Hoop dancing provides connection, perseverance, tradition

Artist in Residence Jasmine Pickner Bell takes the stage at WMPAC

By Leslie Kilgore EBS CONTRIBUTOR

Jasmine Pickner Bell (or, Cunku Was’te Win’ meaning “Good Road Woman” in Dakota) is a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe (or, Hunkpati Oyate). She grew up watching her brothers and father practice the traditional hoop dance highly respected by her family and community. Once a male-dominated dance, it is sacred amongst many tribes in the U.S. and Canada with each tribe having its own origin story for their particular dance.

This winter, the Arts Council of Big Sky invited Bell and her husband for the annual Artist in Residence program, a multi-day workshop in collaboration with the Big Sky School District.  Each year, the program hosts a culturally rich artist who works with teachers and students to build a deeper and authentic understanding of diverse cultures through the arts.

Bell and her husband, Luke Bell, worked with Lone Peak High School teacher Jeremy Harder and high school sophomores to teach them about her heritage, her art through dance and poetry, and her journey as the first woman and two-time world champion of traditional hoop dancing.

“I love this event every year as it exposes our learning community to regional cultural practices that we can’t always observe in Big Sky,” said Harder. “The program always offers different perspectives and preserves the arts creatively and innovatively.”

Harder said the students experience hands-on learning through performance and making art. This year, the students learned how Bell dances and moves with her hoops and the symbolism in her movements; they made small hoop key chains and Bell performed for the community at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center with Luke, who is an accomplished drummer.

At Bell’s WMPAC performance and lecture, she shared with the audience that it took her more than 15 years to perfect her hoop dancing. She started with one hoop and can now move with more than 48 hoops at a time.

“Being one of the first female hoop dancers ever, I faced a lot of hardships,” Bell said. I also grew up in a family of hoop dancers. Our Saturday chores as children would be to make hundreds of hoops for my father and brothers to dance with, and then my father taught me.”

Bell explained to the WMPAC audience that each hoop design has a special meaning within each dance. 

“My culture has our manmade world and we have our spiritual world. We learn how to incorporate our traditional life with the manmade world and at the same time we still honor ceremonies that our grandparents taught us to pass down through traditions, such as hoop dancing,” Bell said. 

Bell’s father has been hoop dancing for over 50 years and she recalls traveling as a family of performers throughout her childhood with the goal of connecting people and telling stories. She has performed at the Library of Congress, on “Good Morning America,” for Mohammed Ali and other influential people around the world. Now, she is teaching her daughters to be up-and- coming champion hoop dancers—she danced and competed through all five of her pregnancies.

“In our way of life, children are sacred,” Bell said. “They are gifts from the creator, and my children will be instilled with this gift that our family was given. As a Dakota mother, I need to always share with my children who they are and where they come from. And as a female dancer, I want to continue to build a legacy for more female hoop dancers.”

Bell mentioned that there are more than 575 native tribes in the U.S. with their own interpretation of hoop dancing and stories that correlate with each dance. The Hoop Dance World Championships take place annually during February in Phoenix, Arizona and draws more than 10,000 spectators. Each dancer competes in several rounds of elimination.

“It was beautiful to see her culture from her perspective and her story told through hoop dancing,” said LPHS student, Piper Carrico.

LPHS sophomore, Dylan Manka, added: “It was really cool to understand her story better when she talked about the memories of her brother and how she incorporated that into her dance.”

While Bell said teaching children is central to her purpose and mission so that native traditions are not lost in today’s changing society, she also sees hoop dancing as a way of life and a metaphor to keep going when life gets hard.

“I dance to the heartbeat of our nation, and that is very sacred to us,” Bell said. “The drumbeat represents all of our nations. It’s a way for connection with all people. Sharing my energy and love for who I am and where I come from is sacred to me.”