Hip-hop Dance Research Articles

Walking histories: narratives of young urban dancers in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

ABSTRACT The aim of the study is to investigate the construction of street dances in the city of Rio de Janeiro, describing urban dancers and their daily ‘art of doing’, listening to their voices and observing their physical and virtual interactions. In this paper, a specific methodological approach is applied towards a tactical plan in order to understand the urban dance phenomenon within the universe of hip-hop culture. This particular approach includes the analysis of eleven narratives of young dancers and their everyday experiences, their personal life stories, interlinked with categories such as masculinity and business. The results reveal the complexity of hip-hop and street-dance culture in general, and specifically among young Brazilians. The narratives of these young men have provided an effective means for representing hip-hop dancers’ concerns and bodily articulations in order to comprehend their dance practice and the construction of spaces, but also indicate aesthetic and commercial dimensions.

The incorporation of Hip Hop dance in English language education in Japanese universities

The incorporation of Hip Hop dance in English language education in Japanese universities

Benefits of an online group dance program for adolescents' social bonding and wellbeing.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its ensuing effects on mental health made it clearer than ever that social bonds are critical for survival, flourishing, and mental wellbeing. Experimental laboratory-based research with children and adults shows that activities involving movement alignment and joint action, such as dance, can facilitate social bonds. This study examined whether an online group dance intervention positively affects social bonding and wellbeing using a randomized control design. Participants were 58 UK adolescents aged 11-16 years (N = 52 girls, 75% White, 7% Asian/Asian British, 18% Mixed-Other), randomly assigned to an online intervention or waitlist control group. Participants in the intervention group completed an online 5-week hip-hop dance program during the Covid-19 pandemic in January to February 2021. Measures of social bonding, wellbeing, and future orientation were taken at the beginning and end of the program. Linear mixed model analyses examining group × timepoint interaction showed greater increase in social bonding (p < .0001), and wellbeing (p < .0001) in the intervention vs control group. Moreover, increases in bonding significantly predicted increases in wellbeing (p < .0001), and increases in bonding (p = .03) and wellbeing (p = .0002) significantly predicted increases in the adolescents' hope for the future. These data, collected at a time of mass social isolation, show that a 5-week-long online dance activity can help adolescents forge stronger social bonds, and improve their wellbeing and future orientation. Our findings suggest that the wellbeing and future orientation benefits of group dance may stem from having stronger social connectedness, opening up avenues for future research and interventions.

An Efficient Immersive Self-Training System for Hip-Hop Dance Performance with Automatic Evaluation Features

As a significant form of physical expression, dance demands ongoing training for skill enhancement, particularly in expressiveness. However, such training often faces restrictions related to location and time. Moreover, the evaluation of dance performance tends to be subjective, which necessitates the development of effective training methods and objective evaluation techniques. In this research, we introduce a self-training system for dance that employs VR technology to create an immersive training environment that facilitates a comprehensive understanding of three-dimensional dance movements. Furthermore, the system incorporates markerless motion capture technology to accurately record dancers’ movements in real time and translate them into the VR avatar. Additionally, the use of deep learning enables multi-perspective dance performance assessment, providing feedback to users to aid their repetitive practice. To enable deep learning-based dance evaluations, we established a dataset that incorporates data from beginner-level dances along with expert evaluations of those dances. This dataset was specifically curated for practitioners in a dance studio setting by using a total of four cameras to record dances. Expert annotations were obtained from various perspectives to provide a comprehensive evaluation. This study also proposes three unique automatic evaluation models. A comparative analysis of the models, particularly contrastive learning (and autoencoder)-based expression learning and a reference-guided model (where a model dancer’s performance serves as a reference), revealed that the reference-guided model achieved superior accuracy. The proposed method was able to predict dance performance ratings with an accuracy of approximately ±1 point on a 10-point scale, compared to ratings by professional coaches. Our findings open up novel possibilities for future dance training and evaluation systems.

Head movements induced by voluntary neck flexion stabilize sensorimotor synchronization of the finger to syncopated auditory rhythms.

Head movements that are synchronized with musical rhythms often emerge during musical activities, such as hip hop dance. Although such movements are known to affect the meter and pulse perception of complex auditory rhythms, no studies have investigated their contribution to the performance of sensorimotor synchronization (SMS). In the present study, participants listened to syncopated auditory rhythms and flexed their dominant hand index finger in time with the perceived pulses (4/4 meters). In the first experiment (Exp. 1), the participants moved their heads via voluntary neck flexion to the pulses in parallel with finger SMS (Nodding condition, ND). This performance was compared with finger SMS without nodding (Without Nodding condition, WN). In the second experiment (Exp. 2), we investigated the specificity of the effect of head SMS on finger SMS confirmed in Exp. 1 by asking participants to flex their bilateral index fingers to the pulses (Bimanual condition, BM). We compared the performance of dominant hand finger SMS between the BM and ND conditions. In Exp. 1, we found that dominant hand finger SMS was significantly more stable (smaller standard deviation of asynchrony) in the ND versus WN condition (p < 0.001). In Exp. 2, dominant hand finger SMS was significantly more accurate (smaller absolute value of asynchrony) in the ND versus BM condition (p = 0.037). In addition, the stability of dominant hand finger SMS was significantly correlated with the index of phase locking between the pulses and head SMS across participants in the ND condition (r = -0.85, p < 0.001). In contrast, the stability of dominant hand finger SMS was not significantly correlated with the index of phase locking between pulses and non-dominant hand finger SMS in the BM condition (r = -0.25, p = 0.86 after multiple comparison correction). These findings suggest that SMS modulation depends on the motor effectors simultaneously involved in synchronization: simultaneous head SMS stabilizes the timing of dominant hand finger SMS, while simultaneous non-dominant hand finger SMS deteriorates the timing accuracy of dominant hand finger SMS. The present study emphasizes the unique and crucial role of head movements in rhythmic behavior.

Aesthetic capital as a work strategy among precarious migrant coaches in China’s leisure industry

ABSTRACT This article explores how specific kinds of aesthetic capital enable urban-to-urban migrant workers to secure social mobility in the informal labour market of China’s leisure industry. Focusing on aesthetic capital accumulation and transference, it investigates how gym coaches, hip-hop dancers, and performers trade on their bodily assets and taste and seize opportunities to maximise capital when the fitness and leisure market creates occupational niches in metropolitan cities. It draws on ethnographic data from urban migrant coaches in the leisure industry in eastern and western cities in China. The findings reveal the dynamics of personal attributes, work strategies, and the increasing importance of aesthetic capital in the precarious economy. The findings enhance our understanding of how modern capitalism sustains interest in aesthetic and affective cycles.

Computational kinematics of dance: distinguishing hip hop genres.

Dance plays a vital role in human societies across time and culture, with different communities having invented different systems for artistic expression through movement (genres). Differences between genres can be described by experts in words and movements, but these descriptions can only be appreciated by people with certain background abilities. Existing dance notation schemes could be applied to describe genre-differences, however they fall substantially short of being able to capture the important details of movement across a wide spectrum of genres. Our knowledge and practice around dance would benefit from a general, quantitative and human-understandable method of characterizing meaningful differences between aspects of any dance style; a computational kinematics of dance. Here we introduce and apply a novel system for encoding bodily movement as 17 macroscopic, interpretable features, such as expandedness of the body or the frequency of sharp movements. We use this encoding to analyze Hip Hop Dance genres, in part by building a low-cost machine-learning classifier that distinguishes genre with high accuracy. Our study relies on an open dataset (AIST++) of pose-sequences from dancers instructed to perform one of ten Hip Hop genres, such as Breakdance, Popping, or Krump. For comparison we evaluate moderately experienced human observers at discerning these sequence's genres from movements alone (38% where chance = 10%). The performance of a baseline, Ridge classifier model was fair (48%) and that of the model resulting from our automated machine learning pipeline was strong (76%). This indicates that the selected features represent important dimensions of movement for the expression of the attitudes, stories, and aesthetic values manifested in these dance forms. Our study offers a new window into significant relations of similarity and difference between the genres studied. Given the rich, complex, and culturally shaped nature of these genres, the interpretability of our features, and the lightweight techniques used, our approach has significant potential for generalization to other movement domains and movement-related applications.

Risk Factors for Lower Extremity Injuries in Hip-Hop Dancers

Background: Hip-hop dance is one of many types of dances that is very popular in the international community. Dance is a profession that combines art with sports so it is very vulnerable to injury. Lower extremity injuries in dancers can occur due to muscle weakness, extreme movements, or overuse. Objective: To determine the risk factors that can cause lower extremity injuries in hip-hop dancers. Method: The method used is a literature review with a compilation of journals related to risk factors of lower extremity injuries in hip-hop dancers taken in the form of PubMed page. Results: It's really common for dancers who report injuries to lose time for work because of the physical limitation due to the injury. Based on the journals reviewed, factors that often caused dancers to suffer injuries include overuse (35.2%), lack of or not warming up before dancing (37%) fatigue and muscle stiffness in the lower extremity (51.6%), joint hypermobility (43 %), and using incorrect dancing techniques (49.1%). Conclusion: Based on literature reviews and the discussion in the journals discussed, the results show that fatigue and muscle stiffness were the common factors that caused lower extremity injuries in hip-hop dancers. Keywords: Risk Factors, Lower Extremity Injury, Hip-Hop Dancer

Dance in Black and White: Examining the Stereotypes of Black and White Ballerinas and Hip-Hop Dancers

Throughout the course of ballet dance history, White ballerinas have maintained the spotlight—subsequently leaving limited representation of Black ballerinas. However, other forms of dance, such as hip-hop, may yield greater representation of Black dancers due to hip-hop’s origins during the Harlem Renaissance. The current work examined if perceivers stereotype ballet and hip-hop as dance forms more suited for White or Black dancers, respectively. Two hundred sixty-eight online participants completed explicit and implicit (implicit association test) stereotyping measures examining endorsement of the ballet = White and hip-hop = Black stereotypes. In step with predictions, results showed that individuals were more likely to explicitly and implicitly endorse White women as ballerinas and Black women as hip-hop dancers. In addition, participants with ballet and hip-hop dance experience were less likely to endorse the stereotype that ballet dancers are White and hip-hop dancers are Black. Moreover, less stereotype endorsement also predicted greater likelihood of seeing a ballet or hip-hop performance in the future. These findings suggest that perceivers hold expectations about racial identities of dancers in ballet and hip-hop dance. Future directions regarding the role of race and stereotyping in the world of dance and the performing arts are discussed.

Breaking the normalization of appropriation and exploitation

Capitalism often gives away gold in exchange for something much more lucrative. Breaking was created by people of color whose ancestors originally owned the land from which the gold, now offered to the best dancers at the Olympics, was extracted. In this article, I wish to examine the financial inequity between the creators and the exploiters in the Hip Hop Dance Scene globally. I examine the relationship between dancers, dance schools and intermediary dance organizations globally. I question how most of the money is made and how much trickles down. I also consider how people of colour participate in the global organization efforts of breaking in the Olympics and discuss how the notion of ‘winning’ can also obscure the healing power of dance. Gold is symbolic of scarcity and capitalism will sell this to dancers in the same way that overnight fame is sold to rappers. I reflect on three primary questions: Will this dance join the others already exploited by dance schools who have no historic connection to the culture? Will the World DanceSport Federation and the International Olympic Commission celebrate the creators of the Breaking moves or will it perpetuate racist appropriation of culture without learning about its heritage? and finally, what efforts are being made to create an economically self-sustaining dance community?

Creativity, Skill, Integrity, Intelligence and Community: A Conversation on the Nature of Practice in Hip Hop

Robert Hylton is a first-generation UK hip hop theatre practitioner, who is currently writing a PhD at the Centre for Dance Research Coventry University on the nature of transmission of knowledge in black British Popping. Jonathan Burrows is a choreographer and Associate Professor at C-DaRE Coventry, who has worked for many years with hip hop artist Jonzi-D, mentoring hip hop artists interested in theatre practice. Robert and Jonathan have shared a long and ongoing conversation over many years about the nature of hip hop and its uneasy relationship to contemporary dance. The following text reflects that conversation, focussing specifically on the nature of practice in hip hop dance including transmission of physical and philosophical knowledge, respect for lineage, innovation and the relationship or not to academic research and the space of theatre.

WALKING HISTORIES: NARRATIVES OF YOUNG URBAN DANCERS IN THE CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO (BRAZIL)

The aim of the study is to investigate the construction of street dances in the city of Rio de Janeiro, describing urban dancers and their daily 'art of doing', listening to their voices and observing their physical and virtual interactions. In this paper, a specific methodological approach is applied towards a tactical plan in order to understand the urban dance phenomenon within the universe of hip-hop culture. This particular approach includes the analysis of eleven narratives of young dancers and their everyday experiences, their personal life stories, interlinked with categories such as masculinity and business. The results reveal the complexity of hip-hop and street-dance culture in general, and specifically among young Brazilians. The narratives of these young men have provided an effective means for representing hip-hop dancers’ concerns and bodily articulations in order to comprehend their dance practice and the construction of spaces, but also indicate aesthetic and commercial dimensions. Keywords: Hip-hop; dance; urban; masculinity; Brazil.

Experiential Learning Strategy in Teaching Hip-Hop Dance for Enhancing Dance Performance among Grade 10 Students

One of the most effective means of empowering someone with knowledge and skills that bring about change and support their economic development is education. According to an article written by Leverage (2021), education helps to create a better society. Understanding the value of education in today’s culture is crucial. Learning or acquiring knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, and habits is the education process. With the correct teaching strategies, teachers can make the classroom fun and effective for students to gain vital intellectual and social skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives (Indeed, 2023). Among such teaching methods is the use of experiential learning, wherein the students use experiences to learn a certain topic or subject (Institute for Experiential Learning, 2021). Hence, this study aims to determine the effectiveness of using an experiential learning strategy in teaching hip-hop to enhance dance performance among Grade 10 students. A descriptive-experimental research design method was employed wherein a pre and post-test was given among the respondents and their perception of the experiential learning strategy was assessed. Considering this, the results revealed a significant difference in the performance of the respondents before and after employing the experiential learning strategy in terms of knowledge, comprehension, ability, and attitude. It was also found that there is no significant relationship between the respondents' perception of the respondents in connection with the experiential learning strategy when compared to their performance.

Spinal Counts, Impact, and Partnering Movements in Ballet, Modern, and Hip Hop dance: A YouTube Video Analysis Study.

Dancers have self-reported a link between spinal extension movements and low back pain (LBP). Researchers have not reported the total number or frequency that spinal movements occur in ballet, modern, or hip-hop dance classes or performances. The purpose of this study was to report the number of spinal movements dancers are exposed to in different dance environments. We analyzed 65 dance videos on YouTube.com for dance movements within 7 dance environments: ballet class and performance, modern class and performance, and hip-hop breaking, ciphers (large groups), and battles ("1v1s"). Two reviewers recorded counts of spinal (spinal flexion, extension, lateral flexion, and rotation), impact (jumps, leaps, and falls), and partnering movements (lifts, catches, and leans). Data analyses were processed in Jamovi (the jamovi project, Sydney, Australia). We reported movement totals, percentages, frequency, ranges, means with standard deviations (SD), and medians with interquartile range (IQR). We calculated significant differences using Mann-Whitney U tests. Video length ranged from 3 to 141 minutes (mean ± SD: 38.4 ± 38.3, range: 138). the average spinal extension movements ranged from 2 ± 0.8 to 7 ± 9.6 movements per minute across genres. Modern dance class had the most spinal flexion (89 ± 53.6), rotation (60 ± 40.8), and lateral flexion (74 ± 20.7) movements. Ballet performance had the most spinal extension movements (77 ± 69.8), jumps (74 ± 48), and leaps (19 ± 18.2). Hip-hop breaking had the highest number of falling movements (2 ± 2.3). Partnering movements were only present in ballet performance, modern dance performance, and hip-hop breaking environments. Movements that increase LBP occur often in all 3 dance genres. Dancers can expect frequent exposure to spinal extension movements; therefore, we recommend strengthening back and core musculature for all dancers. We recommend that ballet dancers also strengthen their lower extremity muscles. For modern dancers, we recommend strengthening their obliques. For hip-hop dancers, we recommend increasing muscular power and muscular endurance.

The overlooked contributions of African American women hip hop dancers to breaking and hip hop culture

In the late 1980s through 1990s shifts within the aesthetic of hip hop culture helped the sustainability of breaking. When the discussion of hip hop and its major contributors are mentioned, seldom is there any acknowledgement of African American women. Like many art forms, hip hop is male-dominated, which can eclipse narratives about African American women in early hip hop dance circles. African American women practitioners are rarely called upon to moderate panels, write or are acknowledged as true pioneers of the field. Many times, throughout hip hop, African American women kept the dance alive with their resiliency, becoming the catalyst from the streets that help preserve and continue its legacy. The question I ask is: How have these African American women impacted global hip hop culture and why are they unknown to us? The article will examine performance qualities within interdisciplinary practices that forged ahead hip hop culture with these under-represented New York hip hop female dancers. Insights about the experience of these African American female pioneers bring into light historical concerns of exploitation and representation right in time for the introduction of breaking in the 2024 Olympics.

Uplift the breaking trajectory1

For the title of an article to state that breaking is an 1980s pop cultural trend, this may have been forgivable in the 1990s, but it is not today. It is 2021 (at the time of writing this), and everyone has access to research via the internet. Breaking was not a trend that ended in the 1980s, and then ‘made the leap’ to the Olympics. It has succeeded in preserving and evolving the vocabulary that attracts the best dancers to it from around the world to this day. The dancers who upheld its history and solidified its place in the dance pantheon have created relationships with realms once thought of as intangible such as theatre and academia. Many hip hop dance movies have copied the format and theme of resilience found in the original cult classics such as Beat Street and Breaking. In this article, I explore the tensions emerging from lazy research practices sustained in the media surrounding the announcement that breaking would be included in the Olympic Games. I argue that mainstream media networks need to have a greater respect for the dance, its practitioners and its traditions to avoid this type of appropriation.

Asian American Activation Through Hip Hop Dance

Asian American Activation Through Hip Hop Dance

“Out in the Streets”

Abstract This article provides a socio-anthropological portrayal of the hip-hop narrational mosaics in Greece through the intertemporal exploration of two hip-hop scenes: the rap scene and the hip-hop dance scene. It explores the gray and contested zones of a local hip-hop culture—which reflect on global hip-hop imageries, norms, and antinomies–through permutations and manifestations of difference, hybridization and subcultural capital, and their subversive intersections with race, class, gender, and affective states in contemporary Greece in landscapes of crisis. Drawing on content analysis of rap lyrics and ethnographic fieldwork on rap and hip-hop dance performativities, resonating contemporary Greek society’s precarities, traumas, and ethics, this article explains why hip-hop and street cultures are so popular today in Greece. Furthermore, it highlights their global dynamics and their present and future potential as an empowering and emancipatory space for young generations.

The effect of dance workshops participation on reaction time in persons with moderate intellectual disabilities - pilot study.

Background: Persons with intellectual disabilities who are physically active have faster reaction time compared to the physically inactive persons with intellectual disabilities (Yildirim et al. 2010). Aim: To recognize how participation in a series of hip-hop dance workshops can improve reaction time in persons with intellectual disabilities. Methods: 13 persons with moderate intellectual disabilities aged 14-22 (M = 17,30; SD = 2,52). A quasi-experiment was prepared using a single-group plan (nine dance workshops). Study design applied: pre-test - post-test. Measurement Tool - Optogait - acoustic response test. Results: Reaction time measured prior to dance workshops was M = 1,58; SD = 0,48 and after workshops was M = 1,34; SD = 0,69. The analysis using Wilcoxon signed-ranks test showed that this difference is statistically significant, Z = 2,06; p < .05. Conclusions: Hip-hop dance classes improve response times in persons with moderate intellectual disabilities.

Hip Hop Party Dance: Cardiorespiratory Profile and Responses to a Predefined Sequence.

Hip hop is a popular dance genre practiced worldwide that has gained popularity since the 1970s. Despite this, studies related to the area and its physiological demands are still scarce. The purpose of this study was to report the cardiorespiratory profile of a group of male and female hip hop dancers to determine the zones of intensity of a predefined hip hop party dance sequence. Eight Brazilian professional hip hop dancers, four women and four men, mean age 22 ± 2.3 years, participated in the study. Using a portable gas analyser (Cosmed K5) their cardiorespiratory variables were measured at two different times: first, during a maximal treadmill test and later during a predefined hip hop party dance sequence. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used for calculating the dependent variables: oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rate (HR), and the intensity zones for the predefined hip hop sequence. Data normality was verified using the Shapiro-Wilk test. The Mann-Whitney U-test was performed to check any sex-related difference (p < 0.01). No statistical difference between male and female dancers was found in the cardiorespiratory profile and responses to the predefined hip hop party dance sequence. On the treadmill, the participants' VO2peak was 57.3 ± 12.7 ml·kg-1·min-1, and HRmax was 190.0 ± 9.1 b·min-1. The predefined hip hop party dance sequence was mainly (61%) performed in the moderate aerobic zone. However, when the dancers jumped, the intensity of the sequence increased. This information could be used to develop a specific supplementary training protocols for hip hop dancers to improve their physiological fitness parameters and reduce the incidence of injury.