The Miseducation of Hip-Hop Dance: Authenticity, and the Commodification of Cultural Identities

The Miseducation of Hip-Hop dance: Authenticity, and the commodification of cultural identities. E. Moncell Durden., Assistant Professor of Practice University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance Introduction Hip-hop dance has become one of the most popular forms of dance expression in the world. The explosion of hip-hop movement and culture in the 1980s provided unprecedented opportunities to inner-city youth to gain a different access to the “American” dream; some companies saw the value in using this new art form to market their products for commercial and consumer growth. This explosion also aided in an early downfall of hip-hop’s first dance form, breaking. The form would rise again a decade later with a vengeance, bringing older breakers out of retirement and pushing new generations to develop the technical acuity to extraordinary levels of artistic corporeal genius. We will begin with hip-hop’s arduous beginnings. Born and raised on the sidewalks and playgrounds of New York’s asphalt jungle, this youthful energy that became known as hip-hop emerged from aspects of cultural expressions that survived political abandonment, economic struggles, environmental turmoil and gang activity. These living conditions can be attributed to high unemployment, exceptionally organized drug distribution, corrupt police departments, a failed fire department response system, and Robert Moses’ building of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which caused middle and upper-class residents to migrate North. The South Bronx lost 600,000 jobs and displaced more than 5,000 families. Between 1973 and 1977, and more than 30,000 fires were set in the South Bronx, which gave rise to the phrase “The Bronx is Burning.” This marginalized the black and Latino communities and left the youth feeling unrepresented, and hip-hop gave restless inner-city kids a voice. Back in the 1980s, if I mentioned I was a dancer, people would ask what do you dance? Once I said hip-hop, I would get incurious looks, or perhaps hear something to the effect of, “that’s not real dancing.” Even when I was teaching at Drexel University, I remember someone saying my class was just fun—to give students a break from their real technique classes. Studios would usually turn you away if you wanted to rent space to practice your moves, put together routines or rehearse for upcoming performances. In the early 2000s, I spoke with dance studio owners in Philadelphia about their interest in offering hip-hop classes. They mentioned that they felt the need to provide hip-hop as a part of their curriculum in order to stay competitive, even though they did not know much or anything about the art form. There is a large percentage of studios in the U.S. that do not employ instructors qualified to teach hip-hop dance. And in many cases, this overwhelming demand results in students just learning a hybrid of choreography based on motifs from lyrical, jazz, and ballet styles, not hip-hop dance. Many studios feel that watching music videos or training in different disciplines qualifies people to teach hip hop, but these methods of teaching hip hop in this authors opinion are damaging and disrespectful to all dance forms. Ask yourself whether you would hire an unqualified instructor to teach ballet. Would you tell a teacher who doesn’t know ballet to just watch a video and copy it? No, because we accept that ballet takes years of training, and has techniques. Well, so does hip-hop. Hip-hop is a vernacular form, similar to authentic jazz, meaning that it is indigenous to a particular community or lifestyle. Vernacular was coined by researcher Marshall Stearns to describe the jazz dance of the early twentieth century that came from the ‘street’ and club cultures in Harlem New York, “vernacular” addresses the dance and the people, and like jazz, hip-hop is a way to express concerns, frustrations, aggressions, ideals, and exuberance. The outlet of music and dance expression can help maintain daily balance and peace while dealing with day-to-day life experiences; it has been a way of life for African and Afro-diasporic people throughout time. Further, hip-hop is the true continuum of Jazz dance. Understanding how to teach the form means not only comprehending its true techniques, foundations, vocabulary, pioneers, and innovators but also the significance of its deep-rooted structures, behavior characteristics, and cultural identity. These dance practices and their lineages have been dismissed, marginalized, commodified and yet are still appropriated and codified by individuals outside of the vernacular. Don’t Believe the Hype Scholar Sally Banes wrote the first article covering hip hop dance and culture. Her 1981 Village Voice article, “Physical Graffiti: Breaking Is Hard To Do,” was accurate ground-breaking, (no pun intended) and highlighted the cultures authenticity. Many writers would fall short when it came to writing about the dance and culture—they were misinformed, or misunderstood what they were writing about, accomplished scholars on the lineage and expression of ‘black’ dance who missed the mark when it came to hip-hop. “Black Dance: from 1619 to Today,” written by Lynne Fauley Emery and published in 1988, was an amazing account of the lineage of African-American dance forms, but of its 367 pages of text only a page and a half spoke to hip-hop, with some key names, dancers, and dances and a meager relationship to authentic jazz. The 1990 book “Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African- American Culture,” by author/scholar Katrina Hazzard-Donald is one of my favorite books to cover the subject. However, in 1996 she contributed an article titled “Dance in Hip-Hop Culture,” which appeared in the publication “Droppin’ Science,” a collection of critical essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. This article was not the well- researched work in “Jookin’”—at least not when it came to correct identity, terminology, and social structures of the dance. Donald makes statements that hip-hop is clearly masculine in style, and that in its early stages it rejected the partnering ritual between men and woman. In regards to floor-rocking, the aspect of breaking that occurs on the floor, this is true. But Donald fails to realize that there were female breakers (though it was male dominated, hip-hop was not purely masculine). In fact, many male breakers learned how to dance from their sisters. And the earliest form of the dance was rocking, also known today as top-rocking, which men and women would dance together. Donald mentions that while at a party, a young dancer refused to dance with her because his personal locking style did not allow for partnering—an experience she took too literally. Soul Train shows dancers Pat Davis, Dimita Jo Freeman and Locking Janet dancing with Don Campbell (the creator of the form), Jimmy “Scoo B Doo” Foster, and other dancers doing the locking form. These dances are not partner dances in the sense that you hold hands, that social decorum was changed with the popularization of the Twist. Social dances of the 60s and 70s, and even 80s, did not require partners to always hold hands. One of the worst things this article does to aid in the miseducation of hip hop dance is suggest that there are three stages, which are waacking, breakdancing and “rap dancing.” This misinformation was cited in Carla Stalling Huntington 2007 book Hip Hop Dance: Meanings and messages. In fact, there are only two forms of dance that are actually hip-hop: breaking (correctly known as B-boying) and party/social dances this includes Harlem Lite Feet. Today, hip-hop has become an umbrella term that houses other associated with it. Waacking is a west coast dance, created in the Los Angeles LGBTQ community and based off of an earlier dance called posing. As far as the hip-hop community is concerned, there is no such thing as “rap dance.” That would be like calling dances “song dance,” when performed to R&B. Their music may include singing, but the style of music is called R&B. Similarly, hip-hop artists known as emcees are rapping, but the music is hip-hop, and you dance hip-hop to those records. Donald’s article and Huntington’s book are full of misunderstood information, Donald stating that locking was known on the East Coast as pop-locking, but there is no such dance as pop-locking. Because of the technical aspect of each of these dances, it is impossible to perform both forms at the same time. The term “pop-lock” was a West Coast term, probably formed when popping came out in the mid-1970s. Locking was still the most popular dance form, and many people who were popping dressed in the locking fashion, which may have caused the confusion. The East Coast did misinterpret the form, but they called it electric boogie, not pop-lock; they were clear on what locking was and how it was danced. Huntington misunderstands the gang-related dance, the Crip Walk, also known as the C-Walk, which she addresses as the “Sea Walk.” She attempts to connect the “Sea Walk” to “Danse de Negros,” a term related to the “dancing” performed by enslaved Africans on slave ships during the Middle Passage. Donald says that females are not represented in hip-hop, but a clear example of female and male representation of the social dances in hip-hop can be seen in the 1990 movie “House Party,” starring Kid n’ Play. The dance battle that takes place between Kid n’ Play and characters Sidney (played by Tisha Campbell) and Sharane (played by A.J.

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