Hip hop and urban dance styles are a versatile, expressive, and unique style of dance. Gaining inspiration from nearly everything around it, the history of hip hop dance is just as versatile. Recently, hip hop duo Kyle “JustSole” and Dinita “Queen Di” Clark spoke at Colgate University to educate students on hip hop dance. Read some snippets below and check out the full article here.
“Hip-hop is an umbrella term; there are several interpretations of the art form.By definition, “hip” refers to one who is knowledgeable, or in the know, while “hop” refers to a dancer or a club of dancers. Together, hip-hop is a group of intelligent dancers, as Kyle explained. The culture of hip-hop has four key components: a Mic Controller (MC), a Disc Jockey (DJ), graffiti artists and knowledgeable dancers. These elements can be traced as far back as 10,000 years ago in Africa, where there were two drummers, a tribal or ritual dancer in the middle and a group of other dancers on the outside. Nowadays, one can see two DJs in the club, a street dancer in the middle and a group of people dancing around the dancer.”
“Dance and movement is a reflection not only of music, but also of the social and economic time periods during which people are dancing. People move to show how they feel when others will not listen or do not understand their voices. Kyle “JustSole” began the hip-hop lecture in Los Angeles, 1970. During this time, 19-year-old Don Campbell premiered on the TV show “Soul Train.” Meanwhile, the Lockers dance group was created, which was the very first street dance team to perform on television. Kyle iterated that a style of dance cannot be created without a foundation; all dance starts with a social dance, which builds on top of other social dances, and then becomes technique. There is nothing that is wrong or right – dance is like art, and it is in the eye of the beholder. The first style of hip-hop that the Clarks and Colgate students demonstrated was locking: a picturesque, posing form of isolated movements.”
Read the entire article for more information.
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