Ashley Russell graduated as valedictorian of Amelia County High School, is president of the Belly Dancing Club, and wouldn't mind running off and joining the circus if she was offered, but most people just know her as "Hoop Girl."
Between her going out of town for performances and working as a Resident Technical Assistant (RTA), it's not easy to find time to sit down with Russell. We met on a Sunday evening in the dining hall as it started to slow down for the night. She picked at a piece of yellow cake as I set up my recorder and note pad.
Her hair was in a ponytail, frizzy from being teased all weekend. She wore a long flowing skirt and a fitted T-shirt, her version of every other girl's sweatpants and hoodie. A trace of smudged, stubborn eye makeup was still faint on the top of her lids. She had just gotten back from a gig at The Hanger 9 in Virginia Beach, where she accidentally got shoved off a 12-foot platform by another dancer, resulting in several sprained limbs. Earlier in the night she also had a flaming ball break off the hoop she was spinning during her "fire hoop" dance, landing on her head and burning her hair. But by some act of God, she still met with me, willing to be asked about her life.
Russell has been belly dancing for three years and has been hooping for a year. She decided to hoop because she found a song she liked for belly dancing and looked it up on YouTube to find it; among the results she found for the song there was also a video of a hoop dance done to the song.
Russell said, "I was watching it and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, if I can mesmerize somebody and make them feel like this little tinge of happiness that I'm feeling right now, then I'm doing something amazing.'" A grin spread across her face as she added, "I wanted to make people smile."
Russell said she tries to hoop as often as she can. "If I have free time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they're generally my days, especially Thursday. I'll do it out on Wheeler Lawn." She said that several students have approached her while she's been hooping around campus. "I've had a few people come up and tell me that it's really cool and I'll stop and talk to them."
Russell has even had some hecklers, "Some people will be like 'Dude, I can do that' so I'll be like 'prove it.' I give them a hoop and they never can." She laughed and added, "I know how to handle hecklers."
Along with a few events that she has performed at on campus, such as the Red Flag Awareness Walk, "Hoop Girl" has several out-of-town performances. She said that she generally has five to ten a month, depending on her work schedule as an RTA. She also has to juggle the hefty course load of an upperclassman biology major. "I've been having one [performance] on every weekend, and usually on Fridays. Most of them have been for raves or parties; like birthday parties and Hat Factory type raves."
Her dancing career wasn't initially very well-received by her family. Russell said, "At first my parents weren't supportive of the belly dancing because they thought it was a lot more sexual than it really is. It's not, and I perform a traditional form. They started to accept it."
As soon as her parents got comfortable with belly dancing, Russell started hooping. "My parents are good with me hooping, but my dad worries that I'll skip out of college and join the circus," Russell looked down then laughed, "Which I really want to do." She explained that she won't because she knows that if she left college, she probably wouldn't come back because she'll be having too much fun.
Senior Amanda Byrne, who has been Russell's best friend for two-and-a-half years, said, "Being friends with Ashley is interesting to say the least, there's definitely never a dull moment." Byrne also commented on how she admires Russell for hoop dancing. "I think it's great that she's so passionate about hooping and is even able to make a living performing."
Belly Dancing Club Adviser and Sociology Professor Carl Riden described Russell's development as a dancer, "I found that as a bellydancer she began to diverge from the rest of them from fairly early on and wanting to do things that are a bit more individual and unique and less mainstream bellydancing in her performance, which I always really liked...This makes her rather unique among the bellydancers."
Riden also added, "People maybe look at Ashley and don't realize that she's a science major, they don't realize all of the heavy coarseload that she's taking while she's training and doing this kind of performance."
The hardest question of all for "Hoop Girl" to answer was if she planned to do this as a career. She hesitated then said, "It's hard to say." Russell explained how she'd like to do it as a career, but that it's all about demand. Right now how things are going money-wise, most people can't afford to hire entertainment "so that's one of the things they skimp on."
Russell said that regardless of the low demand, she doesn't know if she could do it as her career. "I like doing it as a side thing, and I'm perfectly fine with it on the side because if I did it every night I'd probably die," she laughed.
As the dining hall workers started to clean the tables around us, I asked Russell if there's anything else she'd like the campus to know. She just shrugged and smiled. "I welcome anybody to come out and hoop with me." As I started to pack up my things she added, "Oh! And friend me on Facebook!
