Hip Hop
Boom, clap, (pause), boom, boom, clap. The crowd goes ballistic while watching two young men battling at a Hip Hop dance competition. The man on the left goes first. As he stares down at his opponent he quickly walks in a circle to make enough room for him to dance. He instantly picks up his pace to retrieve enough energy to go straight into a power move. He starts off lifting his whole body with his hands and swinging his legs in circles. After about seven rounds he jumps up then quickly shuffles his feet. He then comes to an abrupt stop ending with a pose, waiting for his opponent. The guy on the right retaliates by copying the same shuffle but adding his own techniques; instead of doing it smoothly the way the break dancer did, he quickly contracts and relaxes his muscle to create a jerking effect and pops his chest along with the beat. The breaker then backs away and a small yet muscular African American man steps in. As the music smoothly transitions to a more aggressive beat, he expresses his emotion by popping his chest also but faster, hitting the beats harder, and at the same time swinging his arms savagely. They silently wait for the judges to announce who the winner is, but unfortunately the judges announce that they just could not decide. When these type of street dances — break dancing, popping and krumping — are battling against one another, it is difficult to determine which is better since each style is so different. Each Hip Hop dancer — break dancer, popper and krumper — has different techniques, styles and music, but these types of Hip Hop dances also have plenty of similarities that connect them together as well.
Break dancing, commonly known as breaking or b-boying, is a type of street dance that derived from a Hip Hop movement that occurred in the South Bronx of New York around 1969. It is believed that a man by the name of James Brown was the one who triggered this Hip Hop movement (Cheng 24). After Brown’s hit T.V show,...
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