Homespun Hooper: From Belgrade with Love!

Recently, hooper Dijana Milosevic reached out to Hoopnotica through Facebook and a new homespun hooping story came to light!

Dijana lives in Belgrade, Serbia, where hula hoops are hard to come by! "In my country, they don't exist" says Didi and they are expensive to have shipped. So Didi decided to take matters into her own hands, literally! For the past few years she has been making hoops in the hopes that she will be able to create her very own hooping community: “I just wanted to spread love for Hula Hoops, and I hope I can turn some people into new hoopers.”

We were really intrigued to learn more about DiDi’s day to day hoop life and her goals for the future of hooping in Serbia! Read DiDi’s full Q&A here:

 

Do you have a hooping name?

Yup. It's Didi. But I'm thinking of start using a new one, like DidiHoop. It's convenient. How long have you been hooping? Not very long. About 2 years only. But for the first year I was only into fitness hooping. Tricks seemed impossible to me. I thought I would never be able to do anything but waist hooping. But I was wrong. It’s an addiction! Once you start hooping, there's no turning back! Who introduced you to hooping? It was YouTube's fault! I randomly came across a hooping video, and I was fascinated at once. There was no doubt. In a few seconds I was looking all over the web for more info. and learned a lot of things, like how important the size of your hoop is. So I figured out that I needed a new hoop. And that was the beginning of a wonderful experience. Who is a hooper that you admire? Now that is a difficult question. Not because I can't choose between all of them, but because I divide them into two groups: One group are hoopers that I can learn from because they know how to slow things down and explain them well and other group are advanced performers, and I can only watch them performing their magic. But I would have to say I prefer the hoopers who teach me new things!

If you could hoop anywhere in the world where would it be?

Some big open air festival, like Burning Man, or somewhere like Ibiza. Looks tempting!

Is hooping popular in Serbia? Not so much, but I think it will be soon. It's not that people aren't interested, I think they are not familiar enough with it. It needs promotion! But so far I have gotten a couple of other people into hooping. I hope it will start to expand and I am keep working on it. Everyday. How long have you been making hoops? For about two years now! Since I needed one! But I started getting into making hoops for others about a year ago and one day my Facebook Page, DidiHulaHoop was born. We’d love to know, how do you say hula hoop in Serbian?

Young people call it exactly the same. It can’t be translated and still sound cool. People who are a bit older learned to pronounced it wrong from beginning. I think that the guy who imported the Hula Hoop first didn't know how to read Hoop (those two O's in the word), so he named it "HulaHop". And it stayed that way, until today.

What is your hooping dream?

First one is to sell all of my hoops because that will mean that at least 50 more Serbian women have become hooping “addicts” and that would be a good start. The second thing is about me: I would like to be able to do all the tricks I want to, and be able to perform in public. I have stage fright. It is a disease!!! Maybe it's a bit shallow, but it is a good start for dreaming.

 

We loved hearing DiDi’s homespun hoop story! It makes us grateful for the many hooper communities we are a part of and inspired to hear about DiDi’s big projects for the future of hooping in her local community. We hope DiDi’s hoop dreams come true! Where there is a hoop, there is a way! :)