Hoop dancing championships highlight mastery, spectacle

[Judi Lynn]

By Maya Hilty [e-mail] Aug 5, 2023 Updated 4 hrs ago



Piero Benally practices as he waits for his turn to perform in the youth division during the Lightning Boy Foundation's Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship on Saturday at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Jim Weber/The New Mexican

A competition this weekend honored the man whose passion sparked a chain of events that has brought the once-lost tradition of hoop dancing back to New Mexico.

Nakotah LaRance died in an accident in 2020. The second annual Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship, named after the hoop dancing teacher and held at Milner Plaza on Museum Hill in Santa Fe this weekend, features dancers from 2 to 26 years old.

Over 50 dancers registered in the competition, including many from pueblos of Northern New Mexico, as well as dancers from all over the U.S. and from First Nations in Canada.

The championship is hosted by the Lightning Boy Foundation — a Pojoaque-based intertribal nonprofit with the mission to empower Native youth through hoop dancing — in collaboration with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

“A beautiful thing about it” is that stories from Indigenous groups throughout the Southwest credit the pueblos of Northern New Mexico as the origin of the hoop dance, said Steve LaRance, Nakotah’s father and co-chair of the Lightning Boy Foundation.

More:
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/hoop-dancing-championships-highlight-mastery-spectacle/article_a6757eb8-30be-11ee-b0f8-3356806a1e25.html

Nakotah LaRance 2018 World Hoop Dancing Championship





Rest in Peace
Nakotah LaRance

[jaxexpat]

1. This can only enrich our culture in ways yet unseen. Go, New Mexico!

[Delphinus]

2. Wow!

I am so grateful I clicked on the link to see this - so sorry to read he is no longer with us on this plane. What an amazing performance. I did not know hoop dancing even existed.

Thank you.

[niyad]

3. I am astounded and fascinated by the hoop dancers. I have been fortunate

to see some amazing dancers at pow wows and performances (mostly Brule)I have been able to attend.

What a beautiful spirit that young man is.)

(And to think that some of us were impressed with our hula hoop abilities!)

[Prof. P.E. Name]

4. Absolutely Amazing Artistry

I starting sympathy-panting out of breath at about the 2 minute mark.

This is the kind of culture event the dominant group worked to eradicate from the minority
social group.

Thanks for sharing.

[2naSalit]

5. Thanks for posting.

I had forgotten about the hoopdance.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Good stuff! Thanks for the link! nt

[CousinIT]

8. From DU back in July 2020 after Nakotah passed:

https://democraticunderground.com/1016262169

[erronis]

9. Thank you, Judi. I'm intrigued and would like to learn more about the history

and the meanings of the incredibly intricate movements, songs, steps.

Absolutely wonderful.

Obviously, my first start should be with the included link - https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/hoop-dancing-championships-highlight-mastery-spectacle/article_a6757eb8-30be-11ee-b0f8-3356806a1e25.html