Melbourne-based dance team “Jigsaw Sneakers”, consisting of 8 kick-ass dancers, have been holding dance battles on an occasional Saturday in and around inner city Melbourne. The hip hop dance moves on show this past Saturday 10th December were hot, and a few battles from the day are shown below for your enjoyment.
First off, you’ll see the two dancers taking part on the stage here at Fed Square (an outdoor viewing area in Melbourne Australia). Some hip hop beats are playing and a bottle is spun to get the dancing underway.
Lucky finishes off and Nish takes over.
The music changes style to a faster beat, and the sweet moves continue
All in all, a great time was had by all dancers and spectators alike!
Here’s hoping there’s another little showcase like this soon and the hip hop dance moves are featured pretty heavily.
When it comes to hip hop dance moves, the “running man” is one of the first ones you will learn. Why?… well it’s easy, looks good, and is a great move to be able to build variety into. You see, by tweaking it slightly, you are able that expand on this one move and give it a different look, in 3 or 4 different ways.
Here is a cool short vid shot after Hip Hop class on Friday night, featuring Hiki, that shows the way that the running man can be relayed into 3 different hip hop dance moves.
First is the “down” style – exactly as it sounds, the focus is on the “down” of weight and energy in the step as the feet are planted.
Second is the “up” style – like this sounds, the emphasis is on the “up”, and the front foot plants the heel to give this effect.
Hiki also splits the running man out to form cool third version where the arms are also involved.
All of these come from the basic “running man”, that anyone can learn pretty quickly. Go off, practice and enjoy!
At a busy dance studio, you will see many options when it comes to classes you can take. I take the “hip hop dance moves” class, but right next door at the same time the “Popping” class is on. That’s right, not “Popping and Locking”, but just “Popping”.
Many people would NOT consider them as separate. They might think that you can’t have Popping without the Locking and vice versa.
But clearly you can, as they are indeed different styles. Then we have “house” and “breakdancing” taking us to 5 styles of street dance that could appear to be the same.
Further proof of the separation between the styles, is from the annual world dance tournament Juste Debout. At this international tournament there are 4 categories that dancers compete in – all are described as “Upright Street Dance” styles:
- Hip Hop New Style
- House
- Locking
- Popping
Amongst the general public though, there appears to be much confusion and debate out there concerning the separation between Hip Hop Dance, House, Popping, Locking and Breakdancing. Following from here I will take a quick look at the background of 5 styles and see if we can understand what separates the styles.
Hip Hop Dance
One of the first things to note about hip hop dance is that it is performed to Hip Hop Music. Now, if you are reading this I am sure you are familiar with hip hop music, so there’s no need for me to go on about that. You are dancing on/with the beat when hip hop dancing, so the heavy bass and drum beat of the music is what gets you moving.
From a historical point of view, Hip Hop dance came out of New York, and does have close ties to breakdancing, or B-boying/B-girling, which also grew out of New York. However, breakdancers will be on the floor performing their moves, whereas hip hop dancers will almost always be standing on their feet.
Theatre also plays a big part in Hip Hop dancing, with groups or “crews” battling each other, usually in the middle of a “cipher”, which is essentially a circle of on-lookers.
Attitude and improvisation also plays a big part in it, with the teams looking to outdo one another on the floor. Movements are fluid and flowing, involving both arms and legs, movements are often driven from the hips twisting. That is why hip hop can be such a great workout.
Here is a great example of hip hop dancing. Notice the elements I discussed earlier: the music, dancing upright, the attitude and improvisation, the fluid movements – (and also the fashion!… sweatpants, t-shirts and caps).
House
Is most clearly distinct from hip hop in the music that is danced to – House music – which is much faster that hip hop music. I hope house music fans don’t take this the wrong way, (but whatever lol), house music would be what the general public calls ”techno” music.
As a result of the fast music, house dancing requires you to be very light on your feet – with the movements matching the music closely. Without going into too much detail (as this is a hip hop dance moves blog ) lots of the moves involve complex and fast footwork, spins, and jacking. Jacking is a crucial part of house and is like a wave effect that ripples through the body that you can see in any house dance competition. You can’t be as heavy on the beat as you are with hip hop dance moves, because you are just moving too fast, making it impossible.
House dancing is performed upright and sometimes on the floor, and is more or less improvisational much like hip hop, with house dancers also battling in a circle when competing.
As a video tells a thousand words, here is a quick house dance example. It is taken from the same location as the hip hop video above so you can compare easily. Look how dynamic and fast it is compared to hip hop.
Locking
Coming out of the west coast of the United States in the late 60′s early 70′s, locking has it’s roots in funk music, although nowadays it might be grouped together with hip hop culture (either correctly or incorrectly).
There are several distinct elements to locking:
Fashion – loud and vibrant, just like the dancing. It’s common to see suspenders, loud colorful pants, brimmed hats and color co-ordinated teams in a kind of funky uniform.
Music – Distinctly different, with trumpets and a fast drum beat. It is easy to see that this is a dance that is performed to funk music. When watching locking it is easy to see the roots of disco and funk combining in a very interesting dance.
Movements – Locking is a really, REALLY dynamic form of street dance, with everything from house like fancy footwork to spins and somersaults. Arm movement is a big part of it, with arms snapping out and back, up and down in exaggerated movments. Legs and feet are generally more relaxed than house and hip hop, with the dancer being almost set in a position as the arms shoot off “locking” movements. Having said that, many movements involve the legs – with them kicking out and back, jumping, performing the splits, or taking big steps around the dance area.
Once again, an example video. This time, locking from the 2009 Champions (champions are in the Checked Colorful uniform).
Popping
Also coming out of California in the 1960′s and 70′s, popping is a dance style that the general public knows quite well. These are the type of jerky robot-like movements that you see on lots of dance competitions and YouTube videos.
There is more to it than that, but frankly, I don’t particularly like the style so I’m not going to carry on too much about it LOL.
Here’s an example. Also from the 2009 Championship.
Breakdancing/B’Boying
These guys are the acrobats of street dance.
This is another form of dance, that is hard to categorise as such, given that it is as much acrobatics as it is dance. Could that be the reason that it is not a style that is contested at Juste Debout?
Born in New York in the early 1970′s, separate as you can see from the funk styles of both popping and locking that came out of Los Angeles. There is debate about whether the term “breakdancing” is offensive and b’boying is the correct term, but we will put those arguments aside for the moment and concentrate on the style.
Musically, breakdancing is performed to the “breakdown” section of a dance record track that has been looped over and over – the “break”.
B’Boys spend the majority of the time on the floor, performing moves such as the windmill, different types of “freezes” where the dancer holds a pose, and all kinds of spins and flips.
Here’s an example of breakdancing from the street of NY!
Hope we all learned something… Now grab a style and roll with it!
Novices are often shocked at how effective hip hop dance moves are as a form of exercise. The truth is that they are a brilliant form of full body exercise, engaging everything from the legs up to the head. (I should know.. I’m dying after each and every class! including tonight’s…)
Anyone who’s not aware of the physical demands and health benefits of hip hop dance should note the following (it’s much more involved than just dancing!):
1) You’ll get a fantastic cardio workout – as anyone who dances hip hop knows that you sweat and fatigue over the course of the lesson/session. The full body nature of the exercise is great for the heart and lungs (and is much more fun than jogging). The fact that hip hop dance moves are dynamic and high in impact also makes them good for your bone density (important for young women).
2) The muscle/strength training benefits of a vigorous dance session are crucial for building the power and definition in the legs, hips and body core. In perfecting hip hop dance moves you are also adding definition and shape to your body, giving you an athletic physique complete with good quality muscle.
3) The dance moves are fantastic for increasing the range of movement (flexibility) of your muscles. This is brought about through a combination of pre (and hopefully post) -dance stretching (which gradually increases range of motion and muscle elasticity), and repetitive “isolation training”. Performed together, this literally changes the capabilities of your muscles throughout the body. Particularly you will see improvements in your hips, legs and core, leading to a more comfortable day-to-day existence.
What’s that?
Yep, hip hop dance will give you increased core strength that is crucial in avoiding the pains of the couch potato existence – all brought on by too much sitting. Bad back. Sore hips. Headaches. All of this and more can often be related to poor “core” muscles.
Specifically, core strength comes from the “trunk” muscles – the abdominals, oblique abdominals (side of the stomach), and the mid and lower back. Not only are these strengthened through hip hop training, but as an extra benefit I often like to add special core-targeted exercises to my gym workouts. My goal here is improving core strength and improving my stamina when doing hip hop dance moves.
The following is a nice example of exercises I regularly perform. It is brilliant and is performed by none-other than world record holding tango dancer Tim Ferriss.
Just wanted to post a little on the spectrum of hip hop dance, and give a little bit of background to hip hop through some history of it.
Pioneers in the Hip Hop game, have to include DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican born DJ who is often credited with creating hip hop music with his isolation of different parts of the beat/break. This created some music that people could really get down to!
If you feel like winding the clock back, here’s a short video on the man himself, the godfather of hip hop, DJ Kool Herc.
As this video shows, by the 70s people were really starting to hit the dance floor and rip out the moves. The 70′s saw the popularity of breaking, along with popping and locking. This type of dance was also the focus of the dance crews of this time, giving rise to some of the first professional hip hop dancers.
A short popping and locking routine. (The first video online that I learnt hip hop dance by following!)
give it a try!
Through the 80′s, Run DMC had their thing going. Stripped down with two turntables and a microphone, they came through as a breath of fresh air and threw big lyrics into the mix with their aggressive style. New School hip hop was born. Notice how the focus has changed to lyrics and the message of the song, and away from the steps done to the music.
In the 90′s even MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice had their influences on hip hop dance. The running man gained popularity around this time, with these two characters dancing in a big and exaggerated pop-style of hip hop. It still looks pretty good, even to this day, and involves moves that many people can pick up quite easily.
If you have a regular Hip Hop dance class, what night is yours on? When do you get to perfect your hip hop dance moves?
Mine is on a Friday night from 6.30 pm: this got me thinking last week. What a great way to end the week!
I look forward to it all week and it is the best way to let my hair down and work up a bit of a sweat. After class I am always a bit thirsty too, so it can be a good excuse to have a beer or two, should the mood strike.
Anyway, I am about 8 or so lessons into my hip hop adventure and still loving it.
Some of the issues have been
a) my persisting whiteness has made finding any “groove” virtually impossible.
b) forgetting steps I thought I had mastered when they are revisited later.
c) a painful neck- although this usually kicks in the next day so I don’t actually feel it during the lesson. The problem here is that I normally wake up on Saturday morning with a very tight neck, giving me a migraine at times. I know this must be from all the head bobbing that goes on during the lesson. (Yes, I am very energetic).
I was just reflecting back on the moves I have learnt since I started hip hop all those weeks ago. Running man, Happy feet, The Steve Martin. All really fun moves.
Call me crazy, but I am going to say that slowly, ever so slowly, I am getting the hang of it. It also helps that my teacher Arisa is a phenomenal dancer and teaches so well that it’s a credit to her that I can do any steps at all. Very patient and encouraging.
Yo Yo Yo, here we go with the hip hop dance moves blog!
So good to finally get this up and running, and it’s a pleasure to have everyone along here for the ride.
At ehiphopdancemoves.com we will be getting right into the “how to” for hip hop moves: everything from absolute-basic beginner-type moves, along to the more advanced jams that will take a bit of practice to perfect.
We will support you guys with video and detailed descriptions that will blow you away and get you busting awesome moves in no time.
) lots of the moves involve complex and fast footwork, spins, and jacking. Jacking is a crucial part of house and is like a wave effect that ripples through the body that you can see in any house dance competition. You can’t be as heavy on the beat as you are with hip hop dance moves, because you are just moving too fast, making it impossible.
