Sushi Zume Tokyo

It was love at first sight in the September of 2008, spotting Shakti Sunfire dancing on the great field at Hoop Camp with a dazzling pair of the smallest hoops I have ever seen. Minis, they were being called and I had to get me a pair. Making a bee line to Shakti’s stall at the Hoop Camp marketplace I snapped up a pair of silver and hot pink minis.

Now that I had these tiny beauties in my possession I was exhilarated thinking about the possibilities but had absolutely no idea what to do with them. I watched stunned as Shakti, Spiral, Jewels and others spun the fast moving minis and shyly asked for a few tips.

There was no workshop offered on minis that year at Hoop Camp, it was if they had some how just burst onto the scene. Although I had seen them used for other isolation and circus arts I had not seen them used with such contemporary style of flow. It seems I was not the only one who was drawn to them. After returning from San Francisco to Tokyo, I watched from afar to see the minis and a variety of smaller sized hoops picked up and taken to new heights/lengths/speeds/shapes by ground breaking artists such as Rich Porter and Rainbow Michael.

So while the rest of the hoop world was having fun, pushing the hoop envelope and “using” their minis my gorgeous hot pink and silver babes sat in the hoop pile looking fab, attended a few kid’s parties and generally felt unloved.

That was all set to change with the much anticipated arrival of Rainbow Michael at Japan’s first hoop camp, Spin Matsuri. My minis got dusted off and demand for minis on the Hoop Lovers shop soared.

Once again on a great field, but this time in the Japanese hinterland, I gripped minis in hand, listened carefully to the instruction and watched in wonder. This time I was not so shy to ask for tips. Determination was more the theme.

Enter Mix. A fearless and highly skilled hooper, basketball trickster and freestyle soccer artist. A diagramatical thinker, powerfully inspired by Rainbow Michael’s skills, Mix put her thinking cap on and rocked into Yoyogi Park about one week later with some mini tricks and eager to partner up with me to create a “show”.

In the beginning we had lofty goals, very lofty. World stages, stories of and from the Universe. Enchanting costumes, mind boggling tricks and sequences. We practiced once a week for about two months. Seasons changed as did the colors of the leaves in the park and we both came to a point where we wanted and needed to record our progress.

Again, it took about a week for Mix to emerge with a track and a fairly tight set of mini sequences. We messed around with it for a bit. I tried hard to soak up the instruction and do some personal practice. Had a lot of fun trying to understand each other. Mix’s English improved and I am happy to say my mini skills did too.

This is where we got to with a few practices. We wanted to film it in one take, so we could see where we needed to be more solid. It is interesting to see it on screen. I am a harsh critic and considered requesting it to be deleted but am glad we recorded what we had been working on. I have a long way to go, but I have learned many things from the process and Mix has been a huge help.

I love the intro created by Mix’s brother, Ma Rock.