<table> </table> She stood out in the crowd. How often do you see a girl with a Hula-Hoop at a hip-hop show or any bar?</p><p>The Barbaric Merits, a Kansas City DJ duo, were playing an eclectic, entrancing mix of hip-hop beats and verses the other night at the RecordBar, and here was this young woman off to the side of the room dancing in a world of her own. But not just dancing. She twisted and twirled within the swirling circumference of her orange and black hoop.</p><p>The DJs&#8217; new album is called &#8220;New Mutations,&#8221; so maybe it all made sense. In the midst of these Nike-wearing, head-nodding hip-hoppers, this girl staked her claim as a hip-hooper.</p><p>A few people watched in awe as she bounced that hoop around her thighs, up her waist and chest. She was dancing and hooping at the same time, never missing a beat, for two hours straight.</p><p>As soon as she took a break, I met Amy Ameis, a 26-year-old UMKC geology major and hip-hop fan. Amy Hula-Hooped as a child but left it behind long ago. Then it came back in her life two years ago after she went to InterFuse, a four-day camping event in Boonville, Mo., that celebrates the annual Burning Man festival of art and anarchy that occurs each summer in the Nevada desert. Among the many fiery performances are the flaming Hula-Hoops.</p><p>&#8220;I saw the girls doing it, and I had to try it,&#8221; she says. &#8220;Their tricks, the way they were dancing while hooping, it was super-creative, and I had never seen anything like it. It inspired something in me.&#8221;</p><p>So she went home, found an online hooping community and YouTube videos. Within three months she&#8217;d mastered the basics: keeping it steady around her waist, moving it up and down the body, swinging it around her hands. She has advanced to kicking over the hoop, dancing with it and putting every action in reverse.</p><p>But fire, she says, is a trick she&#8217;ll try later. &#8220;It&#8217;s addictive. It&#8217;s like dancing. It becomes hypnotizing. Sometimes I am listening to music while Hula-Hooping, and by the end my hoop falls to the ground and I&#8217;m crying. I know it sounds corny, but it feels good. You just don&#8217;t think about anything else.&#8221;</p><p>Hooping also is helping her to quit smoking. Every time she feels like smoking, she will hoop instead. She pours all of her nervous energy and her sad and stressful feelings into the circular tube, and the urge to smoke goes away.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s kind of meditative and a good way of getting away from everything else,&#8221; she says. &#8220;I like to call it a &#8216;hoopiphany.&#8217;&#8194;&#8221;</p><p>Still, hooping has its downside. Sometimes club owners don&#8217;t allow her to bring her hoop, and on occasion people pick on her, but she takes it all in stride.</p><p>&#8220;I like to have somewhere other than my living room to hoop. Most of the time people are cool about it. I do get nervous, but if people make fun of me I normally just go up to them and ask them to try it. No one can put a Hula-Hoop around their waist and not have fun. Once you put it on, even the most serious person is laughing. That&#8217;s what I really like about it.&#8221;</p><p>Amy makes her own hoops out of PVC tubing, plumbing nipples and electrical tape. She has five but has made at least 50 the last two years. She likes to give them away to people to encourage them to hoop, too.</p><p>&#8220;I think that it promotes a healthy lifestyle. It&#8217;s just awesome,&#8221; she says. &#8220;You pick up the Hula-Hoop, and it makes you feel sexy, it makes you feel confident. It really does wonders.&#8221;