Hoopie Honorable Mentions

With the announcement of our 4th Annual Hoopie Award nominees yesterday now comes our annual day of Hoopie Honorable Mentions, shining the spotlight on those who may not have scored a full on Hoopies nod from the community this year, but who really stood out to us here at Hooping.org in 2010. While some may have missed scoring a nomination by a single vote, others here may not have even made much of a showing – but we think they certainly should have. We’ll start at the first category and work our way through the several that we have Honorable Mentions forand while we’re dispensing the hoop love along the way, we invite you to join us in doing so. So without further ado, here are our 2011 Hoopie Honorable Mentions.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: PHOTOGRAPHY

When it comes to photography we pay significantly more attention to action. After all, this is HoopING.org, emphasis on the verb – and we know first hand that getting that great shot of a hooper in motion increases the degree of difficulty factor by Olympic proportions. These five Hoopie Honorable Mentions stand high above the rest, like this shot of Amy Hotfield by photographer Karylee Harrisson for example. Capturing flow in a fraction of a second can get us to stop and truly take notice. We love this shot of Paula Chambers by Shannon Zahnle Wenger with the motion of her hair, the placement of her hands and feet, the framing. Location can also make all the difference in the world and photographer Dani Mouser makes the most of it. In her photo of Boann Thunderfoot the world turns magical. One of our absolute favorites this year was this shot of Mia Gomez. There’s just something amazing about the transparency of the light trails and the beach and the sky and her beauty and outfit = totally captivating – like we want this blown up the full size of our wall. LED hoop photography is even more challenging and photographer Tom Loughlin nailed it – as did Kyer Wiltshire in this this shot of Surke Noelle. How does one even get light fractals to frame someone like that? Was it simply sheer luck? Whatever the case we’re amazed.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: SOLO VIDEO

While we love a good turn the camera on, point and film that performance video as much as anyone, especially when one of our favorites is throwing it down, all too often the camera is shakey, someone is screaming, the person holding it gets bumped, the auto focus overdrives… But every now and then none of it matters. Case in point is our first Hoopie Honorable Mention: Revolva: The Final Countdown. Then, in another direction entirely, we throw ourselves to the birds and imagine ourselves in flight, a hooping bird dance if you will, and the more you watch Bhakti Omwoods’ Bird Dance the more you begin to appreciate her big bird brilliance. And speaking of brilliance, we can’t begin to explain how much we loved Christine Thevissen’s “Sensia” performance this year. Where can we get a giant inflatable bubble? And while some videos like Sensia grab us immediately, others worm their way into our hearts and lives like Blue Hooping by Mari Francille. Watch the whole thing and we think you’ll see what we mean. And then finally, we’re always up something innovative and when it’s done well and beautifully filmed like Michelle Hazzard’s Rope Hoop Experiment it’s truly delicious.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: VIDEO (TWO OR MORE)

Are you ready for some group video Hoopie Honorable Mentions? Then consider The Hoop Unit: In The Garden, easily their best performance ever. And speaking of killer performances Hoop La La’s Hula Heroes is amazing. Kent Bye also brought us a very tasty treat with the Northwest Hoop Down featuring Anah “Hoopalicious” Reichenbach, Baxter, Brecken Rivara and more spinning it up at the gathering in Bend, Oregon. From there we go to Berlin for something totally different: Parkour Hooping – a video where they really throw it down. It’s fun, but few videos made us laugh more this year than Nobody Speaks About The Monsters. We’re not entirely sure we were supposed to be laughing, but we’ve always been a sucker for interpretive dance and it’s just so chock full of drama it’s a 2010 favorite.

And then we have something from Hooping.org that received several nominations, but nobody was really sure where to put it – including us. It’s not a solo or a group video, it’s an animated short simply called: Hooping.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: TUTORIALS

When it came to online tutorials this year, we thought for sure we were going to see Built-In’s Tornado tutorial on the nominees list, but we didn’t. The same goes for Aubreylee Henriksen’s Ragekitty. People were “working on the Ragekitty” and posting tips on how they made the Ragekitty work for them and the Ragekitty was such the buzz in 2010, we were surprised it didn’t make it either. And our final Honorable Mention goes to Ayumi Mitake’s Flamingo Enigma in Japanese. While American hoopers were talking about the Ragekitty, hoopers in Japan were all about the Flamingo Enigma.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: EVENTS

Starting next year Hooping.org is going to be adding a new category simply called “Outstanding Event of the Year.” Now that there are many gatherings and retreats and such going on in the world the time has come for this award. Hooping.org’s long running Event of the Year award, however, is to recognize events that best carried the message of hooping to new audience and we only have one Honorable Mention to share this year. In Shanghai, China, hoopers from Finland were hooping it up at the Finland Pavilion at the World Expo and were featured in the news. Hooping.org salutes our friends from Finland.

HOOPIE HONORABLE MENTIONS: NEWBIES

We’d love to give an honorable mention to all of the newbie hoopers of 2010 cause you all freakin rock. You’re learning things faster than any of us ever have before, which leads us to only making two actual Honorable Mentions this year. And the truth is we don’t even know who our first one is, but she should have scored a nomination anyway. Five weeks? Ridiculous how good she is. Meanwhile, Virginia Acheson came extremely close to scoring an actual nomination for herself, and why shouldn’t she have? She is the Hula Hoop Queen.

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