TravelCent

Dancing in the Streets

Street Dance is an umbrella term used to describe dance styles that evolve outside of dance studios. Competitive street dancing started in the early 1970s among the New York City gangs, such as the Zulu Kings and the Rock Steady Crew. The street dance movement know as ‘King Tut’ uses the head and arm movements of the Egyptians dance style depicted in the hieroglyphic of Egypt. Break Dancing, dancers spin the body on the head, back, hands and performing aerial dives and complicated fast footwork, started in the Bronx and grew out of the graffiti art and rapping culture. The aims of break dancing which developed control and coordination of acrobatics and athletic feats either solo, with a partner or in a group to demonstrate the superiority over rival gangs. Break Dancing exploded on to the world market not to long after the late 70’s and became popular among non-gang members and any American traveler could witness this phenomena being performed on the train platforms in India all the way to witnessing break dancer as young as eight perform right outside one of Singapore Luxury Hotels to earn a living.

Break Dancing evolved to what is called ‘Body Popping‘ with terms like The Turtle and The Beetle Crawl. Body Popping consist of a jerky articulation of isolated parts of the body creating a chain of movements which appear to ripple. A mechanical effect is created by tensing the muscles in a stiff body; the exacting movements are small and sharp. Today’s street dancing is commonly used specifically for the many hip-hop dances and funk dances and are no longer considered gang related. The popularity among the younger generations have taken street dance to a whole new level. There is now an American television show almost dedicated to the street dancer called ‘So You Think You Can Dance?‘.  Which has brought legitimacy to the once gangster related activity and is now being taught in the better known dancing schools and studios.

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2. The Scholar Maid
3. First Trip to New York City
4. Cape Town Birds
5. Singapore Dance Graffiti