Hoola Monsters Ring Up Some Fun

Jessica Ortega plans to spend her career spreading hoop love.

"I lost weight, I got fit and built up my confidence, and I want to share that with everybody," says Ortega, 22, of Largo, a member of the Hoola Monsters dance troupe.

Hoop dancing for show and exercise is huge in California and North Carolina, and the trend is spreading, say the Monsters, who perform at birthday parties, festivals, corporate promotions and nightclubs.

They spin moves that go way beyond old-school Hula Hooping, which became a worldwide craze 50 years ago. The Monsters twirl the hoops fluidly up and down their bodies, out their limbs and back, over their heads, under their legs, even on crooked elbows.

On July Fourth, they undulated with flaming hoops for the crowd at Jackson's Bistro in Tampa.

Egyptian children 3,000 years ago played with hoops of dried grapevines. The toy was updated in 1958, when Wham-O Manufacturing introduced the plastic version still found in suburban garages across the country.

Hoop dancing, a la the Hoola Monsters, sprang from the music scene, getting its start in the 1990s when members of jam band String Cheese Incident tossed Hula Hoops to fans during performances.

It expanded to fitness centers, yoga studios and dance clubs, says Abby Albaum, who founded the six-member Hoola Monsters troupe in February.

It's now a fixture at drum circles, where amateur and professional percussionists jam. The Hoola Monsters often dance at a drum circle that meets about 4 p.m. Sundays on the beach near the Bilmar Beach Resort in Treasure Island.

The modern hoop dancers don't use Wham-O's Hula Hoops. They make their own bigger, heavier rings out of industrial tubing and decorate them with colored tape. The big hoops don't move as fast, are easier to manipulate and provide a better workout, Albaum says.

Hoop love, as the dancers call it, well describes what seems an addiction.

"It completely changed my life," says Albaum, 29, a marketing executive for a restaurant chain. "It was a way to clear my head."

That's a lot of the draw for Ortega, too.

"Once you get lost in it, you feel like you're at your center," she says. "If you're upset, you can express it in the hoop and then you're happy. If you're happy, express it in the hoop and you're happier."

Jodie Urias, 38, another Hoola Monster, first tried it out with her 3-year-old.

"My daughter and I had two hours of what I like to call hoop bliss. We played. There was no screaming. There was no fighting. There was no 'I have to get this done,' 'Mommy, I'm bored,' 'I want to watch TV.' It was just playing and having fun."

The Monsters hope to spread hoop love individually as workout instructors while pulling together as a troupe for performances. Albaum, Urias and Ortega took a course from San Francisco hooping icon Cristabel Zamor, known as HoopGirl. They now are certified HoopGirl instructors.

Ortega had set her sights on a career in accounting until she discovered the power of the hoop.

"Hoola hooping made me so happy," she says. "I kept doing it every day for an hour or two. I hoop on my lunch break. I hoop after work. I hoop after dinner."

THE RING OF SUCCESS

Entrepreneurs Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. Melin started out making slingshots in a garage in San Gabriel, Calif. They formed a company and named it Wham-O for the sound the shot makes when it hits the target. Their toy was a minor hit.

Someone showed Melin a bamboo exercise ring that Australian kids were spinning around their waists. The company made a few wooden hoops before switching to a hollow polyethylene ring they named the Hula Hoop.

A half-century ago this year, Hula Hoops - and Elvis - captivated the world. In four months, Wham-O sold 25 million of the mindlessly simple toys at $1.98 each. In a year, 100 million customers were Hula Hooping.

The two inventors started out promoting the toy on Southern California playgrounds, according to the Wham-O company history at www.wham-o.com. They demonstrated the technique and tossed free hoops to the kids.

Soon, youngsters worldwide were entering Hula Hoop endurance contests. In Taipei, Taiwan, 14,000 people crowded into a 7,000-seat stadium to watch a demonstration. Three Japanese cities outlawed hooping in the street, saying it contributed to traffic accidents. The Jakarta, Indonesia, City Council prohibited public demonstrations, fearing it could "stimulate passions."

It didn't go over well in the Communist bloc. A newspaper in Soviet-controlled Budapest, Hungary called it "Western idiocy."

The fad faded by the summer of 1959. Though Wham-O still sells Hula Hoops - they've gone up just $2 in 50 years - it has never come close to recreating that glorious spin of 1958.