Origin of Locking in Hip Hop Dance

Series Summary

Have you ever been ridin' dirty in your Cadillac letting your chains hang low and wondered if your Laffy Taffy is getting a little too loose? Well don't worry, you don't have to be at a party in da club to shake it like a polaroid picture, thanks to the Hip Hop expert at Expert Village, you can bring sexy back right in your living room. That's right, there is no need to blame it on the rain and stand under umbrellas, cause you can back it up and get your bootilicious body feeling healthy again while kickin' it at your own home.

A unique form of hip hop dance is locking it. In this free video series, watch as professional dancer Safi A. Thomas teaches how to lock it in hip hop dance. Learn how to Sam Point, the Scooby walk, wrist rolls, the iron horse, the double lock, and more choreography ideas. So let your tootsie roll and give a great big booty clap! You can now work it out while you walk it out thanks to the experts at Expert Village.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village I'm Safi Thomas form the Hip Hop Dance Conservatory. These are our dancers and we are based here in NYC and we're going to show you how to lock. So we're starting with the history of locking, locking is one of the foundations in hip hop dance. It has developed over about three decades three to four decades. Starting from way back when Don Campbell was trying to kind of learn the funky chicken as he was trying to get the funky chicken, from the funky chicken he couldn't really do it because he didn't have enough flexibility in his arms in order to get there. This is the late 60s 1967 somewhere around there 1968 and so he started he would just lock into place lock into place. So from that he developed pretty much his own style which was called the Campbell lock and that is where what we're doing now called locking comes from."