Spinning triangles with a hula hoop and fire

Appreciating the body's intelligence!

“Triangles are my favourite shape”. I’m a hula hooper, so it should be a circle. But this line from an Alt-J song called Tesselate, makes me feel some type of joy everytime. And recently, it took me on quite a journey of understanding the intelligence of the body, and how I express shapes with my hula hoop!

A few months ago, I went for a fire jam at Bangalore Creative Circus. After watching some stunning fire performances by other folks, it was my turn.

I felt fully in my element (fire), as I was spinning. And then when my favourite lyric “Triangles are my favourite shape, three points where two lines meet” came up, my bodymind did my favourite thing. I found myself moving with the hoop in the shape of a triangle. My hand, the hoop and each fire wick made different triangular forms!

This, I think, is embodied cognition, and what I love about my hooping practice. Where my bodymind (a term I picked up from Shayda Kafai’s Crip Kinship) expresses a thought, feeling or idea, in this case, triangle. My brain wasn’t on while I was performing, I just heard that lyric and I found myself creating a triangle.

So then I went on a journey about understanding whether this really is embodied cognition. I’m still very much in it, so the things I say here might be wrong. Analysing the moment and feeling of spontaneously breaking into triangle, does feel like overexplaining a joke. But I’m so curious and in awe of the body’s intelligence; so this process is something I want to go through.

When I saw the video a kind flowmie took, I immediately cropped the moment and took it to procreate dreams, to trace the different triangles. While I began, they didn’t look like triangles, and that was disappointing. But through my design training, it’s been drilled in my brain to stick to the process. And so I spent weeks just tracing the paths of my hand, and each fire wick.

I also realised that the angle of the camera, and the fact that I am a human moving, not a machine, adds to the imperfect shape. But over time, triangular forms emerged!

Rose curves and trefoil knots traced by the fire wicks attached to the hoop!

And there some pretty cool triangles in there. The dark blue and purple fire wicks resemble 2D projections of trefoil knots. The light blue and pink wicks are creating rose curves of n=3, r=cos3θ . The yellow wick being closest to my hand is tracing a cute wobbly shape that I don’t have a name for yet.

And of course the hand makes a nice imperfect, slightly curved triangle. The hoop is like a spirograph made triangle. In fact I might be a living and breathing harmonograph!

As I was analysing this moment, it dawned on me that I was trying to drill/learn this poi move called mercedes during this period. Poi is another flow art form with a prop that’s like a tennis ball inside a sock, and you use two of them with both hands.

Drexfactor performing a super clean mercedes

In the mercedes move, you move both your hands in a triangle together, as the poi spin in opposite directions, which is kinda hard. One poi makes a three petal flower (rose curve of n=3) and the other creates a circular border for the trick. Cause it requires a decent amount of coordination with both hands, I’ve been drilling it for a while. And I think that muscle memory is what kicked in at the moment I heard ‘triangle’ in the song! Since I was only using one hoop, it was far easier than mercedes.

Coming back to embodied cognition, from the little I know, the 4Es of cognition are enactive, embodied, embedded and extended. Here’s how I felt these 4Es come alive:

Enactive: Since the triangle wasn’t a pre-planned or choreographed moment, there is a sense of enactment. The enactive view holds that cognition arises from the dynamic interaction between an organism and its environment. Knowledge is enacted through action rather than being passively stored.

And embedded means that the environment, context and body you experience plays a role. I usually spin fire when I do public performances, so the state is controlled and I ensure that I try tricks that are rehearsed. But since this was an open space that I feel very comfortable in, and being surrounded by these incredible performers whose art I was witnessing, it really brought out something in me. Also the element of fire is in itself so powerful! So the whole poi drilling process might have embedded the triangle in me, and led me to enact it in that moment.

And finally extended in the sense that the hoop literally feels like an extension of my body! There’s no better way to describe the feeling of flowing with a hoop.

I know circles are supposed to be my favourite shape, and they are, but I really love triangles too. In fact, a triangle inside a circle is what sparked the idea of Spinfinity, three years ago.

I was trying to learn how to balance a hula hoop. I suddenly realized I was balancing it with the back of my palms, making a triangle with my gaze, and the visual popped up in front of me. I thought, “oh wait, that’s an inscribed triangle, something I tried to learn in school, and here I am manipulating it.” That’s where the idea was born: I can use the hoop as a tool to teach math, physics, explore, and learn in many ways.

This messy unpacking and tracing of my fire hooping triangle moment is an example of that!

Thankfully I don’t think I have to choose between a circle or triangle, I can just play with them with my hoop and discover some fascinating mathematical objects. And also appreciate the intelligence behind art, and beauty behind math/tech!

I’m finding the words and moves to appreciate the body’s intelligence, slowly. It’s such a wonderful site for knowledge creation, learning and expression!