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Hip hop dance classes in dc10/2/2023 Social dancing is most often based on relatively simple patterns of stepping and weight shifting, which are overlaid with multiple rhythmic layers of gestures done with the arms, head, and segments of the torso. This can also be unadorned rhythm playing, such as a synthesized drum track or an impromptu beat pounded out by hands or with sticks. Hip-hop dancing is done to any type of hip-hop music-rapping, singing, or instrumental-with an appropriate beat and tempo. In Washington’s black community, hip-hop includes social dancing, done by couples (who do not hold hands) and exhibition dancing, done by individuals or sets of dancers who do their most impressive moves and choreographed routines to demonstrate their prowess. Hip-hop is shared by young people of different cultural backgrounds throughout the United States, but its basic aesthetic ideas are deeply rooted in African American culture. Hip-hop is not just a dance style it is a multifaceted world of expression that includes dance, music, a DJ’s skilled mix of live and recorded sounds, verbal art (including rapping and other forms), visual arts (such as graffiti), clothing, body adornment, and social attitude. This return to artistic roots planted firmly in the Motown era led to a revival of “oldies but goodies” music at Washington-area clubs, cabarets, and radio stations. Sometime in the mid-1980s, however, as rap became more commonly heard on the radio and hip-hop grew into a major cultural movement, hand dancers-by this time mostly in their forties and fifties-began to revive their generation’s “own” music and dance. Most of the black teenagers who had grown up hand dancing in Washington made an easy transition to the new free dancing styles, and kept pace as young adults with the new trends in popular black culture. This intra-city variation, and the markedly contrasting dance styles seen on nationally broadcast shows like American Bandstand, helped to fortify local opinion that hand dancing was unique to Washington, D.C.Īs the Motown era faded into funk and disco in the 1970s, however, hand dancing was largely replaced by “free dancing” styles, in which partners do not hold hands. Just by the way they danced, hand dancers could be recognized as hailing from Southeast, Southwest, or Northeast Washington. Individual dancers cultivated distinctive styles, often incorporating regional variations that developed within the city. Local television shows such as the Teenarama Dance Show, which ran from 1963 to 1967, featured local teenagers and put hand dancing in the spotlight. Photos by Richard Strauss, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives DJs provided the music for dance events and built reputations on the breadth of their record collections and their skill in crafting song sequences. It largely eclipsed the older styles at house parties, cabarets, and clubs in Washington’s black community. Like popular dance styles before and after it, hand dancing soon became a favorite pastime for teenagers and young adults. As musical tempos increased through the 1960s, with successive Motown hits by groups such as the Supremes, Four Tops, and Temptations, hand dancing style developed to suit the fast beat and new rhythms. It is essentially a smooth version of the Lindy Hop that features almost constant hand holding and turning between partners, and several step patterns used to keep time. Hand dancing was born and bred in Washington, D.C., during the Motown era, which began in the late 1950s. Together with a third style, go-go, they provide artistic alternatives to people of different ages and aesthetic sensibilities. What do the Motown sound and hip-hop music have in common? Each is the musical inspiration for a vital dance tradition that thrives in the African American community of Washington, D.C.Īnd these two styles of black dance-the smooth partner coordination and intricate turns of “hand dancing” performed to Motown classics, and the rhythmic steps and weight shifts with elaborate, syncopated arm and torso gestures done to the rhythmic polyphony of hip-hop music-what do they have in common? Each serves as a generation’s prime marker of identity and vehicle for artistic expression. A version of this article originally appeared in the program book for the 1993 Folklife Festival as part of the American Social Dance program. As we prepare for the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Freedom Sounds festival, we look back into our archives of African American music from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Smithsonian Folkways.
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