Reflecting ‘the beauty of Mother Earth’
Champion hoop dancer takes his ninth title
As a little boy, no more than 4 or 5 years old, Nakotah LaRance went on a road trip that shaped the rest of his life.
“His aunt took him on what we call the ‘powwow trail,’ where they basically spend the summer going from powwow to powwow in different communities throughout the Western United States,” his father, artist Steve LaRance, recalled.
At one of the gatherings, the rambunctious youngster saw a world champion hoop dancer perform. He was mesmerized.
“It definitely struck some kind of chord that was in me,” said Nakotah LaRance, now 28.
That chord has been beating ever since, and now LaRance is the one mesmerizing audiences.
LaRance, an Arizona native who now lives in Ohkay Owingeh, where his mother is from, earned the top spot last weekend at the Heard Museum’s World Championship Hoop Dance Contest in Phoenix, his ninth championship title.
The win marked a comeback for LaRance, who won the championship title in the adult division two years in a row, in 2015 and 2016, but failed to make it even to the second round last year.
LaRance said he forgot his trusty hoops in his sister’s car when he competed a year ago, forcing him to borrow hoops from another competitor that felt different and threw him off his game.
This time, though, he made sure he packed his hoops. He danced his heart out with a routine that included dizzying footwork, a gainer flip and the moonwalk. Both the audience and the judges took notice.
“Nakotah winning back the World Championship Hoop Dance this year was like witnessing a phoenix rise from the ashes,” said family friend Felicia Rosacker-Rivera. “Watching him, his unmatched combination of confidence, speed and creativity appeared to have come from a spiritual place.”
LaRance competed as part of the Lightning Boy Hoop Dance group, which he teaches.
The group of Northern New Mexico tribal youth is an extension of the Lightning Boy Foundation that RosackerRivera created in honor of her late son, Valentino Tzigiwhaeno “Lightning Boy” Rivera. A hoop dancer, he died in May 2016 at age 8 from injuries sustained in a car crash about a year earlier.
“Valentino left us with specific instructions on how he wanted to be remembered, and that was as he was before injury: as a dancer, a teacher and a healer,” his mother said. “The only way for us to live through our heartbreak with any hope for happiness was to create, to practice, to inspire and help other youth realize the dream that Valentino pursued early on.”
“Hoop dance itself was practiced as a ceremonial healing dance among various tribes throughout North America.” Shaliyah Ben, Heard Museum’s director of public programming
The hoop dance may have been the most fitting outlet.
“Hoop dance itself was practiced as a ceremonial healing dance among various tribes throughout North America,” said Shaliyah Ben, the Heard Museum’s director of public programming.
“It’s something that we, collectively, as indigenous people of the Americas can share with one another,” she said. “It’s a celebration of our resilience, of where we are today and the commonalities and the threads that we share as indigenous people.”
Steve LaRance, who also teaches hoop dance, said the contemporary hoop dance “reflects the beauty of mother earth.”
“Contemporary hoop dance actually is a respect for mother earth and pays homage to mother earth and all the beautiful things she provides to us in our daily lives,” he said.
Exactly where the hoop dance originated is a mystery, but some believe it came from Native Americans in Northern New Mexico, Steve LaRance said.
“All the different tribes have different stories about how the hoop dance came to them, but many people believe that it originated from the pueblos of Northern New Mexico,” he said. “That’s why we’re really proud of this accomplishment that Nakotah was able to achieve and that he was able to bring the trophy and title back to New Mexico.”
New Mexico was home to the first hoop dance competition.
In 1991, Ralph Zotigh, who was then the director of entertainment at the New Mexico State Fair Indian Village, asked his son, Dennis, to come up with ideas to attract crowds to the village.
“I suggested having a world championship hoop dance contest to see, for the first time, who was the best of the best,” Dennis Zotigh wrote in 2007 for Indian Country Today.
After the inaugural event’s huge success, organizers moved the competition to the Heard Museum in Arizona the following year. The museum is dedicated to the presentation, interpretation and advancement of American Indian art.
“I actually remember that being in ’92,” said Ben, the museum’s director of programming. “My mother was one of the original organizers of the hoop dance competition.”
Nakotah LaRance, who has been competing since he was a child, beginning in the Tiny Tot division, said he practiced about two hours a day for a month ahead of the competition.
“It’s not really that much; I’m a lazy hoop dancer,” he said jokingly in a telephone interview from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.
LaRance said hoop dancing will always be part of his life and that he will continue to compete as long as he can physically.
Dancing isn’t his only talent. LaRance is also a film and television actor who has appeared in Longmire, Into the West and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He also performed for three years in Totem, a touring show by Cirque du Soleil.
But dancing, especially hoop dancing, is his first love.
“The connection was just right away — boom!” he said seeing the hoop dance for the first time as a child. “It’s just one of those things where it’s like, ‘Yep, this person is born to do it.’ ”
Contact Daniel J. Chacón at 505-9863089 or dchacon@sfnewmexican.com. Follow him on Twitter @danieljchacon.