HULA HOOPING
Blaire Hammer is reminiscent of a pixie, a petite woman with a large purple flower adorning her hair. The music starts, ethereal and winding. Blaire sways softly side to side until the beat kicks in, and suddenly she’s twirling. The hula-hoop that was dangling from her fingertips two seconds ago suddenly becomes an extension of her body as she effortlessly maneuvers it up, down, and around. She playfully ducks in and out of it as it orbits around her body, the lights sparkle and splay patterns in the darkness around her. It’s a beautiful spectacle.
Hammer is a 26-year-old flow artist based out of Calgary, Alta. She is part of a larger community of performance artists who engage and delight audiences, particularly at electronic dance shows, using assorted props. Her primary prop is her hula-hoop, though she dabbles in silk fans, poi, and even fire props. On stage, she is Ursa Minor, “like the constellation,” she laughs.
“Closing the doors to one specific prop closes the door to a whole new world of opportunity to something you might fall in love with,” she explains, “I like to try everything and feel the challenge of everything. It helps to keep you from plateauing.”
She has been perfecting her hooping skills for almost eight years, crediting a November 2009 Bassnectar rave at Calgary’s Symons Valley Ranch as the first time she fell in love with the art of hooping.
“I saw a couple of girls hooping in the back of the venue, far away from the crowd in their own little world,” she recalls.
“Just the way they moved their bodies, and the way the lights were orbiting around them in these beautiful patterns, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. It added so much to the music for me.”
Not long afterwards, Hammer went online and found a woman named Kelly Janes, whom she affectionately refers to as “Calgary’s hoop mama,” Janes took her in, and she’s been addicted ever since.
“Blaire and I have been to many hoop events together over the years,” recalls Janes, “it’s been so wonderful to watch her hoop journey unfold.”
Janes began her own journey into hula hooping in 2007, where she quickly realized how beneficial hooping was for exercising the body and helping to relieve stress. A young mother at the time, Janes used hula hooping as a way to blast off the baby weight, and to relax. She started making hoops, and teaching classes, in 2008 as a way to share her newfound passion with everyone.
Meet Blaire
“The hoop has the potential to be such a personal development tool, teaching creativity, coordination, confidence, patience, persistence and play,” says Janes. Blaire agrees that he hoop is a powerful tool for personal development, noting her own humble beginnings.
“My first performance, I felt like ‘why am I here?’… I’m going to throw up, my heart’s going to stop, what am I doing?” Hammer says, “that heart being out of your throat feeling doesn’t go away, there’s kind of a frantic anxiety feeling that washes over you and during the performance… I don’t even know what’s going through my head.”
“I just chase that state of flow where you’re not thinking about anything. You’re in the moment, just feeling that passion run through you.”
She’s come a long way since then, and now says she is in the process of transitioning into a full-time performance artist, something that is challenging to do in the industry without exceptional talent. She keeps busy with a plethora of interesting projects. She spearheads her own entertainment company, Ursa Minor Entertainment, she teaches hooping to a groups of eager students in Calgary three times a week, and also facilitates hooping workshops at several of Western Canada’s music festivals each year such as Fozzy Fest in
When Blaire performs she says she always gets a positive response from the crowd.
Blaire's first experience seeing a hula-hooper was mesmerizing and she was immediately drawn to the art.
Another popular way to entertain the crowd at EDM shows is adding fire to the mix, whether it's with hooping, fans or even poi.
Photo courtesy of Zane Z - ZTZ media.
Blaire also likes to play with LED or "light-emitting diode". Photo courtesy of Kayla Grahm - Kreate Love.
Lake Koocanusa, B.C., Astral Harvest in Driftpile, Alta., and Edmonton Flow Festival.
“I’ve also been a part of performing with Cirque de la Nuit and I work with a performance collective called The Dirty Gramophones… we do a lot of performing down in Nelson, B.C. and in the little mountain towns.”
Cirque de la Nuit is a self-described, “premier event series to engage your senses, spark your imagination, and provide a definitive platform for creative expression.” It is composed of a group of different artists who put on circus-like performances at nightlife venues across Alberta and B.C., combining electronic dance music and flow art.
The Dirty Gramophones is a similar dance, music, art, and performance collective based out of Calgary.
“Other than that, I work with groups who will contract me, kind of like a subcontractor,” Hammer explains, “if I have a show coming up where I have to choreograph and make music… depending on the length of the show you’re putting together with a group of people, I would say 100 hours minimum would go into that.”
Outside of the realm of flow arts, Hammer runs an eco-friendly cleaning business on the side to generate income that helps her pursue her passion. Even still, it can be difficult to make ends meet.
“We all love to perform and share our gifts, but there is a whole other side to performing where people do it for a living, it’s their main source of income,” she explains.
“Sometimes people have difficulty connecting the dots there when you have promoters coming and telling you, ‘I’d love you to come and hula-hoop for free, it’d be great exposure!”
Blaire makes multi-hooping look easy.
Photo courtesy of Phi Vernon - Third Eye Arts.
Nonetheless, Hammer says the positives of the performance art industry far outweigh any negatives.
“There are ebbs and flows,” she explains, “some days you’ll pick up your prop and feel like you have two left feet, and there can be a lot of politics around you once you’re bringing money into play… but for the most part the community is one of the most supportive, loving groups of people you could ever encounter.”
She emphasizes the word community, noting that many people view her way of life and her job as one big party.
Blaire says that politics sometimes come into play within the hooping community.
Not Just a Party
“It’s not just a party,” Hammer affirms, “It’s transformative and beautiful and a magical thing to be a part of,” she says, “people are here to do something good for the world, for the culture, they’re just trying to make the world a better place.”
She does acknowledge that there are some people in the culture that take it too far, an idea that she finds “troubling” – but believes the well meaning population greatly overcomes the people who just come to party.
“For the small percentage of those who think of things as a big rager, all of the rest of us are just trying to do something good for the world,” she smiles, “it has changed my life for the better in so many ways so I like to be an ambassador of keeping this community growing and blossoming.”
Janes also says she feels the community vibe “I have watched a community grow, a community that is based on mutual support and encouragement,” she notes, “As adults, it is so important to continue to play. I feel hooping allows play to be a part of living, it’s a beautiful thing to witness people happily engaged in hoop fun.”
