Hip hop dance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

Breaking, often considered the original hip hop dance style, performed at MTV Street Festval, Thailand.

Hip hop dance refers to dance styles, mainly street dance styles, primarily danced to hip hop music, or that have evolved as a part of the hip hop culture. Hip hop dance can be seen as part of the hip hop culture in the US. By its widest definition, it can include a wide range of styles such as breaking, popping, locking, house dance and even electro dance. "Cowboy" of The Furious Five is credited with coining the term "hip hop"^[1]. It can also include the many styles simply labelled as hip hop, old school hip hop (or hype), hip hop new style and freestyle. However, "hip hop" and "dance" should properly be distinguished separately, as was stated by legendary "hip hopper" Ice Cube, "Gangsters don't dance, we boogie.".

[edit] History and classification

The dance style primarily associated with hip hop is breaking, which appeared in New York City during the early 1970s and came to be popularly classified as one of the four primary "elements" of hip-hop (along with rapping, DJing, and graffiti). Funk styles, such as popping and locking, evolved separately in California in the 1960-70s, but were also integrated into hip hop when the culture reached the West Coast of the United States.

Though breaking and the original funk styles look quite different stylistically, they share many surrounding elements, such as their improvisational nature, the music they are danced to and the way they originated from the streets, mainly within African American and Hispanic communities. These similarities helped bring them, and other street dance styles, together under the same sub-culture, and help to keep them alive and evolving today. Yet, this has not been without problems, often involving the media, such as when the movie Breakin' put all various styles under the label "breakdance", causing a great naming confusion that spawned many heated debates.

In the late 1980s, as hip hop music took whole new forms and the hip hop subculture established further, new dance styles began appearing. Most of them were danced in an upright manner in contrast to breaking with its many ground moves, and were in the beginning light-footed with lots of jumping. Some moves hit the mainstream and became fad dances, such as The Running Man, but overall they contributed a lot to later hip hop styles, and heavily influenced the development of house dancing.

During the 1990s and 2000s, parallel with the evolution of hip hop music, hip hop dancing evolved into heavier and more aggressive forms. While breaking continued to be popular on its own, these newer styles were danced upright, and draw much inspiration from earlier upright styles. Classifying these newer hip hop styles as a unique dance style of its own has grown common with larger street dance competitions such as Juste Debout, which includes hip hop new style as a separate category for people to compete in. Today, we see many specific styles that first appeared on their own, such as krumping and clown walking, now being danced and accepted within hip hop new style contexts.

All hip hop styles from the 1980s and beyond are sometimes collectively called new school while the distinct styles from the 1960-70s, such as breaking, uprocking, locking and popping, are considered old school. However, this classification is controversial, and often old school hip hop (or, in some areas, hype) is used solely for the late 1980s upright and jumpy hip hop styles, excluding locking, popping and breaking, and new style hip hop for the heavier hip hop styles of today. Hip hop and break dance soon became popular among Asia. Today hip hop is well known all over the world and despite cultural differences among the hip hop dancers they all follow the same moves.

[edit] Lyrical Hip Hop

Lyrical hip hop first gained mainstream exposure, and a name, on season 4 of the reality dance competition So You Think You Can Dance.^[2] The actual term has been credited to Adam Shankman, a choreographer and judge on the program, who made a comment in reference to a routine choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo.^[2]

"The great thing about this show is that we've really explored a totally new thing which is lyrical hip hop and [Tabitha and Napoleon] nail it. This show has shown that hip hop is just a completely legitimate beautiful genre in and of its own and you can tell such beautiful and heart breaking stories."^[3]

Due to Shankman's comment and their subsequent work on seasons 4 and 5, Tabitha and Napoleon are often credited with developing this style.^[2][4][5][6] Some hip hop purists feel the interpretive and softer style means it isn't hip hop at all. Others, such as hip-hop choreographer Shane Sparks, feel that it is hip hop but the style isn't different enough for it to be in its own genre.^[2]

[edit] Competitions

There are many hip hop dance competitions around the world today, some allowing all styles to enter while others focus on more specific styles.

The World Hip Hop Championships in America is a large international competition for hip hop dance featuring the worlds most recognised dance crews and nations. Battle of the Year, the UK Bboy Championships and Juste Debout remain the choice for specific forms.

Juste Debout is a large, international and annual street dance competition held in Paris, which includes hip hop new style, popping, locking, house, and experimental as competition categories. Breaking is not included to put more focus on the upright hip hop and street dance styles.

Vertifight is a street dance competition also held in Paris, which includes electro, milky-way, breakdance, hardstyle tecktonik and sometimes vogue dancing.

The International Dance Organization (IDO) holds many competitions every year. The most important of them are the European Street dance Championships (which were held in Espoo, Finland in 2006 and in Graz, Austria in 2007) and the World Championships which are held in Bremen, Germany each year.

In the UK Hip Hop Crew Championships is a recognised event, and so are others such as the Gforce Productions StreetDance Weekend and JumpOff.

Dance Studios around the world famous for their hip hop dancing include Millenium, Boogiezone(LA), Debbie Reynolds (LA), Broadway Centre (New York), Pinapple Studios (London), Sunshine Studios (Manchester), The Vibe - The Internatinal Hiphop Dance Center (Oslo, Norway) DREAM Dance Studio (Canada), and Ones to Watch (Japan & Hong Kong). In these studios you will find choreographers and dancers who have worked with many of the entertainment industries biggest stars.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Dancing on the Through-Line: Rennie Harris and the Past and Future of Hip-Hop Dance" by Jeff Chang; from the series Democratic Vistas Profiles: Essays in the Arts and Democracy
• Millennium Dance Complex
• Debbie Reynolds Official Site
• Sunshine Studios Official UK site