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Standing at the center of a circle of hoops, Ty Defoe (Ojibwe Nation and Oneida Nation) plucks one from the ground and spins it around their arm. Their feet piston to and from the floor, then, another hoop plucked and spindling. One by one, each hoop: a new limb, seamlessly moving in tandem. You blink, two hoops are interlocked. Three, four. Now, stretching beyond Defoe’s arms, the hoops interlocked and flapping, Defoe is winged.

Ty Defoe’s work is their invitation to image a life beyond the borders of artistic discipline, gender, generation, and nation-state. Hoop dancing, one of the oldest native dances, is the embodiment of life’s interconnectedness, each hoop a symbol of unification. As with their work as a Grammy-award-winning composer, playwright, librettist, actor, choreographer, eagle dancer, or hoop dancer, Defoe’s artistic practice unifies.

When this two spirit, interdisciplinary performance artist hoop dances, it is at once a practice of play and decolonial praxis. This, one of the oldest native dances, is the embodiment of life’s interconnectedness, each hoop a symbol of unification. Beyond symbol, whether engaging in their work as a Grammy-award-winning composer, playwright, librettist, actor, choreographer, eagle dancer, or hoop dancer, Defoe’s artistic practice unifies. 

In an interview with Anupa Mistry for Fader, Defoe explains the significance of hoop dance as an integral part of their artistic practice and of both personal and cultural survival.

The hoop dance grounded me in heritage, family, and ritual, and that’s something I carry with me today: even as an artist and writer, and as a two-spirit person too. Reservations are on gorgeous, beautiful land, but they are also places of triggers and historic trauma, so hoop dancing was my saving grace in terms of passing culture on to the future. All of these stories and traditions were lost [during colonization of the Americas] but now, like lots of people of color in the U.S., we are beginning to ask about the nuances within our culture.

Ty Defoe’s unrelenting commitment to social justice, indigeneity, environmentalism, and to two-spirit youth is grounded in this sentiment from the Fader interview: “When we can name things, we can tell truth to power.” 

A recipient of numerous awards, residencies and fellowships, including a TransLab Fellowship, Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award and Robert Rauschenberg Artist-in-Residence award, Defoe’s academic and artistic work is, at its center, a practice of naming. This naming tells the truth of colonial violence while simultaneously claiming a future that isn’t centered in whiteness, but rather, in collective healing, celebration and possibility.

When Defoe was a child, they were given their first two hoops—one made of iron, the other, soft, almost weightless—and was invited to dance. In an essay for HowlRound, Defoe said:

There is a teaching I received when I was given a sacred hoop dance. It was that we are all connected in this great circle of life. The symbol of the hoop is important because it unifies all living things.

As Defoe was invited, so do they invite us to reconnect with ourselves and with each other, to tell our stories and to name ourselves, both within and outside their “new nation of theatre.”