The History of Hip-Hop Dance

What's Hip-Hop Dance

Hip-Hop dance refers to dance styles, mainly street dance styles, primarily danced to Hip-Hop musics or that have evolved as a part of the Hip-Hop culture. Hip-Hop dance can be seen as part of the Hip-Hop culture in the US. By its widest definition, it can include a wide range of styles such as popping, breaking, locking, house dance and even electro dance. It can can be simply labelled as New School Hip-Hop, Old School Hip-Hop (or hype), Hip-Hop New Style and Freestyle.

Origins of Hip-Hop

The first Hip-Hop music hits were born in the African Americans New Yorkers Block parties in the Bronx during the 1970s. In the first Hip-Hop hits performers began speaking while the music (especially funk and soul music) was played. These were originally called MCs.

In 1960~1970s

The dance style primarily associated with Hip-Hop is Breaking, which appeared in New York City during the early 1970s and came to be popularly classified as one of the four primary "elements" of Hip-Hop (along with rapping, DJing and graffiti). Funk styles, such as Popping and Locking, evolved separately in California in the 1960-70s, but they were also integrated into Hip-Hop when the culture reached the West Coast of the United States.

Though breaking and the original funk style looks quite different stylistically, they share many surrounding elements, such as their improvisational nature, the music they are danced to and the way they originated from the streets, mainly within African American and Hispanic communities. These similarities helped bring them, and other street dance styles, together under the same sub-culture and help to keep them alive and evolving today.

In 1980s

Hip-Hop musics took whole new forms and the Hip-Hop subculture established further, new dance styles began appearing. Most of them were danced in an upright manner in contrast to breaking with its many ground moves, and were in the beginning light-footed with lots of jumping. Some moves hit the mainstream and became fad dances, but overall they contributed a lot to later Hip-Hop styles, and heavily influenced the development of House Dancing.

During the 1990s and 2000s

Parallel with the evolution of Hip-Hop music, Hip-Hop dance evolved into heavier and more aggressive forms. While Breaking continued to be popular on its own, these newer styles were danced upright, and draw much inspiration form earlier upright styles. Classifying these newer Hip-Hop styles as a unique dance style of its own has grown common with larger street dance competitions. Today, we see many specific styles that first appeared on their own, such as Krumping and Clown Walking, now being danced and accepted within Hip-Hop new styles contexts.

Nowaydays

All Hip-Hop styles from the 1980s and beyond are sometimes collectively called New School whilethe distinct styles from the 1960-70s, such as Breaking, Locking and Popping, are considered Old School. However, this classification is controversial, and often Old School Hip-Hop is used solely for the late 1980s upright and jumpy Hip-Hop styles, excluding Breaking, Popping and Locking, and new style Hip-Hop for the heavier Hip-Hop styles of today.