REG

Project: Dance
Audience: Professor Ludlow and Teacher Assistants
Objective: To learn how to bear my testimony through dance and song, specifically through Native American Hoop dance
Research: The research that I have done for this project I feel is a little informal, because most of it is based on suppressions and traditions. I learned to Hoop dance from my friends and they learned to dance from their friends. No one is even sure if Hoop dancing is from the Navajo tribe or the Hopi tribes. The lessons that I have learned from hoop have been given to me orally. I tell you all of this because I am not quite sure how to cite or credit my research.
This fall I joined the Remembering Our Culture nonprofit dance group and travel across the nation singing and dancing traditional style dances: Latin, Asian, Native American, African, Pacific Islands, and Indian. There are about forty members in the group of all divers backgrounds and heritages. Our purpose is to spread the gospel while we perform in firesides and productions through out the school year. More meticulous details about the group can be found at www.roctheplanet.org, but for this paper I would like to focus on my personal connection between Remembering Our Culture and Isaiah.
I have honey blond hair, turquoise eyes, strawberry cream skin, and I love to Native American Hoop dance. After finding a white copy paper flyer about Native American Dancing I went to a the club practice, and expected to try a piece of free fry bread and receive a forgetful message about enjoying people’s heritage. Instead I went to the club meeting and made my first set of Native American Hoops. I felt like I was Neil Armstrong returning to earth after visiting the moon when I walked home after that first night, simply because the music, the steps, and the rhythm of the dance felt so foreign to my body. Of course I was at the club dance practice the next week, and the next. Now I can not even imagine my life without Native American Hoop dancing; I live with the friends I found in that class; I am planning to do my internship on the Navajo Reservation; and I still dance Native American Hoop.
If you have ever listened to Pow Wow music you can imagine the pounding of the drum filling your whole soul to the point that your heart thunders a steady 1-2-1-2-1-2 with the rhythm. From there you add the way your toes feel like butterfly wings as they tap the earth beneath you and the surge of pleasure that drips like sugar through your eardrums and into your pounding heart when you hear the snap of your hoops when you complete a formation. That is what it feels like to hoop dance. I chose this for my Isaiah project because I feel like it describes Isaiah 60. This chapter is about the gathering of Israel. In the dance the I preformed for the Culture of honor I created formations that I found in these versus to represent both my part in the gathering of Israel, the glory of God’s kingdom, and my sacrifices.
The Hoops themselves symbolize eternity, and healing. Some dancers prefer to have all of their hoops white to represent purity, and others decorate their hoops in patterns and colors that signify their ancestors and heritage. Which ever pattern a dancer chooses to decorate their hoops in is highly symbolic. In honor of my Irish heritage I taped my hoops in four-leaf-clover pattern. Suposably St. Patrick used the three-leaf-clover to represent how God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost could be like the individual leaves on a three-leaf-clover and yet one in purpose. The four-leaf-clover was considered lucky because the fourth leaf was suppose to represent the person who found the clover, and it showed that they were one in purpose with God, Jesus, and The Holy Ghost. I like my hoops in this pattern because it reminds me that I should give all of my heart, might, and mind to God. Although the only formations that I can make with my hoops are momentary designs my pattern reminds me that what I make in this life should glorify the God Head.
After you have danced for a while you can recognize how different your hoops are. Simply the way you taped or bent each hoop they begins to form them into distinct and individual hoops. There are some hoops that I like to use for back supporters, and others that I think are better at flipping. Most all of my hoops are cluttered with gold and white tape strips but one, and for some reason it feels magically universal and can fit in all of my formations. This hoop is plan black with only the four-leaf-clover patter, but the pattern is why I feel endured to this hoop. I call it the “me” hoop. There is so much that I need to learn that I often feel empty, just as my “me“ hoop looks blank. The beautiful lesson is that just as I know were each of my hoops needs to be positioned in a pattern God knows were to position me in his patterns. Despite my ignorance He can use me in his divine creations. I will forever feel endured to this simple hoop that taught me how precious and significant I can become in God’s hands.
Hoop is a dance about the power of creation, and not simply expression. When you being dancing you start with only one hoop, because in life you need to learn how to juggle one thing before you can add more things to your life. As your talent improves you being to add more hoops to your patterns and conversely the same can be said about life. You can progressively add more to your life once you are able to control one aspect of your well.

Goal: I am Irish, English, Dutch, and Swedish. There is not a drop of Native American blood in me. I love my ancestors and my heritage, and I do not want to mock their sacrifices by saying that I wish I had a different heritage! That said, there are a very limited number of times that I can perform Native American Hoop dancing. In order to perform in a tribal pow wow you have to have Native American blood, and I do not. Fortunately this year I was asked to perform in first annual Culture of Honor at Brigham Young University on November 10th in the Wilkinson Student Ballroom.

Plan: As a members of Remembering Our Culture we practice our dances every Tuesday and Thursday from seven until eleven. On Sunday we practice our fireside songs from eight to ten, and on Friday we teach dance at the Provo Middle School. Without including extra practices or fundraisers I am at practice a minimum of ten hours a week. Not all of the time is spent on Hoop dancing, but I was able to practice and cerograph a solo that I preformed at the Culture of Honor night on November 10th at the Brigham Young Student Ballroom.

Event: I sat in the backstage dressing room fidgeting with the tape around my hoops. My outfit was borrowed. The beadwork on the front was of a horse when my friend

Every practice we recite Joseph Smith’s The Standard of Truth which is, “The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

We also recite First Nephi 6:4 which reads, “for the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved.”

We practice our dance routines every Tuesday and Thursday from seven until eleven. On Sunday we practice our fireside songs from eight to ten, and on Friday we teach dance at the Provo Middle School.