Mesmerizing movement

A routine typically begins with broad, yogic strokes, swinging the hoop high and low through the air, unhurried and unconcerned, as if summoning the ambient energy and limbering up for a journey to, well, wherever it is the other side of this particular dance happens to be.

After all, hooping is considered a "flow art," and as such is governed by an inherent and mesmerizing spontaneity, said Chelsie Welker, a Chaffee, Missouri native and professional hoop-dancer.

And, yes, at their most basic, these are the same types of Hula-Hoops you played with as a child.

"But the hardest part when you first start out is just keeping it around your hips," she said.

Those unconvinced are invited to dust off their childhood toys and give them a whirl. Keeping the hoop around one's waist is deceptively -- maddeningly -- difficult. Those who haven't touched one since their salad days on the playground are likely to find the necessary skills have evaporated almost entirely, that the motions that once came naturally now feel clunky and obtuse.

Chelsie Welker hoop dances with an LED hoop in a Cape Girardeau County creek, Tuesday, May 26, 2015. (Laura Simon)

"Yeah, it's not like riding a bicycle, though; you can't just pick it back up," Welker said. "But if you practice, it goes pretty fast."

But therein lies the philosophical conceit at the center of hooping: rediscovering within yourself a playful, enthusiastic center and then channeling it outward into the world. A flower-child ethos, to be sure, but hooping is an unabashedly flower-child pastime. Welker said the hippie charm was part of what first caught her eye about four years ago.

"It was at a music festival called Bloomheavy," she said. "There was this hippie festival going on, and there were all these beautiful people with Hula-Hoops doing things that I had never seen before."

Of course, hooping happens where the music happens, Welker's friend and protege of sorts, Stephanie Koch, explained.

"It's dancing," she said. "It's really more difficult without [music]. It's harder to get into the groove."

Hooping with fire is unexpectedly peaceful, afficianados say. (Laura Simon)

And seeing a hooper in their element -- Koch prefers funk, while Welker, EDM -- the compatibility's apparent. There's an ephemeral musicality to the movements, in the loops and the hops, the lulls and flourishes. As does any dancer, they go where the music takes them.

So far, it's taken Welker to the stage of the Pageant in St. Louis, among other places.

"The best was New Year's Eve last year," she said, uncapping a gallon of kerosene as dusk approached. "And I'm sponsored by a company called Hoop Conscious out of Atlanta. They make these."

By these, she's referring to the hoops with the knobs around the edges, the ones she then lights on fire.

There's a bright whooshing sound, and what started out as a groovy curiosity becomes a striking, mystical display as the fiery hoops -- yes, two at a time -- arc and flash in the darkness.

Chelsie Welker fire hoops in a Cape Girardeau County creek, Tuesday, May 26, 2015. (Laura Simon)

After the hoops are extinguished and hair and hemline patted in precaution, she explains that since the hoops are moving fast and often out of one's sightline, a large part of hooping involves a queer sort of surrender to muscle memory and intuition.

"You always have to know where it is," she explains. "A lot of times you have to go by feel."

But she said that in the fiery center of the hoops, it's empowering, expressive and peaceful.

tgraef@semissourian.com

388-3627