Welcome to HipHopDance.co.uk,

Class is definitely on tonight back to normal :)

NEW! Hip Hop Dance Classes! MARPLE!

WHATS IN THE CLASSES?

Here's some pictures from a recent Hip Hop Dance performance we did for Vodaphone.






and heres a video of one of our routines:



If you enjoyed this video check out our other routines in the vidoes section at the top of the page.


This Website is for anyone interested in learning the Hip Hop Dance style,

We've got a few online tutorials and videos to get you started,
but these are no substitute for actual class time
so if you live in the Manchester/Stockport area
check out our "classes"section for up and coming dance lessons.

If you want to learn more about Hip Hop Dance you can take a visual journey through the Hip Hop Dance
style entitled "What Is Hip Hop Dance?" by me Travis Donaldson, or you can just browse the links at the top^.


"What is Hip Hop Dance?"

You can fast forward to the section of this article that interests you with the links below:


Introduction "What is Hip Hop Dance?"
Body Popping
Locking
Waving
Tutting
Breakdance
Krumping


Introduction


Hip Hop Dance is a blanket term used to describe a range of different dance styles such as Breakdance, Street Dance
Body Popping, Locking, Tutting, Krumping and can also contain elements of gymnastics and Parkour. There are also a few hybrids such as street jazz and lyrical hip hop. All these styles are primarly danced to Hip Hop or RnB music. The easiest way to differentiate a Hip Hop Dance from other dance styles such as Classical Ballet or Jazz is the dances usage of some or all of the Hip Hop dance elements.





Body Popping

The most obvious Hip Hop dance element is isolation i.e. using one particular body part to perform a specific action. This is usually a small movement and most of the time requires the rest of the body to stay unchanged to emphasise the move. These types of movement are the basis of Body Popping which combines said isolation with a"hit" or "pop" and involves a tight and sharp contraction of the muscles. The most common of example of this is a chest pop as seen in this video featuring my favourite popper Philip Chbeeb if you look at the opening beats of this routine it goes shoulder, shoulder, chest, chest concentrate on the chest and you'll see an almost perfect example of what I'm talking about.


Philip Body Popping



This particular routine itself is actually a lyrical hip hop dance not purely hip hop but we'll talk about hybrids in more depth at a later date.

Locking

The second element your likely to see is locking this is very similar to popping in the way that it operates. The principle difference being that you lock your joints into a static position and hold a particular pose rather than quickly performing the motion, for example. The most common locking move would be an arm lock which involves bending the arm while staying quite relaxed and then locking you elbow in a bent position usually with a "hit" or "pop". Here's a prime example of some Lockers from japan Hilty and Bosch.

Hilty and Bosch Locking



You'll notice that the type of dance in this video is much more soft and fluidic especially compared to popping. The locking style consists more of flowing movements and quick pose changes. In recent years Locking hasn't really developed and remains one of the old school dancing styles of hip hop but it's unlikely you'll see it in your next hip hop dance video.

Waving

The next common hip hop dance element is waving. The Idea of this style is to create the visual illusion of a wave passing through the joints of the body. This move commonly moves across the arms, body and legs, the easiest move to learn for beginners being the arm wave. I've provided a in depth tutorial for this move in the tutorials section at the top of this page, but I've placed the video for this tutorial here for your convenience to give you an idea of what the motion should look like:


Travis' Arm Wave Tutorial



I apologise for the quality of this video but you should at least be able to make a wave out. Waving is also quite common in styles of dance other than Hip Hop such as Classical Ballet, lyrical and contempory. These can usually be seen in the form of body waves, or body rolls as they're sometimes known.

Tutting

Another Hip Hop element that you would only find in a Hip Hop dance performance is Tutting. This style has drawn inspiration from ancient egyption hirogliphics which depicted flexed hand positions facing alternate directions. The basic priciple of tutting is restricting every joint movement to a flexion of 90 degrees this sounds technical but all it really means is keep everything on a straight axis, here's a fantastic example of tutting from Moon of the Marvelous Motion Crew.


Moon of the Marvelous Motion Crew Tutting

You'll notice when watching this video that some of the more intricate moves Moon performs with his hands and fingers give a nice effect and are actually another branch of tutting called finger tutting, this follows the same basic principles as regular tutting but is a relatively new dance style. For me personally those are the four basic elements of upright hip hop dancing that have evolved over the past 30 years.

Breakdance

The next major area of hip hop dance is Breakdance this dance style is closely related to the four elements I just talked about but I believe is a seperate style all by itself. Break dancing appeared some time in the late 70's in the city of New York, America but can also be linked back to the Northern Soul dance style back in 1960's england, which consisted of various acrobatic flips and floor movements but with more of a rock dance flare. The Breakdance that we know today was originally performed when Hip Hop DJ's would select a break in their music, usually picking the part with the heaviest baseline to dance to and mixing it into the climax of thier sets. This would be where the breakdancers would perform thier break routines hence the term "breakdance". Breakdance has its own subset of dance elements mainly being: Uprock, basic Floor Work(6-Step,3-Step), Freezes and Power Moves. Uprock is the upright dance performed at the start of your break routine usually consisting off lots of rapid footwork and is used to build momentom before going down on the floor. Basic floor work is used to and mixed into your power moves which are usually extremely athletic and consist of spinning on various body parts such as back, shoulders and head or performing while being supported solely by your hands. A break set is usually finished with a freeze this move entales fixing you body in a set position generally on your hands or in an up-side-down position. Breakdance itself can be quite dangerous and it is not recommended to try any breakdance without supervision from a qualified instructor. Heres a break dance video from my favourite Breaker Hong 10 in a versus battle against rival breaker Physicx:


Hong10 vs Physicx



Breakdance can also incorporate gymnastics moves as they both involve alot of upperbody strength and control.





Krumping

Something else that makes hip hop dance standout from other dance styles is the hip hop attitude or swagger, this can sometimes make the difference between a fantastic performance and a mediocre one. Alot of the swag and style of hip hop dance is attributed to it's relaxed style. In comparison to ballet for instance when every move consists of strict upright posture and perfect lines, hip hop dance is much more chilled and even though good lines are still important so you don't have a sloppy performance, they can be sacrificed a little. A good example of this relaxed style quirk of hip hop is say you were going to perform a pirouette(spin) or series of turns on the spot in ballet everything would have to be straight, head facing forwards body aligned, in hip hop dance you can mix it up a bit maybe you could lean out of your turn a little and perform it off centre, if performed well this could add to the style of your performance and not be seen as showing a lack of technique. One style of hip hop dance I would again class this in a style of it's own like breakdance is krumping. Krumping is an extremely emotional and sometimes aggressive dancestyle that incorporates rapid body movements with buckets of style and charisma. Primarily a battle style these moves are designed to intimidate and overpower your opponent. Generally this is a no contact battle style but can involve some light contact in frought battle situations. The movement content can actually look as if it has no form and can seem quite random to an untrained eye but when performed well is actually extremely articulated and form based. The closest hip hop dance I can relate it to is popping because it contains popping moves but these are performed a little differently. Generally instead of a hit or series of hits the dancer will hold the muscle tension in there body constantly for longer phrases of the dance only "relaxing" when a rapid surge of movement is released, so yeah this is a very tense style. Rythmically you'll see alot of accents to music and a rapid switching between slow and fast moves that seem to erupt out of nowhere. Krumping is usually performed to specific musical genre called Krump music which has been pioneered by groups such as J-squad . This dance style was performed by Chris Brown I'll bet in a slightly watered down version in the popular movie "Stomp the Yard". The best example of Krump your going to see is by a dancer called Tight Eyes who is just incredible and a forerunner of the whole krumping genre, here's a video of Tight Eyes vs General Earthquake:


Tight Eyes vs General Earthquake



Notice how Tight Eyes is just in a world of his own I don't usually quote people as being the best of any genre but this guys is and by a large margin. This concludes our journey through the different elements and ideas of Hip Hop Dance I hope you know have a greater understanding and interest in this truely awesome dance genre.



Copyright Travis Donaldson 2009.