. This is a video I shot during a jam in Sunday's classes. Everyone looks so badass! The entire weekend was pretty amazing, I can't wait for the next one. My goal for 2015 is to bring a workshop like this to Augusta, so be on the lookout!

Caroleeena workshop in Charleston

2014-11-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

Homespun Hoops in Charleston, SC organized a November 2 workshop with the fantabulous Caroleeena and you can bet that Augusta hoopers represented! Ashley, Jess and I joined up with some lovely Charleston hoopers and had a great day learning from one of my personal hoop role models. Caroleeena makes some of the best online tutorials out there for hoop dance, covering everything from tricky contact moves, to dance footwork to make us all better hoop dancers. I've been learning from her since I started hooping in January 2010, and she's been an inspiration to my teaching, as well, with how encouraging and inviting she is. Hoop teachers are my rockstars, and Caroleeena is one of the best!!

Dissecting Dog Days or "How to choreograph 5 hoopers without smacking each other (that much)"

2014-10-17T13:39:00.001-07:00

This fall I undertook a big project with 4 other local hoopers. We've spoken about doing a large group piece for a while, but I have no dance training or background so I was pretty intimidated by the prospect. With Arts in the Heart of Augusta (and the giant Global Stage) looming, they finally convinced me to work on it. Since these ladies were already coming to my Monday night hoop dance classes, it was pretty natural for me to take the lead on putting the choreography together at the start, but by the end I found that it was a rewarding collaborative experience with these talented hoopers.

Before the experience gets too far behind me, I wanted to describe the process of choreographing a piece for 5 hoopers. In my own research leading up to this piece I had a hard time finding tips and advice on how to do this, so I hope this is helpful for others looking into the same thing!

Click through for the low-down on how we got this thing done!

Music

It took me quite a while to find a song I was happy with. I wanted something with a good variety throughout, with volume, tempo, and energy changes. I've learned from solo performances that a boring song will make even the coolest tricks fall flat, so when I rediscovered Dog Days by Florence + The Machine, I knew it was a good fit.

Envisioning the Choreography

The music gave me a big part of my inspiration for the first part of this piece. At the beginning the lyrics say, "Happiness hit her like a train on a track."and I wanted to conceptually represent that in some way. I decided that the hoops would represent "happiness" and as I gave each one over to the dancers, it would be like they found their happiness in the hoop. Every dancer got a unique move to introduce themselves before we all joined up in the dance together. It gave me teacher-warm-fuzzies, for sure. But once everyone got their hoop, I was unsure what I wanted to do with the rest of the choreography.

A Dance Takes Shape

I broke my "choreo-block" by abandoning the concept I had for the beginning and thinking about the rest of the song in physical shapes. For each major part of music, I decided what shape I wanted the group to form. From there, I decided how I wanted each shape to move and change.

For example, between 1:10 and 1:20, I wanted the hoops to stay "static" on a vertical plane in order to frame each dancer and build some anticipation for the upcoming chorus. At the same time we needed some motion so the audience wouldn't get confused or lose focus. So we did two slow half coin rolls, pausing between each one. We even stepped out to the side on the first coin roll, then closed the gap between our feet in order to shift the line slightly and get the audience's attention. Then, to indicate that something dramatic was about to happen, we flipped the hoops in a staggered line. This kept the vertical plane intact, but it was such a departure from the last two actions that it geared up the audience for something big coming up next.

From there, we all went into lasso, and two of the hoopers went to the front with the hoop on their waist, and three went to the back with the hoop still in lasso. This was the next "shape" I wanted to work with, and I had the hoopers switch places and change levels with their hoop within that shape to give the audience variety.

Other shapes you can see the group make in this piece are the "Kali" where we get in a line behind each other, the "scatter" when we all separate from the organized line of the kali, the "box" where there's a hooper at each of the 4 corners of a square (plus me in the middle), and the "W" when I come forward through the middle just before we all do the escalator move at 3:07. With these basic shapes all set in place, we were able to figure out what specific moves we should use to punctuate the music.

KISS- Keep It Simple, Silly!

Before our first group practice I picked out moves I thought would work for the piece and what I assumed we could do on stage. I was still in a mode of choreographing for a solo piece, so there were some very complex passages that would have been great for a single hooper... but when we started running though we found that with five us vying for space on stage and trying to stay together, things needed to be simplified. So within a few minutes of first working through the choreography as a group, it became a collaboration for all of us as we found ways to have the same effect with simpler moves.

The biggest thing I learned in this process is that the shape of the dancers as a whole has the most impact for the audience; The complexity of the moves is almost completely irrelevant.

Listening to the Group

The hoopers I worked with were also pretty awesome at finding solutions to tricky parts- what we would do for the partner segments, for example, and how to work within the confines of a small space, like staggering our positions. They were constantly coming up with ideas to make the piece flow better, and even came up with the end of the piece (I literally had "do something cool... jump through??? in my notes, but I like their version a lot more). Listening to their suggestions made this piece awesome.. A caveat to this guidance, however, is this: Unless it's simplifying the choreography, try not to change anything too close to the performance date, no matter how much a group member wants it. Have them save their ideas for another group piece in the future.

Other useful tidbits:

CHOREOGRAPHY NOTES: To share the choreography notes, I used a spreadsheet in google docs. These are immensely helpful for quickly sharing and allowing a lot of people to review new edits without wasting a lot of paper. I had a column for the timing, one for the lyric at the moment, one for the main action of the dancers, and another for the action of the other group of dancers. Each person is represented by their first initial. Further on in the choreography where there's a specific order needed, I indicate it by separating their initials by slashes, like so: A/E/C/L/J. We'd have printed copies at each rehearsal to make notes on (printed up by one of the hoopers with a much better memory than I) , and I would update the google doc afterward. You can see how I set it up the spreadsheet in this screenshot:

PRACTICES: Getting people together isn't easy! With our insane schedules it was hard to find time together to practice, but it certainly paid off. In order to go home at a reasonable hour we had to make sure to stay on task, which wasn't always easy. I was grateful to the other hoopers that when I stepped up in "teacher mode" and said that we needed to get back on track, they went right back to work. For a group of hoopers that don't necessarily have a teacher figure, it could be useful to appoint someone to be the person to fill that role.
RUN THROUGHS: We had a variety of methods to running through the choreography in order to memorize it. I would recommend doing all of them. To explain the choreography to the group, I had them all sit while I mimed each part. We walked it out slowly without music. We walked it out to the music without hoops. We rehearsed 30 second to 1 minutes spans at a time in order to get a specific transition here and there. I called out the moves while the music played and they listened. About a week before the performance, we transitioned to running through the whole piece with music and hoops almost every time we gave it a go. If we had a perfect run-through, we would usually break for the night in order to end on a high note.
TEAMWORK: The group of hoopers that came together for this choreography were stellar team players. Because we all had worked together in the class previously, we had experience with helping each other out with tough moves. They were all patient with me and each other as we learned some new moves and refined old ones. Even through hangups and frustrating practices, everyone was super respectful of each other, too.

I hope that helps a bit with any future group hoop pieces out there!! I chose not to go too much into why I chose which moves we would do because I think it's really up to the specific groups to determine what's right for them. I may do something about my individual thoughts on choreography in the future, we'll have to see!

I want to give mad shout outs to the hoopers who learned this choreography with me- Jess Lankford, Ashley Gills, Lacee Deanna, and Emily Moore.

If you're a hooper planning something like this, let me know! I definitely want to see video to continue spreading the inspiration for big hoop acts like this. Email me at cj.berkshire@gmail.com

Augusta Hoopers in Urban Pro Weekly

2014-10-09T08:47:00.001-07:00

Urban Pro Weekly included an excellent writeup of Augusta's Celebration of World Hoop Day in their latest issue. Check out their online edition below.

Thank you to reporter and photographer Vincent Hobbs for his coverage of this event, it means a lot!

WORLD HOOP DAY ROCKED!!

2014-10-07T08:36:00.005-07:00

photo by Brad Carson

World Hoop Day in Augusta was a massive success!! Photos are incoming from our sponsor from PB&J Photography. In the meantime, all I can say is THANK YOU!!

(Flow) Arts in the Heart

2014-09-23T09:43:00.001-07:00

Arts in the Heart welcomed flow artists and hoopers to the stage again this year and we had a great time!

Still from the Augusta Hoopers WHD choreography on Friday at the Global Stage

Photos and a bonus video below

Amanda Boyd worked the doubles at the Flow Arts spot
on Saturday at the Family Stage. Photo by Rhiannon Martin

Chantelle "Cleazy" Clark, the juggling queen!
Photo by Rhiannon Martin

Dear ol' me, in my "spin pants" sewn by
Donna Savage. Photo by Rhiannon Martin

Erin Patch with some rock and roll hooping.
Photo by Rhiannon Martin

Yay for Shay! She learned the WHD choreography in practically
a week and came out to hoop with us for her first performance!
Photo by Fred Swindell

Some of my favorite hoop ladies, Ashley Jess and Emily,
did a hoop trio at the Flow Arts spot on Saturday.
Photo by Rhiannon Martin

We all had so much fun! Here's a video of some of the Augusta Hoopers

introducing themselves with a little improv at the Global Stage.

Arts in the Heart of Augusta performances

2014-09-15T09:07:00.001-07:00

I am very pleased to see so many flow artists performing in the upcoming Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival! There were so many I was able to make up a little guide for everything that's going on. Check it out and come support your local poi spinners, hoop dancers and fire benders!

World Hoop Day Hoop-A-Thon Sponsorship Drive

2014-08-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

Hoopers were down at the Augusta Market today gathering sponsors for the World Hoop Day Hoop-A-Thon presented by Steam Powered Entertainment.

We gathered donations toward marathon-style hoop sessions that four volunteers will undertake during the World Hoop Day Augusta celebrations at Pendleton King Park on October 4. Proceeds will go to both the World Hoop Day Charity and The Augusta Partnership for Children, Inc.

Thank you to our sponsors and volunteers! We'll be back at the market getting donations next Saturday, September 6 from 8 to 2. See you there!

My life in a photo

2014-08-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Synergy fire hoop (wicks removed) and some of my very favorite shoes from my evening hoop at the Augusta Riverwalk.

Augusta Hoopers' Charleston Field Trip

2014-07-21T05:38:00.001-07:00

Augusta hoopers were representing the Soul City in Charleston, SC yesterday at Beth Lavinder's workshop. Hosted by HomeSpun Hoops, it was the first time I've had the opportunity to learn from a professional teacher in an environment like this one and it was well worth the trip. It was made even better with the company of two amazing hoopers I know here in Augusta, Ashley (far left, standing next to me) and Tzara (second to the left, kneeling). Next up, Gratifly!