Hip Hop!

HIP HOP

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Urban Styles

OVERVIEW

Hip-hop dance is a broad category that includes a variety of urban styles. The older dance styles were created in the 1970s. They include uprock, breaking, and the funk styles. Hip-hop dance is not a studio-derived style. Street dancers developed it in urban neighborhoods without a formal process. All of the early substyles and social dances were brought about through a combination of events including inspiration from James Brown, DJ Kool Herc's invention of the break beat, the formation of dance crews

NEW YORK

Break dancing was developed in New York. Breaking was created in The Bronx, New York, incorporating dances that were popular in the 1960s and early 1970s in African-American and Latino communities. At this time Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, was also being developed. It is "a form of self defense disguised as a dance." Its influence on breaking is disputed and debated; one side believes that breaking came from capoeira, while the other side denies this.

Capoeira is hundreds of years older than breaking, and uprock is similar in purpose to capoeira in that both translate aggressive combat movements into stylized dance. Both breaking and capoeira are performed to music and, since both art forms are acrobatic, some moves look similar to each other. However, capoeira is more rule-oriented. One rule in capoeira is that a capoeirista's back can never touch the ground. In contrast, a breaker's back is almost always on the ground, and the only rule in breaking is that you do not touch your opponent during a battle

CALIFORNIA

While several funk styles were created in the streets of California such as; roboting, bopping, hitting, locking , bustin', popping , electric boogaloo, strutting, sac-ing, and dime-stopping. California-were not originally hip-hop dance styles: they 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). The funk styles are actually slightly older than breaking due to fact that boogaloo and locking were developed in the late 1960s

HIP HOP

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Attitude

Commercialization

Films, television shows, and the Internet have contributed to introducing hip-hop dance outside of the United States. Since being exposed, educational opportunities and dance competitions have helped maintain its presence worldwide. Europe host several international hip-hop competitions such as the UK B-Boy Championships, Juste Debout, and EuroBattle. Australia host a team-based competition called World Supremacy Battlegrounds and Japan host a two-on-two competition called World Dance Colosseum.

HIP HOP

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An Escape

Commercialization

The commercialization of hip-hop dance continued into the 1990s and 2000s with the production of several other television shows and movies such as: The Grind, Planet B-Boy, Rize,StreetDance 3D, America's Best Dance Crew, Saigon Electric, the Step Up film series, and The LXD, a web series. Though the dance is established in entertainment, including mild representation in theater, it maintains a strong presence in urban neighborhoods which has led to the creation of street dance derivatives Turfing, Krumping, and jerkin'.

Line Dances

The Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle, and the Soulja Boy are examples of urban line dances that were created from hip-hop songs of the same name. These line dances have the same premise as the more widely know Electric Slide. There are variations to the Electric Slide, but the dance is always performed to the song "Electric Boogie" by Marcia Griffiths.In keeping with this tradition, the Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle, and the Soulja Boy are always performed to their respective songs.

Social Dance

Hip-hop social dancing (party dancing) began when hip-hop musical artists started to release songs with an accompanying dance. In 1990, rapper MC Hammer created the Hammer dance and popularized it in his music video "U Can't Touch This". The Hammer dance was a social dance that became wildly popular and then faded as the album it was associated with, Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em, lost popularity. Most social dances are short-lived fad dances, some are line dances, and others spawn new dance styles that stay relevant even after the life of the songs they came from come to an end. The development of hip-hop social dancing extends further back than the 1990s with the Charleston, a jazz dance; Chubby Checker's Twist, which was considered rock & roll; several 1970s fad dances made popular by James Brown; and the influence of the television show Soul Train.

Business

Other developments in the dance industry occurred in response to the growing popularity of hip-hop. On the traveling convention circuit there were tap, ballet, and jazz dance conventions, but there were none specifically for hip-hop. The same void existed in dancewear. There was dancewear for tap, ballet, and jazz dancers but none for hip-hop dancers. Monsters of Hip Hop and Nappytabs dancewear were formed to answer to both needs. Nappytabs is the first line of hip-hop dancewear. Because their clothing is made for hip-hop dancers, they do not sell leotards, unitards, tights, or leg warmers. Their line consists of tank tops, shorts, t-shirts, sweat pants, harem pants, and hoodies.