To start off my free inquiry project, I am starting somewhere familiar. Today, I will be focusing on the history and culture associated with the style of hiphop. Hiphop is one of the styles of dance I am most educated in, due to the fact that I have been exclusively training it for almost 2 years now. When looking at hiphop, it is important to acknowledge that to lots of people, it is more than a style of dance, it is a culture. However along with this culture, there are many different styles of hiphop to discuss. In this inquiry post, I will dive into the culture and history of hiphop, as well as a few of the more popular styles of hiphop.

History:

To begin, I will discuss the hiphop history that I have been taught throughout my dance experiences. This information stems from a variety of different teachers. According to most hiphop teachers, it is not right to dance the style of hiphop without being educated on the history.

Imagine you are in The Bronx, New York. The year is 1973 and you and your friends are at a block party. Here, someone named DJ Kool Herc is playing music on a turntable. But, the way he plays the music isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen before. Instead of simply playing a song, he is using two turntables. On these turntables, he plays the break of a song on both turntables. When the break is over on one table, he loops the break on the other table. Here begins hiphop dance. This new way of playing music gave dancers more time to dance to the breaks in the music. This is where the term break-dancing (breaking) comes from. This leads me to my next topic, the culture of hiphop.

Culture:

To put it simply, there are five elements of hiphop culture.

• Breaking: dancing to the break of a song, most commonly recognized by floor-work.
• DJ-ing: the person playing the music, in the 70s this was on turntables.
• MC-ing: the master of ceremony, or the host of the event
• Graffiti: art that is most commonly made with spray paint on public surfaces.
• Knowledge: the most recent edition to the elements of hiphop, being educated on what hiphop is and where it comes from.

As you can see, hiphop is much more than just a style of dance. Hiphop stems from Black communities, as well as other minority groups in America in the 70s. As a white person, it is important to be educated on the culture of hiphop instead of just the style of dance to avoid cultural appropriation. This is something that my current teacher talks about a lot. In class, we talk about the difference between appropriation and appreciation. From my understanding, to avoid appropriation, one must be educated on all things hiphop, and be open to learning new things from mentors and founders. In my experiences, I have found that most dance studios that offer a wide variety of dance styles do not emphasize the culture behind hiphop, and just focus on teaching the dance style for fun. However, I am currently training at a studio that only focuses on hiphop, and I have learned so much and have been exposed to so much. I think that it is important for dance studios to hire instructors that are properly educated, not just on the style of dance, but also it’s history and culture. Hiphop is definitely a fun style of dance, but there is so much more to it.

Different Styles of HipHop Dance:

Hiphop is a really broad term when describing a style of dance. In reality, there are many different styles within the category of hiphop. Today, I am going to focus on some of the most common styles; locking, popping, and house.

• Locking: unlike hiphop in general, locking started out in California. A man named Don Campbell created this style. Locking is typically done to funk music. Instead of describing what locking looks like, I will embed a video to demonstrate.

• Popping: similar to locking, popping also started out in California. Popping was created by a man named Boogaloo Sam. Popping was inspired by locking, but is not the same. The idea of popping is to quickly tense your muscles and then quickly release them, which makes for sharp, robotic movements. Popping and locking are often grouped together, but they are not the same. I have included a video of popping below. (Fun Fact: Boogaloo Sam is still dancing and taught a workshop in Vancouver within the last year or two!)

• House: at the end of disco, a new genre of music began to emerge. House music. A man named Frankie Knuckles is titled as the creator of house dance. Like DJ Kool Herc, Knuckles was also mixing records together to make the music longer for dancers. But this different genre of music led to new styles of dance emerging. House dance is typically more fast paced and upbeat, and included a lot of foot-work. I have included a video below.

After reviewing the history, culture, and some of the styles of hiphop, it is clear that this is much more than just a type of dance. This is a common misconception. Many dancers hear the word hiphop, and just think of basic hiphop grooves (which I didn’t even talk about!). But it is important to note that by viewing hiphop as just a type of dance, that is appropriating hiphop culture. To appreciate hiphop is to be educated on the history and culture. There is much more to hiphop than I talked about, and many more styles such as voguing, waaking, krumping, and more. Another huge element to hiphop is freestyle. Freestyle often shows up in two different settings. Battles, or cyphers. Battles can be done individually, in pairs, or even in groups. Battles will alternate between two opponents, who go back and forth freestyling to different music. I was lucky enough to witness many battles when I went to the HipHop World Championships in Macedonia in 2024, and it was such an inspiring sight to see. The other common setting for freestyle is cyphers. Cyphers are when a group of hiphoppers gather in a circle, and each take turns going into the centre and freestyling. Freestyle is arguably the most important part of hiphop dance, as it is where it all began. If you found this information interesting, I encourage you to dig deeper into the history and culture of hiphop!

Sources:

Dominican University (2024, August 21). 50 Years of Hip Hop. Rebecca Crown Library. https://research.dom.edu/c.php?g=1348416&p=9976470

Icon Collective (n.d.). Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream. https://www.iconcollective.edu/hip-hop-history