Tag: Hip Hop

Posted on

GUEST POST BY BEA LESACA: HOW SALSA MADE ME APPRECIATE HIP HOP MORE

Hey, everyone. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to Bea Lesaca, a b-girl and hip hop dancer who writes for HardKnockRadio. Her guest post is about how salsa made her appreciate her own dance style more. Here’s Bea:

How Salsa Made me Appreciate Hip Hop More

Having been break dancing for a good chunk of my adult life, I couldn’t help but actually take it for granted. It was probably due to years of doing the same thing over and over again, making it as routine as going grocery shopping. I know I’m the only one to blame but going through a rut like that; I would like to think, is a necessary part of a dancer’s growth.

See, aside from bgirling, I never tried other types of dance, even the ones under Hip Hop. Honestly, I was a little too scared to venture off into unchartered territory when I already found a niche that I fit right in. I used to think that it was understandable because why bother learning new tricks when the ones I already got has given me enough props I thought I needed (which is wrong btw).

So years passed (with my mentality like that) until I met a DJ friend that went Salsa dancing. We always saw each other at jams and clubs where she spinned and every time we bumped into one another, she would invite me to hit up a salsa class with her. I always said I would think about it, but in the back of my mind I knew it was a resounding hell no! Aside from thinking how salsa was ballroom, I also couldn’t fathom a break dancer like myself getting jiggy with the old folks.

But after consistent prodding from my friend, I ended up going and actually having a great time. It turned out that the misconceptions I had about salsa were just that, misconceptions. I arrived at the place where the classes were held and saw people with ages that ranged from early 20’s to late 40’s of different nationalities just groovin’ to the music. I didn’t know that salsa appealed to that many people! Salsa classes became part of my weekly ritual and it was great. Not only did salsa boost my confidence but it also allowed me to experiment more with the genre I was already active in: Hip Hop.

Every time I feel like there’s a new kind of Hip Hop dance I want to learn, I now think to myself that if I could pull salsa off, what more with this? The expansion to my dance environment wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for salsa. I learned how to appreciate more the genre I belonged to, making me aware of the different dimensions I am capable of.

Bea spends her free time thinking of freestyle rap lyrics. Check out her latest post on the top 100 rap songs at HardKnockRadio.com.

Posted on

THE INFLUENCE OF SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE ON DANCE STUDIOS

 

Interesting article by Claudia La Rocco in the NY Times about the influence of SYTYCD on studios. (I missed SYTYCD this week; had really wanted to watch Thursday night but was at New York City Ballet all settled in my seat excitedly waiting for the premiere of Mauro Bigonzetti’s Luce Nascosta when I realized I’d forgotten to tape it).

Anyway, regarding this article: I have noticed in the last few Dance Times Square performance showcases that there have been several student / pro hip hop and lyrical routines (lyrical there meaning balletic modern, without shoes, like a contemporary routine on SYTYCD), which is odd given that it’s a ballroom / Latin studio. And the students are dancing with their same teachers, which means that ballroom / Latin specialists are teaching performance-level hip hop and modern dance. Perhaps in the future ballroom instructors will have to show fluency in more styles to get their jobs.

Broadway Dance Center (mentioned in the article), where I’ve taken ballet and jazz is an excellent studio by the way, if you’re in NY. So is Alvin Ailey extension, where I’ve taken Samba (Brazilian social / Carnival, not ballroom samba). They have everything at AA now, including Salsa and other ballroom dances, though I think they’re more geared toward social than competitive. But I think the attraction to Dance Times Square (aside from the fact the studio owners are now celebrities thanks to SYTYCD) is that they put on performances in real NY theaters, which gives students the chance to dance on a real stage. Alvin Ailey extension does too now; the students are performing in the theater inside AA studios, and Broadway Dance Center has its student showcases in the Martin Luther King Jr. High School auditorium, but it just feels different when it’s on a Broadway stage.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. But I do think dance styles are merging. You see more ballroom routines both in studios’ student showcases and on Dancing with the Stars that are looking lyrical these days, and more Latin routines that are looking very hip hop. And, as is mentioned in the article, some dance styles – like tap – are not visible on SYTYCD at all and are losing popularity in studios as well. I guess no one wants to bother learning an “unpopular” dance style… Nigel Lythgoe told La Rocco he didn’t think tap worked for the show because it’s so specific – it’s too hard to train general dancers in tap at such a level as to get performance-quality work out of them. Obviously it’s the same with ballet. It takes years, decades, to learn proper ballet technique, to even try going on pointe.

I really hope though that Lythgoe will continue trying to introduce general audiences to those styles not in competition on the show. Savion Glover and Jason Samuels Smith will sufficiently wow audiences (one of them has been on before, can’t remember which one), and all he has to do to make the masses swoon over ballet is to have Natalia Osipova on the show. I think the fun of ballroom and hip hop is in large part to learn them yourself, but the excitement of ballet is just watching.

Photo above of Mandy Moore and students by Stanley Kranitz, taken from the Times.

Posted on

DANCE BRAZIL!

 

(Late) reminder: DanceBrazil’s live webcast begins tonight (Sunday) at 6:45 EST. Go here for deets.

Alyssa and I saw them Friday night at the Skirball Center and Alyssa said it was they best dance event I’d ever invited her to 🙂 I greatly enjoyed it too. There were two pieces, Ritmo and Inura ( the second having its world premiere). Ritmo (from 2008, choreographed by company head Jelon Vieira) is what they’re live-casting tonight. I’d reviewed it earlier and liked it then, but they did something to improve it substantially. I loved it Friday night. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s so worth watching, believe me. It’s basically just a wonderful celebration of Brazilian dance — mainly capoeira, which is a martial arts dance originating in the 16th and 17th centuries by slaves and celebrates the slave’s ability to outsmart the master. Some may see capoeira as a bunch of “tricks” but I think that is a ballet or perhaps modern hip hop mentality (I say ballet because I think those critics are likening the astounding jumps, mid-air turns, and balances on one’s neck, to ballet’s barrel turns, huge jetes, bizillions of fouettes, etc). But the “tricks” here are not so much to wow the audience, but to celebrate the slave’s triumph, his ability to mentally and physically “out-trick” his captors. But there’s more — there’re also a few Samba sections :D, and some parts comprised of beautiful combination modern / Afro-Brazilian movement. In one section, a dancer does what I’ve heard in hip hop referred to as a caterpillar. But he does it so much more poetically than I’ve ever seen; his body gains such momentum on the repeated up and down moves, he begins to look like an ocean wave.

Inura, choreographed by Carlos Dos Santos Jr. which made its world premiere this season at Skirball (but is not being live-broadcast today), is a celebration of Exu, who, in Afro-Brazilian Yoruba tradition, the program notes state, is the messenger between the world of the people and that of the gods, and also the guardian of the energy that moves the universe. Inura is “the manifestation of the Exu energy that exists in each of us.” There are scenes of worship, of a goddess being exalted, raised high by a group of men, of a prince and princess flirting, then consummating their relationship, with a near-naked Yul Brynner-looking man sitting atop a mirror beside them, in various poses accentuating his skin, his musculature, in a kind of celebration of humanity, perhaps representing the human being they will create?

The movement in Inura is contemporary with of course a definite Afro-Brazilian bent. The company is comprised of four female dancers (at least ideally; Vieira has only two for now), four male dancers, and four capoeira artists and it’s interesting to see how he and the other choreographers who work with him use the capoeira artists in a contemporary dance. In one scene, there are several bodies supine on the ground, as if sleeping, and the capoeira men come out and dance over and around them — jumping over them, kicking out in all directions — as if they are protecting them in their sleep from either captors or evil spirits. One man does in back of the group what in hip hop would be termed a “flare” and it looks like as he’s spinning around down there, he’s just whipping all those evil spirits right away.

Afterward, there was a short question and answer session with the artists and one woman remarked how “the youth of today” — meaning, today’s young hip hop / break dancers, are using many of these same moves, totally unaware of their origins, thinking mistakenly that they’re creating them. It was exactly what I was thinking, and judging by all the nods and “um – hums!” was a thought shared by many in that auditorium. She continued, saying how sad it was that these young dancers don’t seem aware of this aspect of their roots — this African slave dance centuries old. So true. Perhaps dance elitists who trash hip hop and break-dancing don’t understand that either.

Posted on

LIVE BLOGGING DANCING WITH THE STARS SEASON EIGHT PREMIERE

Yay, tonight is here! I’m ridiculously excited, even though I wasn’t in love with last season. So, have decided to live blog. Upstairs Godzilla unfortunately just came home and is whacking her tail all about, crashing into walls, thundering down on my ceiling / her floor. She must be excited about the show too.

Oh well; I’ve turned on the closed-captioning.

Shawn Johnson trips on her way down the stairs during introductions. Doesn’t fall or anything. Kind of funny.

Continue reading “LIVE BLOGGING DANCING WITH THE STARS SEASON EIGHT PREMIERE”

Posted on

Blacks Acting "White" is Hilarious, But What Would the Reverse Be?

…and other questions I had after seeing Young Jean Lee‘s The Shipment, a very compelling off off-Broadway play about Black identity in America by a Korean-American playwright, starring an all-black cast.

 

Warning: if you’re in NY and you plan to see this, you may not want to read this yet!

I’d been really excited about seeing this play for a while and it definitely didn’t disappoint. Also made me think. A lot. And methinks this “review” may be all over the place because of those thoughts.

The play is divided into three sections, or acts. The first consists of a foul-mouthed Eddie Murphy-type stand-up comedian who says he’d love to spend all his time telling jokes about pooping (his very favorite subject of comedy) but is being forced to talk about race instead (because he’s black, because it unfortunately affects him as a black American). He remarks on some of the differences between whites and blacks: whites obsess about their weight throughout their lives, blacks — once they get married, forget about that shit. Occasionally, he’s confrontational but in a funny way, and, though I think he made many in the mostly white, mostly young, very liberal audience somewhat uncomfortable at points, everyone laughed. This was my least favorite section, mainly because I wish Lee would have been more specific at times and also because she overlooked class differences a bit. For example, the comedian says that whites love to accuse blacks of “whining,” but look at what whites whine about: “Ooh, I just don’t know what to dooo with my life!,” he says in falsetto, or “Ooh, am I too fat?!” It’s funny — because that’s exactly what a lot of whites do whine about — but upper-middle-class whites. Believe me, poor whites are not worried about how they look; they’re worried about putting food on the table, about how far they can stretch their next paycheck. Just visit any small working-class town in the south or the mid-west.

But also, I don’t really know what whites accuse blacks of whining about. Historical oppression? The disproportionate rates of incarceration? Racial targeting by the police? I’ve never heard any whites accuse blacks of whining about any of these things. Most whites don’t even want to think about those things.

Continue reading “Blacks Acting "White" is Hilarious, But What Would the Reverse Be?”

Posted on

Favorites of 2008

Okay, here’s my (late) list of favorites from 2008: (click on highlights to read what I wrote about each dance)

Favorite overall dance of the year:

Revelations by Alvin Ailey. Because the movement language — a unique blend of American Modern with African — is highly evocative, richly varied, and, because it’s set in a specific time and place recognizable to most if not all of us, it’s imbued with meaning and feeling accessible to everyone. And because it speaks to the human condition like no other dance I’ve ever seen. I’m still looking for something to top this and don’t know if I’ll ever find it.

 

Favorite new dances:

1) Nimrod Freed’s PeepDance in Central Park;

 

Continue reading “Favorites of 2008”