Marawa Ibrahim

Marawa Ibrahim, known professionally as Marawa the Amazing, is an Australian performer who transformed hula hooping and roller skating into virtuosic contemporary circus practices. Born in Australia to a Somali father and Australian mother, she grew up across Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East before training in circus arts. She chose hoops as a specialty that could sustain both extreme technical skill and audience participation, building an international career that blends cabaret, contemporary circus, and record-breaking performance.

By the late 2000s, Ibrahim was performing her hoop act with the cabaret and circus production *La Clique* and appeared in a hoop-based Josephine Baker role in Spiegelworld's *Désir*. Her practice increasingly combined multiple apparatuses and performance codes: hoop isolation and mass-hoop rotation, roller skating, high heels, comedy, glamour and the traditions of dangerous skill. In 2011, she reached the live semi-final stage of *Britain's Got Talent*, bringing her work to a mainstream television audience.

Record attempts became one of Ibrahim's most visible platforms. On November 25, 2015, in Los Angeles, she spun 200 hula hoops simultaneously—her fourth time breaking that Guinness World Record. On September 3, 2017, in London, she travelled 100 metres on roller skates while spinning three hoops in 27.26 seconds. In 2013, the Majorettes, her all-star hoop troupe, set a group record by spinning 264 hoops among ten performers, extending Ibrahim's work through ensemble practice and shared timing.

Ibrahim's teaching and publishing work carry the same body-positive, skills-based ethos as her performance. *The Girl Guide: 50 Ways to Learn to Love Your Changing Body*, created with illustrator Sinem Erkas, appeared in the United Kingdom in 2017 and in a U.S. HarperCollins edition in 2018. In 2019, Ibrahim premiered *Quality Novelty* at Adelaide Fringe, curating a seven-performer, female-led circus variety production centred on strength, oddity, humour and technical display. Her official site credits her with creating the first commercially available high-heeled roller skate and describes more than fifteen years of international performance.