Hip-hop dance refers to social or choreographed dance styles primarily danced to hip-hop music or that have evolved as part of hip-hop culture. This includes a wide range of styles notably breaking, locking, and popping which were developed in the 1970s by Black and Latino Americans. What separates hip-hop dance from other forms of dance is that it is often freestyle (improvizational) in nature and hip-hop dancers frequently engage in battles —formal or informal freestyle dance competitions. Informal freestyle sessions and battles are usually performed in a cipher , a circular dance space that forms naturally once the dancing begins. These three elements—freestyling, battles, and ciphers—are key components of hip-hop dance.
More than 30 years old, hip-hop dance became widely known after the first professional breaking, locking, and popping crews formed in the 1970s. The most influential groups include the Rock Steady Crew, The Lockers, and the Electric Boogaloos who are responsible for the spread of breaking, locking, and popping respectively. Parallel with the evolution of hip-hop music, hip-hop dancing evolved from breaking and the funk styles into different forms. Moves such as the "running man" and the "cabbage patch" hit the mainstream and became fad dances. The dance industry in particular responded with studio/commercial hip-hop, sometimes called new style or L.A. style , and jazz funk . These styles were developed by technically trained dancers who wanted to create choreography to hip-hop music and to the hip-hop dances they saw being performed on the street. Due to this development, hip-hop dance is now practiced at both studios and outside spaces.
Internationally, hip-hop dance has had a particularly strong influence in France and South Korea. France is the birthplace of Tecktonik, a style of house dance from Paris that borrows heavily from popping and breaking. France is also the home of Juste Debout, an international hip-hop dance competition. South Korea is home to the international breaking competition R16 which is sponsored by the government and broadcast every year live in primetime on Korean television. The country consistently produces such skillful b-boys that the South Korean government has designated the Gamblerz and Rivers b-boy crews official ambassadors of Korean culture.
To some, hip-hop dance may only be a form of entertainment or a hobby. To others it has become a lifestyle: a way to be active in physical fitness or competitive dance and a way to make a living by dancing professionally.
History
Birth of breaking
The purest hip-hop dance style, breaking, began in the early 1970s as elaborations on how James Brown danced on TV. People mimicked these moves in their living rooms, in hallways, and at parties. It is at these parties that breaking flourished and came into its own with the help of a young Clive Campbell. Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, was a Jamaican American DJ who frequently spun records at neighborhood teenage parties in the Bronx. In Can't Stop Won't Stop , a novel about the history of hip-hop culture, the author Jeff Chang describes DJ Kool Herc's eureka moment in this way:
In response to this revelation, Herc developed the Merry-Go-Round technique in order to extend the breaks—the percussion interlude or instrumental solo within a longer work of music. When he played a recorded break on one turntable, he repeated the break on the second turntable as soon as the first was finished. He then looped these records one after the other in order to extend the break as long as he wanted. It was during these times that the dancers later known as break-boys or b-boys would perform what is known as breaking. While Black Americans are responsible for creating breaking it was the Latinos that kept the momentum of breaking alive when it was considered "played out" in the late '70s.
Breaking started out strictly as toprock , footwork oriented dance moves performed while standing up, and uprock also called Brooklyn uprock or rocking . The uprock dance style has its roots in gangs. Uprock is an aggressive form of toprock involving fancy footwork, shuffles, hitting motions, and movements that mimic fighting. When there was an issue over turf the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock. Whoever won this preliminary battle decided where the real fight would be. This is where the battle mentality in hip-hop dance comes from.
Because uprock's purpose was to moderate gang violence it never crossed over into mainstream breaking as seen today. From toprock, breaking progressed to being more floor oriented involving head spins , windmills , and swipes . These new dance moves came about with the formation of crews—groups of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. Crews are comparable to dance companies in the ballet/contemporary world but without the formalities. Relationships among members within a crew are familial because crews are formed by a group of friends rather than business partners. Due to the casual nature of a crew, members are not apart of a union, and there are not a series of auditions to go through to get in. Unless the crew is well established there usually isn't a studio to practice in either. Rehearsal happens in homes and on the street.
Rock Steady Crew (RSC) is the most famous breaking crew in the world. Along with Afrika Bambaataa's Mighty Zulu Kings they are also one of the oldest continually active. RSC was founded in 1977 in the Bronx. For others to get into the crew they had to battle one of the Rock Steady b-boys—that was their audition so to speak. The crew flourished once it came under the leadership of Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón. Crazy Legs opened a Manhattan chapter of the crew and later made his friends and fellow b-boys Wayne "Frosty Freeze" Frost and Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert co-vice presidents. Rock Steady appeared in the movies Wild Style and Beat Street —'80s films about hip-hop culture. They also performed at the Ritz, at the Kennedy Center, and appeared on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. RSC is now worldwide with member units in Japan, the UK, and Italy.
It is easy to arrive at the conclusion that breaking came from the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira, "a form of self defense disguised as a dance." Uprock is similar in purpose to capoeira, both breaking and capoeira are performed to music, and capoeira is hundreds of years older than breaking. However, considering how there were no capoeira films or capoeira schools in the South Bronx in the '70s, it is very unlikely breaking would have been birthed out of it. One major difference between both art forms is that in capoeira a competitor's back can never touch the ground. In contrast, a breaker's back is always on the ground. With the South Bronx being a disenfranchised African American and Puerto Rican American community the young innovators at the time had no frame of reference to draw from.
Funk Styles and the California renaissance
As breaking was developing and evolving in New York, other styles of dance were developing at the same time in California. Unlike breaking, the funk styles—dance styles that originated in the '70s in California—were not originally hip-hop dance styles. They are actually slightly older than breaking considering that (ro)boting, a predecessor to locking, was performed by Charles "Robot" Washington and The Robot Brothers (crew) in the late 1960s. In addition, the funk styles were danced to funk music rather than hip-hop music and they were not associated with the other cultural pillars of hip-hop (DJing, graffiti writing, and MCing).
Like breaking the different moves within the funk styles came about with the formation of crews. The Lockers were founded in Los Angeles by Don "Campbellock" Campbell who created locking. Charles Robot later went on to become a member of the original Lockers. The Lockers began as all black males but later women and Latinos were added to make up for the complaints of the lack of racial diversity. One of these additions included choreographer Toni Basil who served as their manager. The Electric Boogaloos are another funk styles crew founded in Fresno by Sam "Boogaloo" Solomon. Boogaloo Sam is credited for developing popping and electric boogaloo. Popping got its name because when Boogaloo Sam was performing it, he would say "pop, pop, pop" under his breath as he was popping his muscles to the music. Electric boogaloo is a combination of boogaloo—a dance style characterized by rolling hip, knee, and head movements—and popping. Sometimes it is mistakenly called electric boogie . The bugalú dance was created in New York City by Cubans and Puerto Ricans and danced to mambo, soul, and R&B music. Therefore calling it "electric boogie" leaves out the original essence of where the dance came from. Electric boogaloo lost popularity after the '70s but it is still a respected dance form. It is the signature dance style of the Electric Boogaloos (the crew). Members of the Electric Boogaloos are still active traveling and teaching dance classes. Timothy "Popin Pete" Solomon and Steffan "Mr. Wiggles" Clemente are both faculty members at Monsters of Hip Hop dance convention.
Though breaking and the funk styles are different stylistically they have always shared many surrounding elements such as their improvizational nature and the way they originated from the streets within
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