Styles of Hip Hop Dance

1. B-boying or breaking
It is a form of street dancing style popularized by Michael Jackson. It consists of four
elements: toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes/suicides. Break dancing is
gymnastics with a groove which calls for strength, skill, balance and technique amongst
other things. Cartwheels, head spins, splits, jumps, energetic tumbling moves like the
windmill, the turtle, and the flare are few moves incorporated with this dance. A practitioner
of this dance is called a b-boy, b-girl, or breaker.
2. Crip-walking
Crip-walking was popularized by the infamous rivalry between the Bloods and Crips gangs.
Crips members are known to execute this move after killing a rival, thus capping off the kill
with their signature. Nowadays, crip-walking has gone beyond its violent origins and is now
often part of every hip hop dancers repertoire of moves. Snoop Dogg and Xzibit are known
to have shown these in their songs music videos, Drop It Like Its Hot and Get Your Walk
On, respectively.
3. Locking
Locking is characterized by sudden pauses or freezes of the entire body while performing
moves, then resumes motion after a short hesitation that lasts about 1 second. Originating
way back into 1969 as popularized by Campbellock Campbell and his crew, The Lockers,
locking has endured transitions from its funky origins into a common hip hop dance idiom.
Some of its most popular move is the Scoo B Doo, Muscleman, Floor Sweep, Funky
Guitar, and a lot of others.
4. Popping
It is often done standing up, in which the body is twitched or jerked in a way that goes with
the beat. These twitches are called pops or hits. It involves contraction of particular
muscles, then quickly relaxing them. This produces the illusion of a pop --- or snap --- that
the dancer can move around his body.. Popping involves a great deal of motion manipulation
such as animatronic moves (think of the Jabbawokeez, etc), miming to the beat, and
isolation (creating illusions that isolate a limb or a section of the body).
5. Electric Boogaloo
Closely connected to popping, boogaloo is related to funk and its associated dance styles.
Its often involves rolling of the limbs and twitching legs.
6. Floating
Floating emphasizes slick floating movements that give the impression that the dancer is
dancing in the air. Its three basic moves are the float, gliding, and sliding. All three moves
are focused on creating the illusion that there is no friction between the dancers shoes and
the floor.
7. Turfing
An acronym for Taking Up Room on the Floor, turfing is a dance style hailing directly from
Oakland, California. It is much based on non-traditional ways of storytelling or representing
a particular turf or place which a particular performer seeks to represent. Turfing is very
improvisational and free-form, having dance moves that come from different traditions in
order to fully express or narrate a particular life story.
8. Robot/Mannequin
Robotting is pretty much similar to popping, but still many dancers use robot dance moves
as their primary style. Robot dance is simply acting like a robot and doing stiff arm and
head movements that often contrast with smooth flow of the music.
9. Liquids and digits
Liquid dancing is oriented more towards dance hip hop and more laidback settings such as
in glitch hop and drum n bass. It often involves smooth, liquid-ish hand movements called
hand flows, and digital manipulation, creating illusions and movements with the fingers. The
performers body is used as a contour to express a feeling or a series of interpretative

gestures. Liquids and digits, like turfing, is pantomime-like in nature, often involved in
telling a story and creating a visual representation of the music.
10. Jerkin
Jerkin involves twitchy dance moves called jerks wherein the performer executes a set of
leg stretches in and out.
11. Harlem shake
The Harlem Shake has no strict code of dance moves as it only involves creative convulsions
of the body. It gained popularity because of a viral Youtube video called Harlem Shake.
The shakes origins are said to be from an East African dance called Eskista, but dancers
most often compare the Harlem Shake to drunken dance.
12. Krumping
Krumping is increasingly gaining popularity in hip hop and electronica circles because of the
energy and freedom it encourages. It has four basic moves: jabs, arm swings, chest pops,
and stomps, or, if you look at it in a simpler way, basically anything you wanted to do with
your body. It is very improvisational and expressive, at times even violently so, thus gaining
popularity among younger performer.
13. The Wave
A basic dance in hip-hop is the wave, which is very similar to popping, in that the illusion of
a "wave" can travel up a dancer's arms, legs or through his entire body. The wave is a dance
style considered to fall under the general term of popping. The basic difference between
popping and waving is that, while in popping, the dancer employs ticking-type moves, these
movements are replaced in the wave by moves that are almost totally relaxed, and rolling.