World Championship Hoop Dance Contest, 2010

These photographs document the 20th annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, in February 2010. Indigenous dancers performed routines to drumming and singing while moving multiple hoops around and across their bodies. By linking, separating, rotating, and balancing the hoops, dancers created changing geometric and representational forms that combined footwork, timing, visual design, athletic ability, and storytelling.

The contemporary intertribal performance form was popularized during the 1930s by Tony Whitecloud of Jemez Pueblo. Whitecloud used willow hoops to create shapes while dancing to intertribal music and taught the form to other Native dancers during his travels across North America. Individual dancers and communities may interpret the hoops and their formations differently; hoop dance should therefore not be presented as one uniform tradition shared by every Native nation.

The first World Championship Hoop Dance Contest was held at the New Mexico State Fair in 1991. It moved to the Heard Museum in 1992, where contestants have been evaluated on precision, timing and rhythm, showmanship, creativity, and speed. The museum continues to host the annual competition as a gathering for Indigenous dancers from different nations and generations.