Hip-hop Dance - History

History

Hip-hop dance is a broad category that includes a variety of urban styles. The older dance styles that were created in the 1970s include uprock, breaking, and the funk styles. Breaking was created in The Bronx, New York, incorporating dances that were popular in the 1960s and early 1970s in African-American and Latino communities. In its earliest form, it began as elaborations on James Brown's "Good Foot" dance which came out in 1972. Breaking at this period was not primarily floor oriented as seen today; it started out as toprock which dancers perform while standing up. An influence on toprock was uprock which was created in Brooklyn, New York. It looks similar to toprock, but it is more aggressive and looks like a fight. Uprock is done with partners, but in toprock—and in breaking in general—each person takes turns dancing. In 1973 DJ Kool Herc invented the break beat. A break beat is a rhythmic, musical interlude of a song that has been looped over and over again to extend that instrumental solo. Kool Herc did this to provide a means for dancers who attended his parties to demonstrate their skills. B-boy and b-girl stands for "break-boy" and "break-girl"; b-boys and b-girls dance to the break of a record. Further influenced by martial arts and gymnastics, breaking went from being a purely upright dance style—toprock only—to becoming more floor oriented.

At the same time breaking was developing in New York, other styles were being created in California. The funk styles refers to several street dance styles created in California in the 1970s that were danced to funk music. These styles include roboting, bopping, hitting, locking, bustin', popping, electric boogaloo, strutting, sac-ing, dime-stopping, etc. The most popular and widely practiced of the funk styles are locking and popping. Locking is older than popping and it was created in the late 1960s whereas popping was created in the 1970s. The television show, Soul Train, helped to spread locking and popping's popularity. Both The Lockers and the Electric Boogaloos—dance crews responsible for the spread of these urban styles—performed on this show.

It would be historically inaccurate to say that the funk styles have always been considered hip-hop. The funk styles were adopted into hip-hop in large part due to the media. Once hip-hop activist and DJ, Afrika Bambaataa, used the word "hip-hop" in a magazine interview in 1982, "hip-hop dance" became an umbrella term encompassing all of these styles. Due to the amount of attention locking and popping were receiving, the media brought these styles under the "breakdance" label causing confusion about their origin. They were created on the west coast independent from breaking and came out of the funk cultural movement rather than from the hip-hop cultural movement.

As breaking, locking, and popping were gaining popularity in the 1980s, hip-hop social dancing (party dancing) was growing as well. Novelty and fad dances such as the Roger Rabbit, the Cabbage Patch, and the Worm appeared in the 1980s followed by the Humpty dance and the Running Man in the 1990s. The music of the day was the driving force in the development of these dances. For example, 1980s rap group Gucci Crew II had a song called "The Cabbage Patch" that the dance of the same name was based on. More recent social dances include the Cha Cha Slide, the Cat Daddy, and the Dougie. The previously mentioned dances are a sample of the many that have appeared since hip-hop developed into a distinct dance style. Like hip-hop music, hip-hop social dancing has continued to change as new songs are released and new dances are created to accompany them.