About Us
The HoopPath is a hoopdance curriculum founded by master hooper Jonathan Baxter. The HoopPath method stands out in this new, dynamic movement modality as a unique blend of rigorous technique and deep introspection. Bax’s early years practicing alone and blindfolded in his backyard in Carrboro, NC, gave rise to a broad range of highly nuanced technical insights, as well as a deep and real connection to the transformative potential the hoop’s playful form disguises.
HoopPath classes, workshops, and video instructional material are all designed to create a space within which each hoop student may discover her own innate Dance. Concrete, descriptive language and vivid metaphor make the HoopPath accessible and rewarding for students at every level. Even a first-time hooper can find his unique rhythm within the wide and sturdy base of our fundamentals-based curriculum structure. Baxter’s painstaking effort in establishing these fundamentals of hoopdance shows in the patient breakdown of “moves” or “tricks” into discrete and diverse elements of movement which can be practiced for months or years at a stretch. Our students learn and leave class happy. Read some of our testimonials here.
The HoopPath is also the pedagogical origin of such elemental and universally practiced hoop techniques as Breaking and Reversing (changing the hoop’s direction as it revolves around the core), Paddling (accelerating the hoop from within as it revolves around the core), and Samurai (a single-point, highly versatile handgrip), as well as emerging techniques Touch (a range of off-body techniques practiced with a light hand), and Folding (a technical frame encompassing a variety of 2- and 3-point off-body passes). Ubiquitous hoop terms Point, Current, First/Second Current, and Flight Time also originated with the HoopPath.
When Bax began a daily practice with the hoop in 2001, he was looking only to rehabilitate a nagging shoulder injury. Waiting tables to put himself through school, he was stuck without health insurance and needed an inexpensive way to heal. For some reason he thought the 5-foot-tall monster hoop given him by an old girlfriend might do the trick. After only a few days of daily experimentation with the hoop, Bax began to feel his shoulder getting better. After a few weeks, it suddenly came to him that the regular depressive episodes he had experienced since childhood had noticeably receded. This was really something. And he was onto it.
Bax at Weaver Street Market, 2004
Baxter spent the next few years cultivating and honing the techniques, concepts, and metaphors that would become the founding structure of the HoopPath curriculum. In 2005 his close friend and hoop colleague Vivian Spiral, a hoop pioneer and dazzling force in her own right, invited him to teach a class at a local yoga studio. And the HoopPath was officially born.
Please visit our FAQ page if you have more specific questions about hoopdance and/or HoopPath.
If you’d like to see more videos of Baxter hooping, click here!
To follow the HoopPath on Facebook, join our Facebook group.
There is also a Facebook group for the Annual HoopPath Retreat!
Follow Baxter on Twitter: HoopPather
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