Monday, March 1, 2010

What is Hip-Hop and Hip-Hop dance?

It's a term that's been misconstrued since the exploitation era. Ok, I can go into a long, well thought out thesis. However, you will not read all that, because "humans have lack of attention span." lol. At any rate, my believe from the original coin of the term. It is b-boying *the original dance of Hip-Hop which came out of the social dances in NYC - particularly the Bronx*, graffiti *the art of Hip-Hop*, emceeing *the spoken word, the crowd controller,* the dj *the backbone....the crowd regulator that manipulates the music for everyone to get down to*, and knowledge *spreading that knowledge and culture and learning the history*. Now these 5 elements have been battered time and time again.

What I am getting into with this...mainstream "Hip-Pop" dancing. Any real practitioner of the dance knows that official dance begins with B-boying *break dancing*. However, where does that lead to all the freestyle dances. I simply say this. What is called "Hip-Hop dance" now *freestyled movements into choreography so that mainstream America can understand it or it looks presentable by so-called structured dances* is indeed the very root of the street dances that came about.

That's why I can't really fuck w/ shows like SYTCYD or even at times ABDC. I appreciate them, but at the same time...they will never get the essences of our dances. I mean, how can Nigel understand a dope ass lock into a transition at an obscure part of the song. Or a dope halo into some awkward looking thread right on the stop of the dime when a cat is really going off. Or even toprock - the basics of the dance...

I understand people need to make a living, ppl need to eat. True that. I respect the hustle. Seriously! I do...just give props where props are due.

I can go on and on about this. Just check the clip below and see what you think of when u look at dance nowadays:

No comments:

Post a Comment