Force of nature

 

Photo provided to China Daily

City Memory Museum opens in Shenyang

A family art

Locke considers the hoop dance, which is now as central to his repertoire as the flute, as a special gift. He learned it from Arlo Good Bear, a Mandan Hidatsa Indian from North Dakota, while they were rooming together for a New York show.

"He said: 'I'm going to teach you the hoop dance. I'm going to give you four lessons. I will give you one lesson now and the rest later,'" Locke recalls, adding that his friend assured him: "It is going to take you a long way."

A few days after that lesson, he says: "Arlo's mom called and said he had died in an accident. So I went to his funeral, and after I returned home I had a very vivid dream-several vivid dreams-and I saw him dancing with the hoops. A very beautiful, very powerful dance, making all those designs, so fluid and spontaneous."

Locke now believes that the dreams were the promised lessons. He began to teach himself the hoop dance, studying ancient forms and symbols and then working out the footwork and the movements of the hoops.

"There are certain standard designs that everybody does, and Arlo showed me those and made sure I knew them that first night," he says. "The message I got was that this is a way you can connect the past with the present, the present with the future and the spirit world with the material world."

If you go:

March 8,Naxi festival, YunnanNationalities Museum, 1503 Dianchi Lu (Road), Xishan district, Kunming. 8714312091.

March 9, Kevin Locke Trio, National Center for the Performing Arts, 2West Chang’an Jie (Avenue), Xicheng district, Beijing. 01066550000.

Mar 15, 2 pm, performance at UCCA in 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu (Road), Chaoyang district, Beijing. 01057800200.