Who Invented Hip Hop Dancing?
No one person invented hip-hop dance as at is today. It's a descendant of breaking, locking and popping. This article is going to explore its growth from a battling tactic in the South Bronx to a mainstream art form.
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Birth of the B-Boy
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The "b-boy"--a term coined by DJ Kool Herc--is short for "break boy," one who embodies all four elements of hip-hop culture: DJing, freestyling, graffiti and dancing. This is the beginning of what we know as "hip-hop dance."
Breaking
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Breaking arose in the late 1970s from the provocation of a rival crew--a group of b-boys--calling out another. As the DJ spun the track, introducing a breakdown in a song, one crew would interpret those "breakbeats," challenging another. The winner was whichever crew could outperform the other. Bragging rights, along with dominion over the dance floor, were paramount.
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Locking
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Introduced by Don Campbell in the late 1960s by mistake, locking is produced when the body hits a certain beat in the song, stopping motion suddenly when the beat hits.
Popping
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Popping was introduced by the Electric Boogaloos in the 1970s on the syndicated R&B music and dance show "Soul Train." It's a way the dancer interacts with the beats--the dancer's body seems to "pop."
Evolution
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Hip-hop started to substantially infiltrate the mainstream dance vocabulary in the early 1990s. Its latest permutation blends traditional hip-hop dance with jazz, modern and contemporary dance styles.
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