From street dance to hip hop

Rafael Guarato

doi:10.5324/da.v7i1.4226

Abstract

This text historicizes the concept of street dance (dança de rua) by showing distances and approaches in relation to hip hop. For this purpose, the analysis starts from the cultural history of street dance in the city of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais (Brazil), to understand the complex relationships that gave meaning and form to the practice of street dance between the 1980s and 1990s. In a first step, I investigate the various perspectives that permeate the bond between the popular dance and dance festivals, well as between the city neighbourhoods and dance clubs. In a second step, the analysis shifts to the cultural performance that allowed street dancers to migrate to the so-called hip hop dance. Analysing street dance and hip hop considering their ruptures and continuities, the text intends to contribute to studies dedicated to the presence of dance in the construction of urban identities.

Highlights

The academic study of peripheral dances in the urban environment, and their symbolic and scenic aspects, has grown over the last 10 years in Brazil
Interweaving the collected testimonies, the author concluded that the term street dance “is fraught with prejudice” (Torres, 2015, p. 35, my translation) and is gradually being replaced by terms such as urban dances, street dances or hip hop dances1
Santos (2016) attributes this difference in dance practice to the lack of information, in an effort to frame street dance within what the author calls “practices linked to Hip Hop” (p. 69)

Summary

Introduction

The academic study of peripheral dances in the urban environment, and their symbolic and scenic aspects, has grown over the last 10 years in Brazil. Aside from these understandings about the notions of street dance and hip hop, a previous historiographic study (Guarato, 2008) states that both concepts describe different practices, which have common aspects, but they are not the same.

Results

Conclusion