Working+Draft

Most people nowadays look at hip hop as all fun and games. They think it’s just a dance for entertainment or parties. Hip Hop dance is just as vital as ballet, tap and jazz. Hip hop can be used as many things as well some use it for physical fitness and people who are really serious about it compete in dance competition or make a living by dancing professionally. There are so many things you can use hip hop for. You can be a background dancer for a celebrity, be a teacher or dance in videos and on tours. There’s always a celebrity or group that’ll need some choreography for dances and shows. No matter what kind of dance you do whether it’s hip hop or some other form of dance it’s still a dog eat dog world. Nineteen states have named hip hop their official state dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. Internationally dance has influenced places as distant as France, South Korea and even Turkey. I have been dancing for quite some time. Since I was about three years old and I have always been passionate about hip hop. It’s an improvisational dance and anyone can add their own flavor to any move. The genre of Hip Hop is usually characterized as a choreographed form of dance but taking a look at all the dances region to region it becomes clear that though there are different moves that are done it’s really a compilation of forms of freestyle. Hip hop took the world by storm around 1940. From then on it's been a large compilation of dances from everywhere and pretty much everyone. Hip Hop dance was developed around the popular moves known as breaking, popping, and locking by Black and Latino Americans. Around the 1970’s hip hop which was about thirty years old by now expanded and that’s when groups would get together and have a “Battle”. A battle would usually consist of two crews showing off their moves trying to prove they were better than the other. Nowadays battles can consist of as many crews that want to join and that would be called a tournament. Nineteen states have named hip hop their official state dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. Internationally hip hop dance has even influenced places as distant far as France, Turkey, and South Korea. In the Tri-Sate are which consists of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware there aren’t many dances coming out in this area. Usually the dances done on this coast come from other places. We have many different forms of hip hop music to dance to but only a handful of dances. As far as music goes we have Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Baltimore has something called Baltimore Club or House music. This music is traditionally used for dances like the “wu-tang” or the “d mac”. Both of these dances use the constant steady beat of this music to go with the beat of the dances. This music is very bass heavy and the beat is usually constant. Some of it has lyrics and some of it is just music. The majority of it has some form of a catchy tune to it to get people to listen to it. House music became popular around 2000. It’s used everywhere from clubs, to house parties to dance studios and choreographers, Cheerleaders also tend to use this music for competition pieces. In Washington there is music called “go”. They use this music just like Baltimore uses their house music but the dances are very different. An example of “go” would be the popular song “Sexy Back” by Justin Timberlake. The music has a syncopated rhythm and a bit of a skipped beat. It dates all the way back to the 1970’s when Chuck Brown a singer and guitarist came up with the genre. He had a band called the “Soul Searchers” and by the 1966 he had created a form of funk mixed with Afro Caribbean flavor with a kind of laid back beat he called “go go”. It was usually used at parties back in the day to keep people on the dance floor. It doesn’t really have a constant beat so it was easy to get people to keep dancing with all of the rhythm changes. The first song made was called,” Mr. Magic” by Grover Washington Jr. Dancers would break-dance or pop lock to this music and some would come up with routines and show off their moves at the parties. Dances on the West Coast are definitely different from dances on the East Coast and in the Tri-State area. The music is drastically different as well but it has traveled all the way to the East Coast and is pretty popular right now actually. In California there is a dance called the “Jerk”. It’s a newly rising dance to us in the East coast but in California it's been around for quite some time. The jerk came out in the 70’s as well with a song called the “Cool Jerk. The Jerk has a few different moves to it. the reject, sponge bob, dip, jerk and ufo.The reject came from the famous “running man”. It’s the same except for the fact that when doing the reject you’re doing the running man backwards and you lean back a little so it looks a bit exaggerated. The sponge bob is a bit of a jumpy criss cross type dance. You jump side to side and cross your legs before you switch them. This dance really doesn’t have a serious origin it just came from a bunch of teens posting a Youtube viral video and became popular everywhere. The dip isn’t really the most complicated. It’s pretty simple actually all you have to do is dip and pause. The UFO is just as simple as the dip. You have to lift your hands above your head somewhat in front of you and wave your hands back and forth to a certain rhythm depending on the song you’re dancing to. Now there are so many different jerkin’ songs. There are groups like the New Boyz, Cold Flamez, Audio Push and a guy named Yung Sam that have all came out with the latest music for the dance. The dance really just mad an appearance over here on the East Coast over the past month.