Popping: The umbrella term for a group of dance styles originally done to funk music (George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelics, Gap Band, Fatback Band, etc...)
The actual "pop" of popping is a technique called hitting. It is used to accent the snare, clap or clack sound that is played on the 2nd and 4th beat of every measure (known as the off beat).
Hitting is the quick tensing and relaxing of key muscle groups to create a surging stop. If u stop a motion without a hit, it is called a dimestop.
The general concensus in the Funkstyles community is that popping is when you are continuously hitting to the beat (hitting on each count).
There are many styles of popping (here I am using the umbrella term). These are (and I'll try to list all of them):
Boogaloo and Bay Area Styles
Tutting
Boogaloo
Scarecrow
Puppet
Toyman
Fresno
Filmore
Sticking
Saccing
Hitting
Illusional Styles (Popping and Electric Boogie Styles)
Floating/gliding
Waving
Centepede
Spiderman
Miming
Ticking
Strobing
Animation
Robot (Botting and also Bopping-robot with a hit and character)
Hitting
Here are some descriptions of some of the styles:
Tutting- this style is influenced by the positions of the arms and hands of the people depicted on egyptian heirogliphs. The angles formed by the hands and arms are the focus of this style. Some different types of tuts are King Tut, box tuts, straight arm tuts, magazine tuts and ground tuts.
Waving- one of the most popular illusional styles. It is meant to look like there is a wave traveling through the body. Some wave types are tidal waves, water waves, double waves, ripple waves. Remember to wave different parts of ur body... arms, chest, head, legs, back, stomach, and anything else u can get to wave.
Strobing- an illusional style meant to look like there is a strobe on u. By using quick dimestops, you mimic everyday actions in a way that it appears there is a strobe on you.
Ticking- often confused with strobing, ticking is a dance, not an illusional style. For ticking, you must be hitting to the fastest (most subdivided) part of the beat, the high hat.
Animation- this is a very difficult style. You have to know ur history for this one!!! This style is based off of the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen. Here are some of the movies and characters that are used for this:
MOVIE TITLE CREATURE
"Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad" (195
Cyclops, dragon, sword-wielding skeleton"Jason And The Argonauts" (1963) the seven headed hydra, and an army of skeletons
"Golden Voyage Of Sinbad" (1973) six armed statue, one eyed -centaur and a flying griffin
"Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger" (1977) saber-tooth tiger, baboon, giant walrus, three banshees
"Clash Of The Titans" (1981) medusa, Kraken,
Other movies that inspired animation:
"American Werewolf In London" (1981) wolf
"Terminator" (1984) cyborg skeleton
The main idea is to copy the movements of these characters and others the same way the stop-motion animation is done.
Boogaloo- this is a difficult and very complex style. The most popular form of boogaloo is the EB (Electric Boogaloo) version begun by Boogaloo Sam in Fresno, Ca back in 1976.
Boogaloo consists of various leg rolls, hip rolls, chest rolls, neck rolls, twisto-flexes, necko-flexes, master-flexes, walkouts, struts and angles. It is a very "loose" and truly funky style that is difficult to master.
Strutting- It's an old Bay Area style... one of the first popping/boogaloo styles. There is no hitting involved. It is a series of steps along with different arm angles.
In the "Fresno", you pop BOTH arms and one leg (back). You can also pop everything. AND there is a specific foot movement back and forth which I could probably describe to you one the phone if you want - I have taught it many many times to dancers and non-dancers alike. The 'classic', as I call it, manner would be right, left, right, right and then to the other side - but you can vary it. Looks great in unison. When I say both arms pop, one goes forward (classically), or it can go up, down to a side etc, while the other one pops back (classically). i.e., you can vary the arms. I learned this from all of the EB's except for Sam, with whom I have never studied.
Puppet - A style of boogaloo in which the dancer performs the boogaloo style with a "puppet" flavor. "Puppet" is meant to imitate the stylistic movements of a marionette puppet... this means puppet like hands, head, body breakdowns, looser movements. With puppet style, HITTING is not a necessity, as it is with many other popping styles.
Spiderman - Poppin' Pete created this style. Complex finger and hand movements across and around the chest which imitates spider movements, including crawling, sliding, jumping, and more. Get one of his instructional videos, it's almost guaranteed to have him doing some spiderman somewhere.
Robot - A style that's easy to learn, hard to look good with. Like waving, you need to have a lot of control to isolate and emphasize body movements.
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