2 minute read
South Dakota’s legacy of hoop dancing
—Kevin Locke
In a previous Arts Alive column, I discussed our creative aging program, Art For Life, and the fact that arts and healthcare professionals are starting to recognize the connections between an active engagement in the arts and healthy individuals and healthy communities. While this may be a relatively new focus in the arts administration world, in many Native cultures, this has been understood all along. In Lakota culture, the arts have always been considered integral to a healthy lifestyle. The hoop dance in particular, is a healing practice.
Over the past year or so, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with a number of South Dakota hoop dancers, learning about this traditional art form and its history and legacy in the state. Throughout this project, I worked with Kevin Locke of Wakpala, a 1990 National Heritage Fellow; the Chief Eagle family in Kyle, including Dallas Chief Eagle and his daughters Starr Chief Eagle and Delacina Chief Eagle; Jackie Bird of Bushnell, one of the first women to hoop dance; Jack Ovitt of Rapid City, who was an active hoop dancer in the 70s, and Leonard Crow Dog, who hoop danced as a young man before his political and spiritual prominence.
The hoop dance is a representational dance form with a collection of hoops that are made into shapes by the dancer to represent parts of the natural world. Although there is now a Hoop Dance World Championship every year in Arizona, Kevin Locke stresses that the hoop dance is not mere entertainment.
“In the dominant immigrant culture, music is often categorized as entertainment,” Locke said. “It is used to escape one’s everyday, mundane reality. In traditional Indigenous culture, one could say that music and the arts in general are used for the opposite purpose—to connect with reality.”
This is the message of the hoop dance: connection with reality, healing, wholeness and unity. Locke expands on this, describing the hoop dance as a choreographed prayer.
“The hoop dance comes from the real universe, it is like a prayer, us being restored to that,” he said. “The symbolism of the hoop represents harmony, balance and unity. It represents all things good and all things holy. So our prayer [of the hoop dance], is to be restored to that.”
The hoop dance is, in and of itself, a healing practice, so providing an opportunity for traditional art, such as hoop dancing, to thrive is not only an important part of the South Dakota Arts Council’s mission to preserve traditional arts and culture—it is integral to the health and well-being of our communities.
The interviews I conducted about hoop dancing will join the rest of the South Dakota Arts Council’s Folk & Traditional Arts Program collection at the State Archives at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre.
