Hip Hop and the Trends in the Dance Industry - By Eric

This is an article that's been posted on a couple of Hip Hop website.

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The hip hop and pop/fusion/commercial dance industries. If you don't give a shit about either then move on to the next article. This article is for the people that actually care about the ignorance that brought about this phenomenon. This is about hip hop. Let me draw some parallels before I bring up my point to further elucidate. Its ignorance that makes a person call any person of Asian decent they see, Chinese, or any person of Latin background, Spanish. Its the same way with the hip hop. I wasn't born into hip hop but rather grew into it. Its the ability to relate to certain aspects of a culture or lifestyle that draws people to them. Your own personal ignorance is diminished once you start to identify cultures instead of group them all together, but ignorance still persists until you learn as much as you possibly can about each separate culture. Knowing where you came from allows you to know where you want to go. Knowing where others came from allows you to understand them better. Ignorance is minimized. With that said let's look at the industry.

Having been a hip hop dancer/choreographer in the industry for awhile now I have taught in a number of dance studios in NJ and NYC and no matter where you go you'll almost always find some joker that names their class hip hop when they don't teach hip hop. Most of these styles are fusion or street funk however in NYC, where history and origin are the city's heart, you need to show respect. If your style is fusion, then call it fusion. If your class teaches street funk, call it street funk. If your class does in fact teach hip hop, then call it hip hop. Try to understand where I'm coming from. Hip hop is a lifestyle and a culture. A hip hop class would teach about the culture while concentrating more on the dance aspect of hip hop. Hip hop heads don't hate any other styles of dance, they are respected and loved by any spectrum of dance however hip hop is different just as any other style is different. The point is to recognize the origin and history of where the style you teach came from. Its the only way to pass it on.

There's an underground house/hiphop convention that is held in nyc once every month. At this convention/club all the old school heads, who attributed to the birth of the hip hop dance forms (popping, locking, bboying, uprocking, whacking, boogaloo, etc.) attend to work out just like they used to, to show the new school where they came from. Here you'll find Boogaloo Sam, Poppin Pete, Stretch, Rockafella, Quikstep, Brian "Footwork" Green, and occasionally the members of Rocksteady. This convention is held in the environment of how the originators of hip hop learned in the past. They didn't learn in a classroom. They learned on the streets and the underground. The purpose is to educate the new school heads at these conventions. They teach the origins of dance styles, the names of moves, the originators of steps, and the variations based on borough and geography. The emphasis on these conventions is EDUCATION.

This new fusion style that has been created out of the new popstar sensation has been at the height of commercial dance for almost a decade now and it is finally starting to see a small decline in the demand. The fusion style is looked at like a fad or trend style. The reason is that it is not one of the "core" styles of dance. Styles such as hip hop, jazz, ballet, tap, etc are considered "core" styles due to the fact that every step has a name and origin. A fad style does not therefore not allowing it to be passed down or taught effectively to the next generation.

Its not difficult when looking at history. Hip hop, ballet, jazz, and tap attendance never fluctuated to a severe degree, however the fad/fusion styles fluctuate depending on the trends in music and the industry. You can see it by thinking about a certain piece of choreography...let's say hip hop and more specifically locking. If you were to expose the public to a locking combination 20 years ago it would have been generally recieved as hot. If you were to expose the same combination currently it would still be considered hot. If you were to expose the same combination 20 years from now it will still be considered hot. We can see this in some of videos like Mya's "Free" where they are locking and even in Janet's "Miss You Much" where a current audience would snicker at the fad moves of the time in the choreography however, at the same time see her doing some old school locking later on in the video and watch it with respect.

Now take a fusion style combination which is based on the trends of the music business. The New Kids on The Block could be looked at like N'Sync or Brittney of our past. 10 years ago NKOTB was considered hot to millions of fans, mainly girls. Take that same dance combination out of any of their concerts/videos and introduce them now and they are whack. Take the Back Street Boys/N’Sync/Brittney combinations or any of the boy/girl bands combinations and place them 20 years ago, currrently, and 20 years in the future. Would they still be "hot"?

Some of the fusion choreographers have done the smart thing businesswise and began to learn hip hop. This is smart because it lays down a foundation where hip hop is the core and then you can add your own style to it as you want. When the current fad goes away an the core dance styles persist before the next fad, these choreographers will survive. But the fact remains that you must always give props to where it is due. Currently many of the stars and choreographers that “made it” never bother to credit those that taught them. Some Rocksteady taught Michael Jackson, but you’ll never hear him give credit. Do you really think that Michael invented the moonwalk? He claims to.

Without the "core" a dance style will not survive unless its able to be passed down thru history and origins. Just learn why we are able to dance the dances we do today and be able to pass it down. We must realize the most powerful and unavoidable truth before its too late: We are one of the last, if not the last generation of dancers that are able to still learn from the creators of hip hop. That in itself is amazing. After the great ones pass, the future generations have no where to learn the history and origins of hip hop but the generation that it was passed down to...us. We are needed to keep hip hop alive. Recognize.

Eric