Marianna De Sanctis: I Exist Without My Hoop
Introduction
I first met Marianna at Hoopla, Ireland's first hula hoop convention, at Circus Factory in Cork last October.
I nearly didn't go. I'd just had my second child and was feeling a bit disconnected, but I pushed myself and I'm so glad I did. Hoopers are honestly the warmest, most encouraging bunch of humans, and I left high on life and grateful I stumbled into this discipline almost 14 years ago. And Marianna... it was like she'd sprinkled fairy dust over everyone. The room was alive.
Marianna has been devoted to the hoop for 17 years. She trained at FLIC in Turin and Le Lido in Toulouse, and her latest solo show, Mother.Woman.Artist, mixes hoop with stand-up and her own story.
That's the bit that made me want to ask her in. So many people who wear MBB are squeezing training in around jobs and kids, and I wanted to hear how she makes it work.
Let's dig in.
From Catanzaro to the Hoop
Jess: I'd love to start at the very beginning. You grew up by the sea in southern Italy. What were you like as a kid, and was there any hint back then of the performer you'd become?
Marianna:
If I had to describe the kind of child I was, I would say I was a very lonely one.
I grew up in a very conservative environment, in a rather closed and, I would dare say, somewhat dysfunctional family, with significant financial difficulties. Socially, I wasn't exactly the most likeable person. At school, people tended to avoid me or bully me, and I also struggled to find my place and connect with others. So, no, it wasn't an easy childhood.
As for the artist in me, I honestly don't think she was there from the beginning. I think my life experiences shaped the person I eventually became. In a way, I was a late bloomer.
I owe a huge part of my creativity to what I've lived through. The fact that I eventually found a way to transform those experiences into something artistic is perhaps another matter. But I think the impulse to transform our experiences, especially the difficult ones, is something deeply human.
We all find different ways to do it. Some people do it in a very analytical, almost mathematical way. Others do it through art. And some people might simply do it by building and nurturing their own family, whatever form that family takes, without necessarily conforming to the traditional model.
I believe human beings have this capacity within them: the ability to take what life gives them, even the most painful parts, and somehow turn it into something else.
Of course, there are also people who struggle to express what they are going through or to find a way to ask for and receive help. I recognise this reality with empathy, but once we enter that territory, we are dealing with clinical dimensions that go beyond my expertise and my ability to fully understand, however much I may try to approach them with sensitivity.
Jess: I read that circus found you by accident at 19, when a friend taught you to hoop before you'd ever set foot in a circus school. That friend has a lot to answer for... What do you remember about those first sessions? Was it love straight away?
Marianna:
Actually, I encountered the hula hoop long before I turned nineteen. I think I discovered it through a friend when I was around fifteen or sixteen. At nineteen, I discovered circus schools, which marked another major turning point in my life.
I don't think my friend is responsible for what the hula hoop eventually became for me, but she was certainly an important figure in that story. She was lucky enough to travel and experience other cultures, and when she came back to Italy, she brought this object with her. She told me that people in London used it to keep warm because it was always cold there. It was also a way of spending time together, sharing a moment and creating a sense of community.
At first, though, I wasn't particularly fascinated by the hula hoop. I had already tried pretty much every juggling prop there was, and the hoop came very last on my list. I wasn't especially attracted to the idea of moving sinuously with my body, partly because I felt quite clumsy.
And yet, I learned the basics very quickly and quite easily. So, to be honest, I think I chose it partly because it came naturally to me. Or perhaps because I needed to find something that made me feel capable.
I won't deny that there was also a competitive element at the beginning. I felt a lot of envy towards this friend of mine. I don't mean jealousy so much as envy: she was stunning, absolutely wonderful, and at fifteen, I hadn't yet developed the tools to understand how I could admire another woman without feeling that I was competing with her.
I didn't know what sisterhood meant back then. I think that, at that age, envy was the only way I knew how to deal with my admiration for certain women. Fortunately, that feeling also had a positive side: it pushed me to develop my skills, challenge myself and prove to myself that I could do those things too.
Over time, as I became more confident in myself, I no longer felt the same need to compete. But I started recognising that feeling in other people. It was interesting to realise that I could now see in others the same insecurity I had once experienced myself. In that sense, the hula hoop didn't just teach me a discipline; it also allowed me to observe how I was changing and to recognise some very human aspects of my own character.
I think this is particularly interesting because of the nature of the prop itself. The hula hoop is in such close contact with the body that it almost becomes an extension of it. The practice is incredibly intimate because it forces you to engage with your body, with how you perceive it and with how you present yourself to others. And yet, at the same time, it is something you can share with a community.
There is a kind of collective isolation in this practice: everyone is immersed in their own personal exploration, their own movement and their own music, but all of this happens alongside other people. I find it a fascinating form of self-exploration, without needing to turn it into something necessarily spiritual or associate it with hippie culture, which, incidentally, isn't really my world.
Another fundamental part of my journey with the hula hoop was YouTube. During those first sessions with my friend, I would watch her and try to reproduce what she was doing. But I spent most of my time watching videos of women practising hula hoop.
Back then, they weren't just short clips of tricks. Some videos lasted five or six minutes, and I would watch them as if they were gold. They genuinely moved me.
I wasn't just watching someone perform a sequence of movements. I could see their personality, their choice of music, the location where they had filmed the video, and the way they composed their images and staged their movements. Each video was a little window into that person's world. I was interested in what they could do, of course, but even more than that, I was interested in who they were, or at least in who they managed to express through their hula hoop.
Today, when I watch much of the content circulating on Instagram, I feel that something has been lost. Maybe I'm a little nostalgic, or perhaps I simply belong to a different digital generation. But I have the impression that many videos have become products designed to meet the demands of society and algorithms: something immediate, spectacular, easily consumed and easy to sell.
Of course, I don't want to generalise, but sometimes it feels as though the content comes before the person, or even ends up hiding them. This feeling has become even stronger since I started meeting people in real life whom I had previously known through social media. Sometimes, they seemed very different from the image they had created online.
With the YouTube videos I used to watch, it was almost the opposite. I felt as though I already knew those people, at least to some extent. And when I eventually met them in person, I could genuinely recognise something of what I had perceived in their videos. That doesn't mean I really knew them, of course, but I felt a continuity between their artistic expression and the way they were in the world.
I think this was one of the things that fascinated me most: the possibility of glimpsing a person behind the technique, behind the movement, behind the prop.
And perhaps, looking back, this is also what has kept me connected to the hula hoop over the years. It wasn't just about learning something, becoming good at it or proving to myself that I was capable. It was about finding a personal form of expression, observing myself through my body and, at the same time, connecting with others. A journey that began partly with competition and insecurity, but that slowly led me towards a greater awareness of myself and of other people.
Circus School as an Outsider
Jess: What was circus school like for someone arriving with no circus background at all? Was there ever a moment where you thought, what am I doing here?
Marianna:
No, actually, I never really questioned whether I was in the wrong place, at least not in the sense of wondering whether I had the right to be there. What I questioned was whether places like that should still exist in the first place.
Looking back at my experience, both in mainstream education and later at circus school, I think there were some serious dysfunctions. Within circus education in particular, these were also connected to the fact that I was a young woman practising a discipline that was heavily discriminated against in contemporary circus.
Perhaps things have improved a little today, but I also find myself asking why. I think part of this change has come from the introduction of elements from juggling and the development of more specialised research, which have helped explore the technical possibilities of hula hoop and establish its value more clearly.
When I started, almost twenty years ago, the hula hoop was often considered a prop with little technical value, even though there was absolutely a technique behind it. It simply wasn't recognised or valued in the same way as other circus disciplines. And when you're young, a woman, and working with a prop that is already considered marginal, you find yourself in an even more vulnerable position.
There is also a broader issue concerning circus schools and training structures in general. I don't know how familiar people outside our community are with the #MeToo movement in circus and the testimonies that have brought to light situations of psychological and physical abuse, often experienced by very young people, particularly young women. These issues cannot be separated from the environments in which we train, because the way we learn a discipline also shapes our relationship with our bodies, with authority and with ourselves.
So my question was never whether I had the right to be at that school or to learn that discipline. I never really wondered whether I was legitimate enough to be there. What I questioned instead was how certain systems could continue to exist and reproduce these kinds of dynamics.
Artistically, however, it was very interesting to discover that I could take a discipline commonly associated with flow arts and use it in a completely different way. I wanted to explore whether hula hoop could be translated into another vocabulary, beyond the categories in which it was usually placed. Not simply a collection of tricks, a demonstration of skill or a practice centred on flow, but a tool capable of generating other languages, other forms of movement and other dramaturgical possibilities.
And this brings us to the last few years, during which hula hoop has developed enormously. New techniques, influences and possibilities for research have emerged. Today, there is no longer just one classical or traditional technique: the language has expanded and continues to evolve.
For me, this evolution is particularly interesting because it shows that a discipline is never defined once and for all. Even a prop that was considered marginal for a long time can become a tool for artistic research, capable of challenging existing categories and opening up new expressive possibilities.
The Clown Who Gets on People’s Nerves
Jess: The Juggle Jabber podcast once introduced you as "the extremely loud and original hoop juggling clown". Would you agree with that? Where did the clown in you come from?
Marianna:
I took about ten minutes to reflect on this idea of a noisy, original kind of juggling, something that almost seems to belong to a person who gets on people's nerves, but is somehow still recognised as art.
And I think that's precisely what makes it interesting: I get on people's nerves.
I've always had the feeling that, one way or another, I'm someone who ends up bothering people. I'm not particularly easy to approach. I'm not the most sociable person in the world, and I'm not the kind of person who goes to conventions and takes pictures with everyone. I find it difficult to fit into certain environments where there seem to be so many shared codes: we dress a certain way, wear sequins, do particular things together and recognise ourselves as part of the same community.
I don't know exactly how much of this comes from my personality and how much from my childhood, but I think my experiences have contributed to making me someone who isn't always easy to understand at first.
It was through clowning, a discipline I added to my artistic practice only a few years later, that I began to understand this part of myself more clearly. I discovered that if I could make fun of it without trivialising what I had been through, this part of me could become a mirror for many other people.
Because a clown, by nature, gets on people's nerves. Whether it's a clown who wants to make people laugh or one who wants to make a political statement, the role is to disturb. The clown takes a voice that belongs to ordinary, popular language and, in a way, speaks on behalf of the people. But if they don't disturb anything, if they don't challenge something, then perhaps they aren't saying enough.
There has to be a moment when the audience asks itself: "What the fuck are you doing?"
Of course, that doesn't mean I'm particularly good at dealing with these things in everyday life. Being able to bring certain contradictions onto the stage doesn't mean I can always recognise or confront them in my personal life. Sometimes, the opposite is true.
I've made some serious social blunders. I've understood certain things far too late, and only realised afterwards that I had behaved insensitively. Some experiences have hurt precisely because they forced me to look into a mirror I hadn't chosen.
I remember, for example, someone who works in the hula hoop world and with whom I'm no longer in contact, by their own choice. They once pointed out that I had been very critical of a friend who was going through a difficult time with her mental health, while on stage I portrayed a character who could be interpreted as someone with schizophrenia. They made me confront the contradiction: how could I defend certain vulnerabilities through my art while failing to understand them in real life?
They were right. And realising that hurt enormously.
Over time, I apologised to my friend several times for not having had the sensitivity to understand what she was going through. I hadn't understood it then, but I came to understand it later.
I also tried several times to get back in touch with this person, without success. At a certain point, you have to accept that some fractures cannot be repaired, especially when there wasn't already a sufficiently deep relationship to help you work through them. What I regret is not having had the opportunity to show them that their criticism, which I believe was justified, had helped me change and grow as a person. Not to erase what I had done, but to show that I had genuinely learned something from it.
And that's also what I've come to understand about clowning: a clown isn't just someone who makes people laugh or provokes them. A clown is someone who exposes their own contradictions, even when they haven't yet managed to resolve them.
I often feel that I'm not a particularly likeable person. Some people are intimidated by me; others avoid me. Perhaps because they don't understand me, or perhaps because I don't always manage to make myself understood. I think it's important to acknowledge both possibilities: being misunderstood can lead to marginalisation, but we also have a responsibility for how we present ourselves to others and for the difficulties we may have in communicating.
People who aren't understood can be pushed to the margins, or they can become frightening to others precisely because they seem impossible to decipher. I think I've brought some of this experience onto the stage, trying to do so with generosity and honesty.
This is probably one of the things I recognise most strongly in my work: when I'm on stage, if I do something, it's because that thought or impulse is genuinely in my mind at that precise moment. I show it without judging myself, without necessarily trying to make it more acceptable or hide it. I try to remain present with whatever is happening, even when it's uncomfortable.
The judgement, if anything, comes afterwards.
When I'm on stage, I don't feel judged. It's when I leave the stage that I start overthinking everything, replaying what I've done, wondering whether I could have done things differently, whether I've made a mistake or whether there are things I should have understood sooner. My mind really starts working after the performance.
Fortunately, this means that, at least for me, the stage isn't where I experience the most stress. I'm hardly ever nervous before going on. The real process begins afterwards, when I return to being myself and have to come to terms with everything that has happened.
And perhaps this is where clowning becomes so interesting: not because it allows us to be better than we are, but because it allows us to show who we are, including the most uncomfortable, contradictory and difficult-to-understand parts of ourselves. And perhaps, through that very act of exposure, it also gives us the possibility of changing.
EmoHoop: Teaching the Emotional Side of Hula Hoop
Jess: You teach EmoHoop, which works on the emotional side of performing as much as the tricks. How did that idea start, and what happens in your classes that people don't expect?
Marianna:
This idea really came into focus during Covid, because we were all forced to stop. And when we stopped, we had the opportunity to look back and question what we were doing. I also began to take a closer look at the circus world, which was in a complete crisis at the time: there were no performances, no human contact, and inevitably, some very interesting questions began to emerge. It was a period when I understood a lot about myself. For example, I realised that, for me, hula hoop is a way of transforming emotions.
I don't move simply because I enjoy hooping. In fact, I'm fundamentally a lazy person who doesn't particularly enjoy physical effort. You're never going to see me going for a run or working out in the park just for the sake of exercising. I don't like moving for the sake of moving. I like moving to release something, to transform something I'm carrying inside me.
During that period, I also began to observe how different people approached the discipline. Many were focused on technique and perfectionism, partly because mastering something difficult provides immediate gratification: it proves that you're capable, that you've achieved a goal. But there were also people like me who didn't necessarily identify with that kind of artistic pursuit.
I began introducing an idea into the hula hoop world that, even today, I don't think is fully understood and remains undervalued. My teaching is not primarily about tricks: technical moves and sequences to learn and reproduce. I often attend hoop and juggling conventions where you might take a ninety-minute workshop, learn two tricks, and leave feeling satisfied. For a long time, however, I would leave these experiences feeling dissatisfied. Learning something someone else already knew how to do, and then reproducing it, wasn't enough for me. Somehow, I even felt as though I were stealing an idea. I didn't want to appropriate other people's ideas or techniques. I wanted to understand them, integrate them into my own language, and transform them into something personal.
That is where my interest in a different kind of teaching began: exploring how to help people develop confidence, recognise what they already have, and find their own way of expressing themselves.
The world of hula hoop is incredibly vast. There are so many different bodies, personalities, sensibilities and ages, and that's what I find so wonderful about it. It would seem absurd to me not to start from that richness, not to value what each person already brings. Why not use someone's personality to help them arrive at something authentic, rather than spending years learning tricks that they might never manage to turn into something of their own? Of course, it also depends on each person's goals: some want to work professionally with the discipline, while others simply want to share the joy of practising it together.
For me, this work grew primarily out of a desire to see people blossom. I'm interested in seeing them disturbed, unsettled, taken out of their comfort zone, not out of sadism, but because I find something beautiful in the moment when people stop hiding behind their habits and allow themselves to be seen as they really are. When that happens, a space can open up for freedom and discovery that goes far beyond technique.
With some people, this process has created deep connections and very intimate friendships. We managed to understand each other through this language. But of course, it doesn't happen with everyone, and I'm perfectly aware of that. During my workshops, some people sit down, some get bored, some don't understand what I'm teaching, and others look at me and ask, “What exactly are you asking me to do?” I know very well that not everyone appreciates my approach. There is a certain disturbance involved in this work, a bit like clowning: what you offer doesn't always reassure people or provide immediate satisfaction.
Sometimes I've also made compromises and taught tricks. People were happy, but I left those classes feeling sad. That was genuinely how I felt. Of course, I can do both, but I feel that my deeper interest lies elsewhere.
I've also learned not to interpret low attendance at my workshops necessarily as a sign that my work is being devalued. For example, at one convention, I was teaching at the same time as someone offering a foot hoop workshop, working with the hoop using the feet. Six people came to mine, while practically the rest of the convention (around seventy people) went to hers.
I could interpret an experience like that as confirmation that people aren't interested in my work, or that it has less value. But I think there's another issue at play: we're used to consuming finished products quickly and cheaply. That's a dynamic that has a lot to do with capitalism. I'm not saying that foot hoop has no value; I practise it myself. I'm simply saying that the kind of work I offer is harder to recognise and appreciate.
It's fragile work, and partly invisible. I don't teach you something you can reproduce the following day and show to others as a newly acquired skill. Instead, I offer you a process, an experience that may challenge some of your certainties and help you discover something about yourself. It's harder to sell, harder to measure, and even harder to explain.
That's why I'm not sure this kind of work appeals to everyone. And perhaps it doesn't have to. But I still believe there is real value in creating the conditions for someone to discover their own language, rather than simply reproducing someone else's.
Hula Hoop on a Staircase
Jess: For LAVATRIX you performed on the grand staircase at Triennale Milano. How do you even rehearse hoop on a staircase? Did anything go wrong along the way?
Marianna:
I'll answer very briefly: doing hoop on a staircase without risking injury (or even death) is impossible! A staircase isn't a flat surface, so it's obvious that there are many things you can't do, or that the space forces you to interrupt a movement that would normally be continuous.
And yet, that's precisely where I discovered something interesting about gravity, in the way the body tips over and changes orientation. I threw myself down the stairs on my stomach, spinning the hoop on my foot. The funniest part was seeing all the children wanting to do exactly the same thing, convinced it was harmless. But you really can get hurt: this is absolutely not something to try at home. I've taken two slapstick courses, so I know how to fall while minimising the risk of injury.
What interested me was breaking the geometric rigidity of the staircase with a body that rolls and a hoop that keeps spinning. A staircase is square, rigid, structured in steps; the body and the hoop introduce something fluid and unpredictable, almost the opposite of the structure that contains them.
Nothing went wrong, but there were moments when I became so focused on where to place my feet that I lost the quality of the movement. That was challenging, but also very interesting.
Rather than trying to adapt the space to my needs, I had to adapt myself to the performance space. And that's precisely what interests me: a staircase will never transform itself to accommodate me. I am the one who can transform the way I move in response to what I encounter, because I'm a living being, flexible and adaptable. A little bit like life.
Gandini, Gynoïdes and HOOPX8
Jess: You've worked with Gandini Juggling and Gynoïdes, and you once got eight hoopers onto one stage for HOOPX8. Is there a rehearsal or backstage story from any of that which still makes you laugh? Or if nothing comes to mind, I'd love to hear how HOOPX8 came about.
Marianna:
Gandini and Gynoïdes… it's been so long that I'd risk distorting my memories. I don't remember the exact incidents, but I know we shared lots of funny moments and that nothing particularly serious happened.
The Gandinis are an incredibly professional and serious company. They were among my first truly meaningful professional experiences, partly because I've rarely met people who were so professional in every aspect of their work while still maintaining a strong sense of humanity. To me, that's an essential skill: being able to distinguish the professional from the personal without confusing the two. In some more recent companies I've worked with, I've encountered much greater difficulties in this respect. The two levels become mixed up, enormous damage is done, and sometimes you don't even understand how you're supposed to communicate anymore. The Gandinis, on the other hand, are very good at maintaining that balance.
With Gynoïdes, the relationship was more rooted in friendship. Many personal relationships grew out of this kind of work, and because we were all women, it was also one of the contexts in which I began to genuinely understand the concept of sisterhood.
With Hoopx8, we're still in the creative process. And I have to say that, so far, there have been more dramas than joyful moments! But that's understandable: it's a group of eight people whom I brought together myself, not so much because of what they did with hula hoop, but because of the way I had encountered them throughout my own journey in the hoop world. They were people I'd already worked with, taught, or shared other experiences with. That means each person comes with a different history, personality and relationship to the discipline. And those differences are already visible on stage.
The process has therefore been intense. We've opened up, cried, argued, felt frustrated and, at times, struggled to find common ground. Hula hoop is an object that tends to isolate you. When you use it in a collective creation, you have to go beyond simply putting together choreography, learning a sequence and repeating it together. You have to find a way for your discipline to become the other person's discipline, and vice versa.
That's where things get complicated. You have to put yourself at someone else's service through an object that, by its very nature, isolates you, without interfering too much with what the other person already knows how to do. We all have different levels of experience and different technical skills. Building a shared language without erasing those differences has been an enormous amount of work.
Now we're approaching the end of the process, and we're very happy with what we're building. Of course, some completely ridiculous things have happened along the way! For example, we have a scene where we don't even use hoops: we do a lip-sync performance of Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball. I'm not going to tell you anything else. You have to see it. There are completely absurd moments when we laugh together, probably because if we didn't, we'd go mad. Sometimes you need a little pétage de plomb!
It certainly hasn't been an easy creation. And not just artistically: there's also the challenge of organising the work of eight people with different lives, commitments and financial circumstances. The process has lasted three years, during which we've had to deal with all kinds of unexpected events in our personal lives. Some of us don't have stable work and devote an enormous amount of time to this project, in some cases unpaid, without necessarily receiving a salary.
So there are very concrete political, economic and social issues running through the creative process. We're not simply trying to put eight bodies and eight hoops on stage. We're trying to build something together despite the real conditions in which we live.
I can't yet say what all of this will produce on stage. The audience will have to tell us what they see when they experience the show. But one thing I know for sure is that we all love and hate this project, and I love and hate them, just as they love and hate me!
Beyond all the difficulties, though, there's a deep sense of trust. I know that if I call one of them because I'm having a problem, she'll be there. I know I can count on these people because they're genuine: we really tell each other things, even when they're difficult to hear. And, in the end, that's the most important thing we've built together.
Mother.Woman.Artist: Why the Show Needed Words
Jess: Why did this story need words as well as hoops? And was anything harder to put on stage than you expected?
Marianna:
It was at a time when I was trying to build an identity through my work, but seeing very few results despite putting so much into it, that I began to feel the need for words.
At a certain point, I realised that circus, and hula hoop in particular, wasn't enough to tell the story of everything that had happened in my life and had led me to hoop. What we constantly see are those five or ten minutes of performance, but behind those minutes there's an entire life. And the audience doesn't see it. They see the result, the tip of the iceberg: the finished product of all the work you've done.
If people can't imagine what's behind it, connect with the artist and empathise with them, you can end up receiving unfair criticism, or criticism that's disproportionate to what you're actually doing: simply performing hula hoop on stage. Nothing extraordinary, really. But behind that gesture there's a history, a body, experiences and reasons that aren't immediately visible.
I realised that everything I'd learned wasn't enough. I'd attended circus schools; I could hoop, sing, play music, do clowning and slapstick, and I'd explored nouvelle magie. I had all these tools, but they weren't sufficient to express what I wanted to say. Or perhaps I wasn't yet able to put those things on stage using only non-verbal language.
So I felt the need to use words. I wanted to create a kind of intimate talk, somewhere between stand-up comedy and confession, through which I could tell the audience about those five minutes of hula hoop. That was the starting point for what I wanted to do with Mother.Woman.Artist: to explain what's behind a gesture that, on its own, cannot tell the whole story.
It was very difficult for me to accept the idea that I shouldn't use words, as though speaking were something to avoid if I wanted to be considered a legitimate circus artist. Many people told me, “But you're selling a circus show. You have to do circus.”
But who defines what circus is?
Is it history, telling us that we have to impress the audience through our physical prowess and by pushing the limits of our bodies? And what is contemporary circus today? Why do words, music and dance now merge with circus disciplines? Perhaps because these forms of expression are also part of circus. And where does the word “circus” itself come from, anyway? Isn't it a place where different talents come together?
So why should I have limited myself to hula hoop?
For me, dialogue with the audience became necessary. Words are a tool that, with all the differences and exceptions we need to acknowledge, belongs to our everyday experience: we learn to speak when we're very young, we communicate, we tell stories, we try to make ourselves understood. I wanted to start from that shared experience to create a relationship with the audience and find another way of talking about circus and about myself.
Ultimately, the point of all this was to discover that I exist without my object, without the hula hoop.
For a long time, I thought the hoop defined me as a person and as an artist. I was almost afraid that without it, I wouldn't know how to be creative anymore, or that I would have nothing interesting left to say.
Then I tried taking it off the stage. And something happened. I began to understand that hula hoop is a tool through which I express myself, but it isn't what defines me. “I exist without my hoop, too. And perhaps that was where I really began to understand what I had to say.”
Jess: Talking directly to an audience is a whole different kind of scary to hooping. Where did that come from? Did you train in theatre or clowning, or did you just throw yourself in and learn on the job? And do you remember the first time you tried it?
Marianna:
Yes, speaking is an invisible risk, and I think it's much less accepted than doing a somersault and landing on your head, potentially dying in the process. Because that's a physical risk, something people perceive immediately. You do a somersault, you fall, you get hurt: it's concrete and visible, something everyone can understand.
But if I say the wrong word on stage, I might carry that word with me for the rest of my life. I might say something completely inappropriate, deeply hurt someone or offend them, perhaps quite casually, without having thought through the consequences of what I'm saying. And then I have to deal with that. It's a different kind of risk, much less visible, but its consequences can be just as profound.
I'm not going to pretend that I had no experience of performance before this. I'd done clowning, attended circus schools and had some experience with theatre, although within certain limits. I think that in circus, we often consider ourselves actors even when we don't necessarily have the same tools as an actor. But I genuinely learned how to speak through making this show. I learned how to use words by putting myself in the very real situation of having to use them in front of an audience.
And the interesting thing is that I'm still learning. Even today, the show keeps changing because people tell me, “You can't say that,” or “That's inappropriate,” or, “Here, you need to distinguish between making a generalisation and describing your own personal experience.”
These are questions that force me to reflect. How can I tell my story without turning my experience into a universal truth? How can I be honest without hurting someone unnecessarily? Where is the boundary between the right to tell your own story and the responsibility that comes with what you say?
So I'm still learning how to speak. And that's precisely what I find interesting: realising that language isn't simply a tool I possess because I know how to talk. It's something I have to keep learning how to use.
It's an enormous risk, often without the same immediate gratification that a physical risk can give you. Sometimes I'd almost rather break my foot and have people say, “Poor thing!” than hear someone say, “They said something wrong; they're a terrible person.”
I don't know if that makes sense. The body can be injured, heal and show its scars. But when you say something that hurts someone, you enter much more complicated territory: intentions, interpretations, responsibility and consequences. And you don't always know how to find your way out of it.
How Do You Tour, Teach and Make Work as a Mother?
Jess: I have to ask about the practical side. How do you make a solo show, train, teach and tour while being a parent? What does a normal week look like for you?
Marianna:
There is no secret. The image you see on social media isn’t reality. My typical week is just like yours: difficult, precarious and stressful.
Let me tell you something: there's no secret. I think it would be absurd to claim that it's easy for women to do all of this. We don't live in a society designed to allow mothers to work while continuing to be artists.
I'm already very fortunate. My children have present and involved fathers, because they have two dads who take responsibility for looking after them. And yet, I won't pretend that this doesn't also create arguments and frustration within the relationship. Who does more? Who does less? Who has to sacrifice something so the other person can work? These questions are inevitable, because if you want to build a career, something has to give. The question is who sacrifices what, and how fairly that sacrifice is shared.
To be completely honest, I hardly train anymore. Training is something I've practically stopped doing, and perhaps that's also why I'm no longer making the same technical progress I made when I was simply attending circus school. You can see it in my work. In the hula hoop world, artists who can devote a lot of time to training and constantly produce content for the internet are able to maintain a certain level of visibility. I risk falling out of fashion. Not necessarily because my work has less value, but because I don't have the same amount of time to devote to it. That's the difference, quite simply.
Creating a show isn't easy either. You have to find time for research, rehearsals and the process of building something without knowing whether it will work. And that time comes out of your family life, but also out of your own time and rest. At the moment, I'm hardly teaching anymore. Occasionally, someone asks me for private lessons, or for support with artistic research or the creation of a show, particularly because I also work as a dramaturg. But I can no longer devote myself to teaching the way I used to.
And then there's touring, which presents a different set of problems. Society, at least in my experience, isn't organised to accommodate artists' children on tour. So every time, I have to find a solution: bring my partner with me, which means paying the costs of travelling with the whole family; or organise things so that he brings the children to me, leaves them with me, I find a babysitter locally, and then he comes back to collect them. Or, if the tour is long, I have to leave them at home, or ask for better accommodation for the whole family. It all depends on the duration and the conditions of the work. And by the way, I lost a job for asking.
Very often, I almost have to force people to acknowledge that I'm also a mother. I have the right and the need to work, but I also need to see my children during the day. And of course, I don't want my children to be perceived as a disturbance in the workplace. Sometimes having them with me doesn't make things easier; that's true. But I'm still a mother, and in certain circumstances I need to be able to bring them with me.
The problem is that society often doesn't even recognise our work as real work, especially when we're talking about precarious and unstable professions like ours. You hear people say, “You chose to have children, so now you have to deal with them yourself.” But think about it: someone with a more conventional job can, at least in principle, take their children to school, rely on public services or organise their day around relatively defined working hours. There are structures that, to some extent, make it possible to reconcile family and professional life.
For us, the problem is doubled, if not tripled. We have unstable work, with no regular hours, often taking place at weekends, precisely when other people may be able to look after their children or spend time with their families. We work when an opportunity comes along, when a tour is offered, when someone books us, when a possibility arises. And often we don't earn enough to pay all the people and services we need to look after our children while we're working.
So not only do we have to keep inventing an almost impossible system of organisation, we also have to pay for the childcare that allows us to do work that, in many cases, doesn't even provide us with financial stability. And if we can't sustain that system, the response we get is: “Get a real job.”
To me, that's a very clear form of discrimination. The implicit message is that our work isn't legitimate enough to deserve the conditions that allow other people to work. As though being an artist were a personal choice that obliges us to accept any sacrifice, as though we had no right to family life, childcare or decent working conditions.
And there's something else I want to say without hiding behind any rhetoric: I experienced significant burnout, especially after the birth of my third daughter. At a certain point, I could no longer cope with the pressure of having to do everything. The mental load, the daily organisation, three children of different ages, work, my relationship, and even the most basic things, like finding time to take a bath, wash myself or eat properly.
I went through intense anxiety crises and periods of burnout, and even today I sometimes struggle. For example, every time I have to travel or leave home, I feel anxious. Not because I'm not used to travelling or because I don't enjoy it, but because I know I'll have to face a whole series of organisational, financial and personal obstacles that nobody really helps me overcome. Every departure means having to rethink an already fragile balance, find solutions for the children, coordinate travel, manage the house, work and everything else that remains on my shoulders.
And this is something people rarely talk about. Everyone seems to want people to have children, but once you become a mother, nobody seems willing to take responsibility for creating the conditions that allow you to keep living and working. Motherhood is celebrated, but the actual work of motherhood is often treated as a private matter, something to be solved individually, preferably without inconveniencing anyone.
There's almost a paradox here: when you become a mother, you become visible. Your body, your pregnancy and your decision to have children become things everyone has an opinion about. You're exposed, observed and judged. But then, when you have to keep working, that same motherhood makes you invisible. You're no longer seen simply as an artist, and often you're not even fully recognised as a worker. You end up isolated, trying to make everything work on your own.
An artist doesn't stop being a mother when she steps on stage. She's not simply a stage product, available to be sold and programmed according to an organisation's needs. She's a person, with a life, responsibilities and relationships. And that's precisely why I created Mother.Woman.Artist: to make visible everything that exists behind the figure of the artist, to say that I'm not just what the audience sees on stage. I cannot be treated as a product that can only be sold when I have no other commitments, as though my personal life were an external obstacle to my work.
And those commitments aren't something that has been imposed on me. They're part of the life I've chosen, and I don't want to have to justify that.
I know many women who choose not to have children because they simply don't want them, and that's an entirely legitimate choice. But I also know women who give up motherhood to make room for their careers, as though the two things couldn't coexist.
And the problem is that society does, in fact, make it extremely difficult for them to coexist. It's not necessarily a free choice between two equivalent possibilities, because one of them is often made much more difficult than the other.
For me, having children is also a political commitment. I don't say this because I think all women should become mothers, or because I consider motherhood superior to other ways of living. I say it because I chose to have children partly because I see life as a collective project. I don't think of children simply as belonging to a couple or a family. I think raising a person is a responsibility that should concern a community, a society, a network of people who take care of one another.
And so I find it deeply contradictory to live in a society that encourages motherhood and celebrates it in words, but then leaves mothers alone to face the practical consequences of that choice. If raising children is genuinely a collective concern, it cannot be a responsibility that falls only on parents, and above all, it cannot become an obstacle that forces women to give up their work.
What I want to question isn't women's individual choices, but the system that forces them to constantly organise their lives around an incompatibility that shouldn't be inevitable. Because I don't want to have to choose between being a mother and being an artist. I want to be able to be both, without one continually having to erase the other.
Doing Stand-Up in Another Language
Jess: The show is performed in French, and you grew up in Italy. What's it like doing stand-up in a language that isn't your first? Do the jokes land differently?
Marianna:
I have to be honest: speaking French comes more naturally to me than speaking Italian, because I learned clowning in France. I developed a French comic timing, and when I perform in Italian, the rhythm of the jokes changes. It’s not enough to translate the words: I have to rethink the jokes in terms of culture, too, and find references, comparisons and analogies that everyone can understand. If I refer to something I know from Italy but that a French audience isn’t familiar with, the joke simply doesn’t work.
Every time, I have to study the show all over again, figuring out what I can connect a joke to, how long to wait before delivering the punchline, what genuinely makes people laugh in one country and what works differently in another. I even have to rethink the onomatopoeia, the exclamations and all the little nuances of language.
I also perform this show in Spanish and English. And I have to say that English has been by far the most difficult language for me. Grammatically, it’s simpler than Italian in some respects, but I found it more limiting when it came to expressing myself onstage. I missed the colour, the nuances and the expressive possibilities I find in Latin languages. In the end, though, I managed to find my way in English, too.
Because performing a show in another language isn’t simply a matter of translating it. It means rebuilding your comic language, understanding another culture and finding a new way to connect with the audience. And every time, it feels almost like starting from scratch.
Looking Back
Jess: You've said the hoop is a partnership that will probably last a lifetime. If you could sit down with that 19-year-old who'd just picked one up, what would you tell her? And what would she make of the woman on stage in Mother.Woman.Artist?
Marianna:
I have to be honest: this question makes me cry because it touches on something very delicate. I’m at a point in my life when motherhood occupies an enormous amount of space. I’m expecting my fourth child, and I’m questioning my work, my abilities and how I can develop them further. I’m wondering how I can expand what I’m capable of doing, how I can stop my skills from being confined to the stage, and how I can contribute to society through what I’ve learned from my work and the experiences I’ve lived through.
It’s a very delicate moment because I feel that I need to look at where I am today, rather than where I was yesterday.
It makes me emotional to think about the girl who started circus school at nineteen, but also the girl who simply started spinning a hula hoop when she was fifteen. I would like to shake her hand because I believe she did the best she could with the tools she had at the time.
I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, of the relationships I’ve lost or of the way I’ve sometimes interacted with people. There are many things about myself that I’m not proud of. But I am proud that I’ve had the opportunity to change, that I’ve actually changed, that I’ve taken responsibility for my actions and faced things without allowing myself to be paralysed by the fear that I don’t deserve to be happy.
Because I believe one of the greatest obstacles in life is thinking that you don’t deserve something because you’ve done something wrong. I, on the other hand, have never really doubted my right to follow my own path. I’ve always told myself that I had the right to do so, even when it was difficult, even when I had experienced violence. None of that had to become a reason for giving up on life.
I have a great deal of faith in this complex system we call life. I have enormous faith in the beauty of the things that move me, that are born, grow and die. I find the process of existence itself fascinating, even though I haven’t the slightest idea where we come from, where we’re going or what the hell this incredible space we inhabit actually is.
There’s a comedian who once said something that sounds rather silly but made me think a lot. He said: “You think you’re in England, but you should zoom out and realise that you’re on planet Earth. And if you zoomed out even further, you’d find yourself somewhere in the galaxy without even knowing where the hell you are.”
I often think about that image. If we could truly grasp the scale of everything around us, perhaps we would live more simply, with fewer problems, less discrimination and maybe less violence. The problem is that we remain confined to our own little space, convinced that it’s our entire world. And that can not only make us violent, but can also turn us into victims of our own destiny.
And I refuse to accept that. The idea of defining myself as a victim, or defining myself through the violence I’ve experienced, or even through the violence I may have inflicted on others, makes me feel as though I’m giving up a part of myself. As though I’m taking away my own chance to keep living and changing.
I believe in constant evolution, in the possibility that human beings can grow and transform. That doesn’t mean denying what happened or avoiding responsibility for our actions. It means not allowing who we have been to become the entirety of who we can be.
What would I say to my fifteen- or nineteen-year-old self today? Nothing. Because if I told her too much, I might take away her opportunity to go through the journey that has brought me here. Sometimes we try to protect younger people, and we end up doing them enormous harm precisely because we tell them too much. I don’t think I would say very much to her.
But I’m sure that if that girl could see me today, she would be very envious of me. And I would probably look at her in confusion and say, “What the hell are you jealous of? Can’t you see how many problems I have?”
But this is life. It’s my life. And every day I’m grateful to have received this gift, even though I wasn’t the one who chose to be born. I’m grateful to my parents for making that choice on my behalf. Today, I can recognise the value of what they tried to give me, even if perhaps, deep down, they also wanted me for a biological need, without necessarily knowing fully what it meant to bring a person into the world. I don’t know all their reasons, but I recognise what they passed on to me, and I’m grateful for it.
In the end, I don’t think I would give that girl any advice. I would leave her free to make mistakes, change her mind, lose things, meet people, suffer and discover for herself that life is much bigger than we can imagine when we’re young. And perhaps I would simply wish for her to keep believing in the possibility of change.
Jess: And finally, velvet or stripes?
Marianna:
Velvet!
Outro
"There is no secret."
That was the line that stopped me. I think a small part of me was hoping she'd have one.
I haven't performed since having my two, and I don't have a tidy answer for how anyone holds all of it either. When I walked into Hoopla last October I was feeling a bit disconnected, and Marianna was the one lighting up the room. Reading this, I understand a bit more of what it takes for her to be in that room at all.
I also loved her on the staircase. A staircase will never transform itself to accommodate her, so she adapts. I really liked that.
And I loved how honest she was about not quite fitting the sequins-and-group-photos side of the hoop world. It reminded me there’s no one right way to belong in this community.
Resources & Links
Marianna De Sanctis: mariannadesanctis.com, Instagram and Facebook
FLIC Scuola di Circo, Turin: where Marianna trained (FEDEC member page)
Le Lido, Toulouse: the city's circus arts centre, where Marianna also trained (Toulouse Métropole)
Gandini Juggling: the juggling company Marianna worked with early on (gandinijuggling.com)
Triennale Milano: home of the grand staircase from LAVATRIX (triennale.org)
Circus Factory, Cork: where Hoopla, Ireland's first hula hoop convention, took place (circusfactory.ie)
More hoop chats on Bubble Bum Banter: Aoife Raleigh and Aino Emilia, or browse the whole series.
Something Velvet
Marianna voted velvet, so I'll leave you with some. Pink Big Top is one of our velvet two-piece sets, in a pink that would look very at home next to a hoop.