Street Dance

A street dance is a dance styleregardless of country of originthat evolved outside dance

studios in any available open space such as streets, dance parties, block parties, parks, school
yards, raves, and nightclubs. The term is used to describe vernacular dances in urban
context. Vernacular dances are often improvisational and social in nature, encouraging interaction
and contact with spectators and other dancers. These dances are a part of the vernacular culture of
the geographical area that they come from. Examples of street dance include b-boying
(or breakdancing), which originated in New York City.
Clogging is thought to be considered a very early form of street dance, since it evolved in the streets
and factories of northern England in the mid-19th century
Street dance, also informally referred to as street, is an umbrella term which encompasses a
range of dance styles characterised by descriptions such as hip hop, funk and breakdancing. Its
eclectic nature has spawned a whole new street dancelexicon, including terms such as popping,
locking, waving and krumping

Street Dance Genres

There are many different genres of street dance. It is often divided into old school and new school,
with 1984 as the dividing year (due to technological effects on the world's cities and youth cultures).
In the old school section, there are categories like tap, locking, popping, and break dancing. In new
school, there is hip hop, house, and techno. There are lots of famous dance moves such as:

Old school

Tap dance - Invented by the Irish and African-Americans in the early 19th century, tap is
considerably one of the first 'street dances' to take form, whereby the term 'street dance' was
used to describe the opposition to the 'folk dance' and 'tribal dance style movements of earlier
vernacular dances. There is also swing and traditional Jazz dances that are street dance (as
opposed to modern dance).
Locking - It was first made in 1970 by funk dancers in various clubs, with one of the first dancers
being Don Campbell (who supposedly invented the 'lock' that the whole locking dance is now
named after). It was very popular in the 1970s and the dance itself is known to be relatively
comic and lively. Basic moves include the up lock, down lock, wrist rolls, points, and hand claps.
Similarly, the Hustle evolved out of disco, but a lot of Hustle moves come under the Locking
category.
Popping - Originating from the west coast of the United States of America, popping involves
sudden freezes of the muscles to maximize the moves. It uses this basic principle, and mixes it
with styles such as waving, ticking and the puppet. It is not known what persons specifically
invented the dance style, however, there is some history on the robot dance that it is thought to
have evolved from.
Breakdancing - It began in the early 70s, when DJ Kool Herc first used breaking beats. Hip hop
music was originally based on applying looped breakbeats over disco music records at a block
party. Dancers began to apply new dances to this new form of music style, which, after the
breakbeats, became known as 'breakdancing'. The dance has floorwork similar to
the British northern soul and the loft dance. Break dancers are called b-boys and b-girls,
respectively of their gender. The dance includes two types of steps: power moves and style
moves. Power moves include the windmill and headspin, while style moves include the freezes
and footwork. Newer forms evolved from breakdancing, such as uprock and toprock, which are
danced upright, especially before entering the actual downrock (or floorwork).
 Hip Hop - As one of the most famous street dance genres, there are many theories on how hip
hop actually started. Since Hip Hop is a culture beyond dancing that includes art, music, poetry
and fashion, it is even harder to define when hip hop dancing actually started. Along with the
mindset of street dance, there are no rules to hip hop, and Freestyle Hip Hop is very famous as
well. Hip hop when named as a dance genre refers to mainly the commercialised forms of
Breakdance, Locking and popping that is popular also in pop and club dance culture. Nowadays,
hip hop dance culture involves massively collecting fellow dancers into crews for competitions,
which theoretically, helps prevents physical violence between gangs since such people perform
dance battles instead of actual fights for territory. The music genres gangsta rap and nu soul
(contemporary R&B) often depict the everyday violence in urban and suburban culture, with hip
hop aiding (especially youths) by providing a constructive thing to do as a hobby between
work/school.
House - Born in Chicago, it began to become popular in clubs in New York in the beginning of
the 80s. It was first influenced by dances like jacking and lofting. Later, steps from various
genres like hip hop were mixed into it. Lastly, the style was completed with a hopping feel to the
moves, making the dance highly energetic and expressive as house music became more
upbeat. Basic steps of house include the sidewalk, happy feet, scribble feet, and skating. One
popular form of house dance is 'waacking'. Waacking (or punking) is known to be first danced by
mainly just gays, and was officially introduced to the mainstream by Tyrone Proctorm. From the
1980s, it began to mix with other genres, and now it is often mixed in with girls hip-hop and
tecktonik.
Techno - During the early 80s, industrial and synthpop music started to influence the sound of
hip hop and house greatly by the use of European electronic music sounds reflecting the fact the
urban world was slowly becoming more and more technologically based. One of the first of the
electronic dances was the electric boogaloo (depicted in breakin 2: electric noogaloo), which is
highly based on breakdancing being applied to electro rhythms. Techno dance became popular
from the appliance of new street dances to electro music, as electro music steadily moved away
from its parent 'hip hop culture' to initialise rave and modern nightclub culture. Nowadays Europe
has taken on street dance culture in the form of house and techno dance. Although techno
refers to most electronic dance genres, it also can refer to the Detroit techno dance styles and
music genre which never became that popular. In Australia, dance parties saw the birth of the
Melbourne shuffle (based off hip hop, house, tap, Malaysian folk dance, etc.), and Europe has
invented its own dances such as hakken, candy walk, jumpstyle, etc. Techno dance in its
modern form makes competition redundant and is usually opposed to battling and caters
dancing for the feel of the music, instead (alike early locking).