You know there are girls dancing now who weren't even born in 81
Lincoln Center Out of Doors, in cooperation with powerHouse Books, bgirlz.com, and City Lore are pleased to announce
WE B*GIRLZ
A 25th Anniversary Breakin’ Event
at Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Thursday, August 10, 2006
5:30–6:40 p.m.
Josie Robertson Plaza
Lincoln Center, New York City
This event is free and open to the public
For more information, please call 212-LINCOLN
In the beginning, there was the break, that moment in a song when all of the musical instruments drop out, and the drums take over. Nothing but groove. And, while high-stakes competitive dance can be found throughout the African Diaspora, it was the break that brought it to the surface in the United States.
In the late sixties, when Brooklyn teens combined Latin and African-American dance styles with a confrontational attitude and a few insulting gestures to create the first modern battle dance of New York City, they saved their most vicious moves for the break. They rocked the break and called it Uprocking.
In the seventies, when kids began throwing rebel street parties in the Bronx, people from different neighborhoods came together for the first time since the gangs had taken over. There was one thing they all agreed on: the break was their time to shine. In fact, it was so important that DJ Kool Herc even began to play two copies of the same record, repeating the break over and over again, giving the dancers more time to showcase their most devastating moves. Before long, Herc and other pioneering deejays like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were playing nothing but breaks. And the dancers responded by creating a new dance form that was nothing but devastating moves: b-boying. Some even began dropping to the ground and spinning around. Hip-Hop music and b-boying were born as twins, and their mother was the break.
Meanwhile, in Central and Southern California, dancers were creating styles that suited their own culture and music. Locking was an upbeat, crowd-pleasing dance style and Popping was its suave, sophisticated cousin, a dance that punctuated smooth flows with crisp muscle contractions. By the late seventies these established West Coast dance forms, know collectively as “Funk Styles”, had arrived in New York to influence the rich culture of street dance that already existed here.
It was this combined dance culture that was presented to the general public for the first time twenty-five years ago at the 1981 Lincoln Center Out of Doors event organized by Henry Chalfant. Little did anyone know that over the next quarter century this underground art would become a billion-dollar industry, and competitive hip-hop dance would continue to evolve as a new generation learns and develops the art.
—Text courtesy of Joe Schloss, Ph.D.
WE B*GIRLZ
A 25th Anniversary Breakin’ Event
at Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Thursday, August 10, 2006
5:30–6:40 p.m.
Josie Robertson Plaza
Lincoln Center, New York City
This event is free and open to the public
For more information, please call 212-LINCOLN
In the beginning, there was the break, that moment in a song when all of the musical instruments drop out, and the drums take over. Nothing but groove. And, while high-stakes competitive dance can be found throughout the African Diaspora, it was the break that brought it to the surface in the United States.
In the late sixties, when Brooklyn teens combined Latin and African-American dance styles with a confrontational attitude and a few insulting gestures to create the first modern battle dance of New York City, they saved their most vicious moves for the break. They rocked the break and called it Uprocking.
In the seventies, when kids began throwing rebel street parties in the Bronx, people from different neighborhoods came together for the first time since the gangs had taken over. There was one thing they all agreed on: the break was their time to shine. In fact, it was so important that DJ Kool Herc even began to play two copies of the same record, repeating the break over and over again, giving the dancers more time to showcase their most devastating moves. Before long, Herc and other pioneering deejays like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were playing nothing but breaks. And the dancers responded by creating a new dance form that was nothing but devastating moves: b-boying. Some even began dropping to the ground and spinning around. Hip-Hop music and b-boying were born as twins, and their mother was the break.
Meanwhile, in Central and Southern California, dancers were creating styles that suited their own culture and music. Locking was an upbeat, crowd-pleasing dance style and Popping was its suave, sophisticated cousin, a dance that punctuated smooth flows with crisp muscle contractions. By the late seventies these established West Coast dance forms, know collectively as “Funk Styles”, had arrived in New York to influence the rich culture of street dance that already existed here.
It was this combined dance culture that was presented to the general public for the first time twenty-five years ago at the 1981 Lincoln Center Out of Doors event organized by Henry Chalfant. Little did anyone know that over the next quarter century this underground art would become a billion-dollar industry, and competitive hip-hop dance would continue to evolve as a new generation learns and develops the art.
—Text courtesy of Joe Schloss, Ph.D.
posted by powerHouse Books at 10:48 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home