Latest / Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast / Hip-Hop: The Foundation and Fundamentals

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Hip-Hop: The Foundation and Fundamentals · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the table at a dance competition?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly what are the judges looking for anyway?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is Making the Impact, a Dance Competition Podcast.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Each week, we'll cover a different topic related to the world of competitive dance from the perspective of the judges behind the table.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hip-hop culture is a lifestyle encompassing music, style, attitude, and movement.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Its rich and storied history is well known to those in the culture, but often gets lost when hip-hop dance is taught in the studio world.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: On today's episode of Making the Impact, a Dance Competition podcast, we explore a brief history of hip-hop with two experts in the art form and discuss what judges really want to see from a hip-hop routine at competition.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Making the Impact.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Courtney Ortiz, and I'm here with my co-host Leslie Mueller.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: Hi, dance lovers.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: We are so, so, so, so excited for today's episode because we are talking about all things hip-hop and hip-hop dance from the very beginning to what goes down in the competition world when we talk about that hip-hop category.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_04: And we've been waiting for such a long time to have this discussion.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: We've also been hearing from our listeners about needing a hip-hop episode, so here we are, we're ready for it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: And we've also just been waiting to find the perfect guests for this episode, and I think we definitely have found them.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I can't wait to introduce them to you all very soon.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: But before we jump into this wonderful discussion all about hip-hop, I want to let you know about a few things happening in the world of IDA, and I'm sure you've heard us talk about it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: But IDA's virtual competition has just wrapped up our March competition.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: Our top 20 live stream challenge is going live this upcoming Sunday, March 28th.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: And there's some fabulous talent.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_04: So you can definitely check it out on our website at ImpactDanceadjudicators.com slash the top twenty challenge if you want to watch that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: And if you missed this one, don't worry because there's more coming soon.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: So definitely head over to our website to learn more and find out how you can register for our many virtual competition event that's also solo and groups.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've gotten so much great feedback about our virtual comps.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: We have been running these since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we are just on a roll.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: We're kind of on our year anniversary of uh producing, yeah, of producing these events.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: So go us.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: But we've also had so much feedback from participants from people around the world who have just been so grateful that this was an option.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: So we wanted to share a review from studio owner and dance mom, Tiffany Turchie, whose daughter entered one of our 2020 events.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: She said, I just wanted to say thank you so much for the amazing feedback.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: In all of our years of competing and listening to critiques, this is the most comprehensive and honest we have received.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: The extra time, slow motion, playback, and corrections were everything.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter self-choreographed this dance on herself and has been looking for exactly these types of tips and corrections, which I hope will give her the extra confidence needed to really shine whenever it is that she gets to compete again, hopefully sooner rather than later.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we've fingers crossed for you, Tiffany and your daughter, that y'all are back at live events right now.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much, Tiffany, for your great feedback.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: We are more than happy to be here and provide these amazing critiques from these great judges for you.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and truly thank you to every contestant that supported us with our virtual competition throughout the past year and helping employ judges remotely.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so many of us have had this competition world taken away from us for the past year.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of judges who are still unable to go to those live events in season for different reasons.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_04: And um, being able to provide like a remote way, new world of judging in a remote way is just really, really cool.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: I love it so much.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_04: So thank you to every single person that's participated.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: All right, and if you've been with us since the start of season one, actually, we've had lots and lots of sponsors throughout our time on the podcast.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: And like I always said, we can't do it without them because they really help provide what we need to be able to bring this to your ear pods.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_04: So we love our sponsors, and first up is one of our favorites level up dance supplies.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: The competition season is in full swing, and if you still need some last minute gear, head over to Level Up Dance Supplies because they have you covered.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_04: They were established in 2010 by a dance mom, and their goal is to be your one-stop shop for all of your dance gear and accessory needs.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: From privacy tents to rolling rack travel bags and duffel bags, Level Up is sure to have what you need at a price you can afford.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_04: Head over to LevelUpdanceupplies.com to view all of their products and gear and use our promo code Bravo5678 at checkout for ten dollars off your order.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_04: So, listeners, it is time to meet our spectacular hip-hop guests that we have here today joining us.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm really excited to welcome our first guest.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_04: He is a very close friend of mine.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_04: I've known him for a very long time.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: We go way back doing a show in Atlantic City together.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: That's where we've met.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: And he's since then become a huge superstar in the Broadway world.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure you know one of the shows that he may have been in.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's called Hamilton.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_04: He's gonna tell you more about himself very soon.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: But I'd love to welcome my dear friend and IDA judge, Voltaire Wade Green, to the podcast.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome, Voltaire.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, hello, and thank you for having me.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, of course.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for squeezing us into your busy schedule and joining us for this discussion.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: I I can't wait to have you on the podcast.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: And it's been a while since I've seen you, so I know.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy to see you via this.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And before that, it's been at least a few years.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm happy to be here and I'm super excited.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I don't bring your show down.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna try to be mindful of that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: You are only going to elevate our shows.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Never fear.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Leslie, I need you in my corner every day.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: All the time.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: I love you.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: Awesome.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Voltaire, can you please share with all of our listeners out there a little bit about you, who you are, where you're based, where you grew up, and any career career credits or credits that you'd like to share on what you're working on?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, I'm Voltaire.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm originally from California, um, Bakersfield, California.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I got a full scholarship to a ballet program when I was 15, and I moved by myself to Philadelphia to pursue ballet.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to University of the Arts after I graduated, and that is where I met my best friend and how I fell in love with hip-hop.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I hopped around quite a bit for a few years, and then I landed in New York, where I got to meet you and do that great, awesome gig uh at in Atlantic City.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I am an OG Hamcast member.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh the original Dance Captain on Broadway with Morgan.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: We were co-dance captains for that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Currently, I am the director of programming and teaching for a nonprofit organization called Dance Recast.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We provide resources and opportunities and free classes to specific.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's open to everyone, but specifically BIPOC dancers in the dance community because we're trying to rewrite the narrative that there aren't enough folks to be on stage for representation.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are giving resources to change that narrative so that casting directors are like, oh no, we have more than enough uh resources to fill our stage with different looking folks than what we normally see every day.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's a much more eloquent way of putting that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also recording an EP and an album.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've been producing uh this entire pandemic, so I've been doing some online courses to do that.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And currently binge watching the magicians and trying not to overeat.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's been part of the daily struggle.
• 7:56
  unknown: Right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Goals.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Voltaire, awesome.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: You're you're so wonderful and spectacular, and excited to chat with you today.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_04: So thanks for joining us.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: So happy to be here.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: All right, and our next guest is a new guest to the podcast.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: I actually personally don't know this guest.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm meeting him for the first time, but I feel like I've gotten to know him a bunch through Facebook and some of those lovely dance forums that we're all in together.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: And uh he is a wonderful hip hop dance educator, and his name is John Comics Barella.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the podcast.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you very much.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very, very excited to be here.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to talk to you guys today.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: We're excited to have you and sharing all of your knowledge on hip hop as as such a big influence and educator for that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: I know you also offer a lot of courses, which I hope please feel free to share that as well.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_04: But in your intro, tell us a little bit about you, where you're based, what any career credits you want to share, what you're working on, and any projects that you have.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I mean, I you know I've been dancing forever.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've been dancing since I don't know, um, I was young.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I never got to go to a dance studio.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I never did that.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I just I had a love and a passion for dance.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had a pretty rough childhood.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one that kind of like forced me to really, really concentrate on you know what made me feel strong, what made me feel powerful.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt the most me when I was listening to music, Michael Jackson in particular.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, like I felt more me and more powerful than ever when I was listening to music.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think what happened was, you know, as I became a teenager, as things got crazier and crazier, it made me more uh stubborn about wanting life to be what I wanted it to be.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I really started to focus on dancing.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up auditioning for Performing Arts High School, and uh I got in, you know, and I was able to do that as a hip-hop dancer, just kind of the light things that I knew about hip-hop then.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I spent my next four years in high school and continuing college learning ballet and modern.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that was actually my uh that was actually my focus.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it but it was it was great because being learning dance in that kind of setting forced me to learn about the you know dance history and technique and choreography composition and improv and all the importance of like an academic-based uh dance approach.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So once I was ready to like go full in with hip-hop, I joined a company after high school, I had a completely different view of what to do with with my hip-hop.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that was kind of my background when I was a kid.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as I got older, I I continued to focus more and more on hip-hop.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I uh still an active performer.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I'm I'm the director and owner of a professional dance company, the Redef Movement, which uh is pretty much all of my focus these days, especially since the pandemic.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, almost a year ago when everything kind of shut down, I rerouted my focus to just what we do.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my company splits its time about evenly between doing street dance type performances and comedy dance performances.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we do this whole comedy thing called Stupid Humans, which is just like a whole like ridiculous take on a dance performance.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: We like make very purposeful mistakes, we pull people out of the audience.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: People like show up late in the middle of a dance, like we just do the most ridiculous audience interaction stuff possible.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So since the pandemic started and we couldn't do live performances, I knew I wanted to keep my dancers busy.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So my big project this year has been, you know, for uh almost 12 months now, I've just been studying, studying, studying film.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I just invested in a ton of film equipment, started like taking classes, learning things, and now I film all my pieces for like professional dance videos.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, we were talking about the dance networks.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I run the Dance World Network on Facebook, which is one of the dance communities that's a lot of fun to do.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting to moderate that kind of thing.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been that was a fun thing to make rules for and do all that stuff.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but yeah, so I mean, you know, a lot of my work these days, especially uh with my company, is on comedy dance, street dance, uh doing it for film, putting things on stage.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh performances we've done have ranged from choreography showcases in New York or Philly to TED Talks, to uh showcases that are more modern-based, more hip-hop-based.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've done Battle of the Boroughs, New York City Breakers event, and that was a lot of fun to do.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've done just so many different kinds of things, and that's kind of what I try to push with what I do is I want to make sure that you know we basically exist in three realms, which is we want to make sure that the hip-hop community appreciates and respects what we do, and want to make sure they know that we're respecting the work that is put out before.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure the professional dance community can understand it and appreciate it and want to invite it in, and we want to make sure that the general public can genuinely enjoy it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of like my mission statement.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you, John.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_04: And we're super happy to have you both and to all of our listeners.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_04: We're definitely going to link in the show notes to both of our guests' projects and the things that they're working on so you can learn more about that there and click the links to learn more.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: All right, guys, let's jump right on in because we have so much to talk about.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to hear, just to kind of dip our toes into the water at first here.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: What is a working, living definition of hip-hop?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't think hip-hop is something that is stagnant.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, hip-hop just like pop, just like jazz dance evolves with the culture and with the pop culture of the time.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: So can you give me a working definition of what hip-hop is?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Voltaire, you want to take it first?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let you, you know, all right.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the the concept of a working definition of hip-hop is kind of tough to to to kind of pin down because there are many different ways people interpret it.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even people who there are multiple people who have taught me who I respect who have given me conflicting information on what they would consider hip-hop.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the nature of it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the beauty of it, and that's also what makes it a little difficult sometimes when it transfers into uh an educational setting, because when we want this like rock solid information, different communities do it different ways.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's always kind of debate over what it really is.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when I describe hip-hop to people, I really consider it, I call it the the bigger picture.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I if I teach a hip-hop class, if I say, if I ask somebody uh, you know, if they want to do work or hire me to do uh do a job as as a guest, for example, in a dance studio, I'll label it as hip-hop, but I correct that when I get into the room.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's gonna be a popping class, I'm gonna teach popping.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm gonna teach breaking or locking.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so many different ways that we can divide it up.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And some people would call it like subcategories, and some people wouldn't.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the truth is hip-hop culture is what it is, and it kind of has adopted certain genres of dance into it, and it's also had its own thing that's evolved over time.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with hip-hop evolving is that the real question comes down to which way, which version of evolution is actually hip-hop.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can look at the way it evolved to through the public eye, which kind of borrows from all these other genres and becomes much less hip-hop, and then there's the version that you can still go to at an event like what I was talking about, like Battle of the Burrows.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you go there and you see just the most straightforward, real hip-hop that you can imagine, you know, untouched by the outside world.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, you know, when you're talking about in a dance studio, hip-hop is is an exploration of that world.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's an exploration of that entire culture.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: From the music to the to the clothes, to all the different elements of hip-hop.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's all important.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think at its best, hip-hop as defined in a dance studio should explore that entire culture, much like uh the way you would explore modern or ballet or anything else.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is a history, there are pioneers, there's there's uh there's a there's a lot more to it than choreography.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for uh like I'm just gonna piggyback on that.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think I like for me personally, it's just like the culture of it, you know, whether like and someone else has said it uh earlier, respect.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I always feel like it comes down to a mutual respect, whether it's two MCs battling, DJs going at it, graffiti artists like bombing.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just I feel like hip hop as a culture, it like in the complete form of it, like is the definition, and because of different cultures and it getting out, even though it is extremely underground.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you can say it's mainstream, but I feel like the flashy things become mainstream where it's like whether it's power moves or it's like ISOs and waving and popping, like you do have all these subcategories under like the dance element, but I do think in general, the reason why there's so many different interpretations is because there is a bit of identity that people like find in hip hop, and then you have the folks who are making money off of hip-hop who are diluting the definition of things and like exploiting it in certain ways.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, but that's just my little bit.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I just I just think it's like the culture and like the respect factor of of hip-hop and like the beginning and where folks are taking it to.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I mean that kind of that's what kind of happens to hip-hop is that like if you if you define anything, like if I was gonna, you know, define my office right now, you could define it by the paint on the walls or the stuff on my shelves or the person in the room.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But each of those definitions takes it in its own way.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you say, you know, I want to continue creating offices like John's office, you could be talking about the color, you can be talking about the decorations, you could be talking about the the layout.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what kind of happens with hip-hop, is that people, especially those who, you know, like you said, try to make money off of it, they focus on this one thing and they say this is hip-hop.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think what what happens most frequently, and I think kind of a problem with it, is that the youth always feel that without even being involved in this culture, that they own hip-hop because they own, you know, the youth own the social world.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they own that aspect of hip-hop, but the social world that created hip-hop in the first place is nothing like the social world now.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the mistake that's made is they feel ownership because they're like, well, hip-hop is now, and that's not really the case.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole history to it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: I also feel like it's evident too uh when you see someone who knows the beginnings and like researches compared to someone who like jumps onto the ownership and like you can see the foundation isn't quite the same from like at least at least like dancer to dancer.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I feel like it it it becomes evident because you have this person who might not have a strong foundation, but they're innovative, and the ownership over that, like their def like their idea of hip hop sometimes can be skewed because again, it's that it's that the identific, like the identifying with it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like everyone identifies with hip-hop in some way, shape, or form.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then it's like, did you do the research?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Were you taught by an old head, or did you just jump on and like you identify with this and now this is what it is for you?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's tricky.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very tricky.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so so speaking of history, because you both brought that up, I'd I'd love to kind of educate a little bit from you because y'all are the experts in in this genre.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: A little bit of history of hip hop and where it came from.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_04: Who are some of the the people that kind of an originated it in the dance world or some of the founders of hip hop that you would you would like to, you know, who you've studied, who you've learned from, maybe one of their like proteges that you've learned from, um, anything like that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_04: Just kind of give us a little bit of a history.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: And like we're talking cliffs notes because this is like yes years and years and years and years and years of history.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like just a tiny bit so people can like jump off.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_04: Summary of some history on the hip hop genre.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, do you want to take it from like the Bronx's burning?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe, maybe pre-let.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so like what w was it the eighty the six no seventies, seventies was when even beforehand, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's been a natural thing.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean, basically what was happening was you had a lot of landlords paying either neighborhood kids a couple hundred bucks to burn down their building, or some landlords were just like cutting off the heat and stuff and like collecting the insurance off of these.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh uh like the insurance off of like the destruction of their property, and basically just tearing down the Bronx.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then you also had all of these gangs that were formed, I guess, out of protection and what have you.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I get it just got to a point where they were tired of killing each other.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't remember who it was between, but they had a meeting at a local Y because a peacekeeper was killed, like trying trying to like stop the whole thing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And out of that meeting, DJ I I don't think DJ Coolhark was there, and I'm probably butchering this.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, John, I would appreciate if you had that way.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, go ahead.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll do when you do it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: But but basically, like these kids were were were done killing each other, you know, and it wasn't even like New York was trying to help these folks in the Bronx, like they were just sending news reporters and cameras.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that was evident of the situation, too, was that you have all this violence, and then finally this peacekeeper who was actually like, and I can't remember his name, and I'm so sorry.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Please don't murder me, hip hop world.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he was murdered, and that was when these folks decided to come together and like call for a truce.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And out of that, um, there was this Jamaican DJ named DJ Cool Herc who started throwing block parties.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what ended up happening was he found that during the breaks in songs, like like like the drum sections and the breakdowns, the kids would get down on the floor and just like start throwing down.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then it became from like it moved from like instant violence to like your moves against my moves, and then groups then started forming, and then you know, each crew had like an ace that they would throw out, and like it was their best person from their hood versus your best person in their hood, and it all came down to just like respect.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm butchering this so badly.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: All the post-production on this is you know, like Well, there's there's an excellent documentary on Netflix, and I I will link to it and we can redo this again to talk about what it actually is.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you you're you're hitting all the points that at least I know just from that one documentary on hip hop.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like these names you're spitting out.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, yes, I remember that from the documentary.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's places to go where you could learn these things also.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the uh the documentary, I think the documentary, if you really want to understand hip-hop, is the freshest kids.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, what a throwback.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I believe the entirety of it is on YouTube.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's awesome.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: So many lessons.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really cool thing.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of my early days of like real hip-hop lessons.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to, you know, I I loved hip hop way before I I understood hip hop.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And once I understood hip hop, I felt guilty doing it without understanding it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I used to, you know, before I took over teaching full time, before before dancing became my full time job, we're talking like I was like 18, 19 years old.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was working at an oil refinery, and I you know, these days, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Internet was so different back then.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I would at home in the morning, I'd have to be at the refinery at 7 30 in the morning, and I'd go online and I'd print out pages from like whatever I was reading online and I'd stick it in my pocket and I'd be out in the field just in my cover rolls pulling out paper, just really obsessing over it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but I mean yeah, no, I mean Voltaire hit those right points.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's you know, hip hop.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's important about that story, you know, the end of that story is the is is the birth of hip-hop.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: But what's before that is so important, and I tell my dancers that all the time.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: What comes right before, like, you know, if you're at a party and you come out there and you start and you and one of you comes out and does something brand new.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: The point is people were dancing right before that too.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: What happened right before matters so much.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, what was the world they were living in?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: What really created the need to do what they were doing?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, DJ Cool Herc, you know, this concept of taking these beats.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I like to use the amen uh break beat a lot uh in my examples when I do this for teachers because the amen break beat, I don't know it's like seven seconds long.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you hear the song and I'll always do it the same way.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'll play the middle of the song, I'll say, listen to it.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't sound like a hip-hop song, right?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll go to this one part where it's just like do dot do dot do that dun dot, and then it's over.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the concept of looping that so people would continue it, I mean, it just literally it like branched off into this whole other world of movement because now you have people, like he said, like, you know, coming out in the circle, showing off doing these things, and then somebody else is adding on, and somebody else is adding on, and it's a conversation.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I kind of teach my classes as well.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I have my dancers learning about how to battle or how to freestyle, I tell them don't try to one-up each other.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get out of this like show off I need to be perfect mode.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just have a conversation with each other.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: If that person does a six-step, you do a six-step a little different, and then you and then you take an element of that, and it's like that back and forth.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of like the natural progression of hip-hop.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And just to put it into perspective, when DJ Cool Herc had that party and he first started doing that, you know, there's like an official birth date of hip-hop.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and when DJ Cool Herc had that party, they didn't say, This is hip-hop.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I believe the term hip-hop, the the concept of hip-hop was there a lot longer before the word hip-hop was ever being used.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very organic, you know.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's interesting is that once you start looking at the idea of like B-boys and MCs and DJs and graffiti and all these ideas coming together to create hip-hop culture, there's a reason something like popping or locking would get pulled in and hang out in the same world, you know, and it and it and it really has to do with like a very specific response from a very specific kind of community.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's really important about hip-hop is is the is the community response, the the powerful and the expressive and the demand to be seen type of community response to uh to to struggle.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what connected me to it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I think is so important about hip-hop that I'm very stubborn about making sure my students know that because the history of it demands that rather than just like flash all the time.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_04: So important.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_04: And we've talked about exactly that on other episodes as well, as far as just the history of each genre that we're dancing, and trying to incorporate that and learn.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, it's uh it's always so hard to to get that into, especially competitive dance, recreational dance.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's hard to have like a a dance history lesson, but I for who was it?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_04: I can't remember the guests.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like I I want to say Michelle Tolson when we were doing maybe a tap episode, and she was like, Every time I teach this step, I say who it came from.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, that's just an easy way to start incorporating the history behind some of these, you know, who founded this and to our students, because let's be real, like we don't have time for a dance history class at the studio, probably, and most likely even with hip hop, the issue is is that it's probably an elective for a lot of dance studios.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: So majority of the dancers may not even be taking it.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_04: And if if anything, they might just do a competition dance and think that they know enough about hip-hop and they haven't really studied it and learned the foundation of it and learned the history.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So and a big problem with that, you know, with with the hip-hop, the way hip-hop has its presence in hip in in dance studios is because it is treated like it's supposed to be that way.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a big concern because hip-hop is always kind of like I always say it's like the gym class of dance studios.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be the EZA.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: They the studio I've had studio owners literally like say to me, like, they, you know, just a bunch of eight counts.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh, you know, they're here to do this in this class.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, but there's so much more to it.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I started calling myself an employee of hip-hop before any an employee of anybody else.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what helps me decide where I'll do my work because I I want to do right by hip-hop, uh, especially after everything that's gone on this last year.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't feel right, I don't feel right profiting or helping people profit off of a culture that demands its history be known.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if if they're not gonna respect that part of it.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's like again, I mean, the idea is always like it's just hip-hop.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or yeah, well, for the hip-hop, you can, you know, they always think that there is an easier way to do it.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, there isn't.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Not if you're gonna do it right.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: I also I also find that the reason I are and hopefully this is not me making an an excuse for this, but like comparing the culture of hip-hop to other dance styles, it's also the youngest because it is the most recent.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas like ballet has been around.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was back in the king's court in France, like to put you know, people in check, and jazz has been around.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I do feel like it needs more respect in those in those areas than it's given, you know.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I mean, like, think about what you're saying, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about how it's newer than all these other styles, and it's true, and it's ironic because I'll have a student come out of ballet and refer to something I'm teaching them from the 70s as old school.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was brand new.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, 70s isn't old school.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: But like, let's teach a plie.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about old school.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you think it's because they always look at it as like now.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: They always look at it as hip hop has to be now.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: But well, and that's you know, you said something earlier that that made a lot of sense that like the youth the youth, and we're all over here like in our 30s, like talking about the youth, but the youth really co-opt what what they want of of culture.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so like it really is, it's it's hard even in other genres to to teach something because they automatically think it's it's old, therefore it doesn't matter, or it's not current, you know.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that we do run into that problem with hip-hop specifically, even just what we see on the competitive stage is you know, it's very rare that I see something that I see those particular steps and those particular moves that I know.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that was done in the 70s.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know that step was done in the 70s.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen it.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't you don't see that very often.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you you're seeing a lot of TikTok dancing.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or or, you know, dance teamy, like formation-y.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's just there's not a lot of substance.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of maybe it's a lot of precision, maybe it's a lot of, you know, hip movement and I and it's some ice some isolations, maybe if you're lucky, maybe.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like jazz, but not it's yeah, well, it's it it's interesting because I feel like you run into the same problem with with with kids listening to music samples or or or samples that are put into songs, and like, oh, you know, Lil' Whoever or whatever, like this is the original song of that, and then they hear their the actual original song that's a throwback, and they're like, oh, they copied that.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_05: You're like, no, it's backwards.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: I feel yeah, I I feel like you run into that, and then you know, I think one huge misconception about hip-hop is the influence it has on mu on on movement, you know, like like everyone, like it it was it killed me, and I will say it, it killed me when people were like, Oh, Hamilton's a hip-hop show.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hit Hamilton was not a hip-hop show.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: The delivery was in rap form, so you got to learn the art of storytelling, which is what rap was, is, but it was hip-hop influenced.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: It like isolation, like there were things that were influenced by hip-hop, but it was not a hip-hop show.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so frustrating when people do that because you know, I think there's a part of the coolness factor that folks want to be a part of or want to have, but I like the coolest thing is just you being you and using the foundation to enhance that.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is a huge thing that is missed in the dance community at times, because it's like we want to be cool, we want to look cool, but what foundation are you starting from?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that's where it gets murky, you know.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where I was going with that.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love that though.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_04: I also think that like I'm I'm glad you kind of briefly brought that up about Hamilton too, because you know, Hamilton's like the talk of the town and the dance world all the time for the past five years.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: But I think especially coming from someone who was there from the creation, from the start of Hamilton, like yourself, who's been through the process, who was in the original cast, who's been casting other Hamilton productions, you know it like the back of your hand.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm pretty sure that you can vouch and tell the dance world right now that majority of the dancers who are cast in Hamilton are not hip-hop dancers.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, and the bet like the the thing that I think is huge being like hip-hop influenced is that they're looking for authenticity, which in the world of hip-hop is like go like the most organic, authentic you you can be.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can go into a battle, right, and think you're gonna like study your opponent, but really the opponent is you, you know, like when you're in a cipher, if you're in an exchange, I personally feel like it's not the person across from me that's like I mean, granted, you're gonna take some things that they're gonna like you're gonna see what they do and just like throw that into your set, but it's it's really like how authentically to yourself can you be to tell a story or to like put something out there, you know, and leave it on the floor.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that is like that is where I feel like we bang our heads as in casting for the show because people think they need to put something on or they need to hit it a certain way, or like they need to take a popping class before coming.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no, sure, there's some ISO elements, there's some popping elements, there's some you know, house elements, there's tap, there's fossil, there's all these things in there, but it's like, what are you to your core putting out for us to see that would represent the show or put the story forward?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you know that's that's pretty interesting, you know.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think something that's hip-hop influenced, like Hamilton, that's what I appreciate about it, because I heard the same thing.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Before I ever got to see it, people would say, Oh, you gotta see it.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a you know, you love it, it's a hip-hop thing, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, you know, kind of noticing, you know, what it really is.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when you see something that's hip-hop influenced, that's even more important for for young hip-hop students to see because they need to see what happens when you truly allow real technique or real concepts from hip-hop culture to have an influence and allow you to explore art whatever direction you're gonna go.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the you know, Hamilton, I think, is a great example of pulling all the way back to the roots and trying a different route, a different way to go.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's here's here's the way that we went with this.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the but the mistake that's made these days is that you know, it's like if I if I learn hip-hop and then I choreograph something that's modernized, people take this new thing and that's hip-hop now, and then they go here and then they take, and it's so far away you don't really know it.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: To return to the root concept of it and allow that to be your influence and expand out right a new way.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that that's doing hip-hop more justice than most things that are labeled as hip-hop.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_04: Competition season is in full swing, and your quick changes are probably getting even quicker this year with the new block schedule format.
• 33:34
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• 33:56
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• 34:03
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• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Since you led us there, can we go back to the route and talk about now that we're sort of out of the history into more like day-to-day, you know, we have hip-hop classes at studios.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: What are some things that dancers should be learning in a hip-hop class?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: Skills, content, foundation, foundations.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: What are the foundations?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I would love to hear um for our listeners specifically, but for me too, just because I need to brush up.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: What are the foundations of hip-hop?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: What should these kids be learning so that they have that foundation to then move forward to do whatever they want, you know, to go in these dirt different directions?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just I just think learning the fundamentals, whether it's b-boying, popping, locking, house, I like it's just knowing the fundamentals where they came from, researching, you know, like YouTube has so many clips of like you've got the boogaloos, you've got like old clips of the boogaloos, like Wiggles before he was in the boogaloos, you've got like the boogie brats down in Florida, you've got I mean the classic, everyone knows, you know, Rocksteady and but like like look up Cruz, like like look up like all the old like I hate saying it because it's it seems disrespectful, but all the old heads who like created it and originated it, you know, and and then also like look at how folks in Japan and China and Korea and Germany and like there are so many, so it's so worldwide now.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I yeah, I I I think foundation is king and to know where you like to know where it came from and to have that respect only informs you better on how to a share it and share share the light and spread it, but then also like how to innovate it for yourself and what that does for you for your personal journey.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think one thing that people don't understand is the moment that you fall in love with hip hop, you can't quit it.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes like an identifying thing and like rules your everyday life.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like you start sessioning by yourself and you're trying to reinvent the will.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, or at least for you, like you're getting out of your own way.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a personal thing.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I guess every form of dance, but like you can only get as good as you uh as the work you put into it.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I just think fundamentals is is just so key.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, I'm a former ballet dancer, so technique is everything to me.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't know your foundation and fundamentals, then it's like you're kind of going into a room without a light, essentially.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you know, kids they they they they lose that because so many hip-hop classes don't really focus on that.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: They focus on familiar and they focus on tricks and flash and all these other things.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And because they focus on that, they forget that there is this entire background of it.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was told, especially when I do a workshop, if I travel somewhere and I do a workshop with students, I'll talk to them about it.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say, you know, who's your favorite choreographer?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll talk about these different hip-hop choreographers, and I'll say, I'm not gonna teach you what they teach you, I'm gonna teach you what they know.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the difference, right?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about what they actually know because the, like you said, foundation is so important.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, and and if I was gonna like briefly go through what my hip hop programs look like, if I'm gonna run a full hip-hop program, my youngest dancers learn the original social dances in hip-hop.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we focus on like the new jack swing era of dancing, running man, prep, Bart Simpson, all these things, and they learn breaking.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: As we age them up a little bit, once they become preteens, we really go hardcore with the funk styles.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we start doing popping, we start doing locking.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, but if you go back, like I mean, I think everybody, every kid should know a little bit about breaking.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it teaches you so much about the floor and balance and things that you can do when moving around on the floor.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And those, those, those original social dances are so important for rhythm, which I think is the foundation you need to learn in dance.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: The funk styles, popping, locking, you know, popping, isolations.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think popping is probably the most versatile thing that you can teach dancers because isolations exist in so many different dance genres, anyway.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, there are some fantastic things to do with popping back in the original ways of doing it, and there's fantastic things people do with popping now.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Locking teaches you so much about rhythm uh in its own way.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's such a different kind of bounce and a groove and get your whole body involved.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: So each of these styles kind of has their own things.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as they get older, then we start to mature all their choreography.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um, brief story: one good example of why some of this stuff is so important is that we actually went to a competition years ago.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I brought my young dancers, and I like I said, I teach the foundation all the time.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when we got the when we got the critiques back, the critiques said plie during one of their dances, right?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: So they were like, plie, make sure you plie.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And my students looked at me and I just kind of went like, no.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Disregard.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to because it was wrong.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember the studio owner said, Well, I think they just mean, you know, you have to bend your knees more.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, That's the problem.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not where your bounce comes from.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a big mistake.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the biggest thing I think students need to learn, the most important part of all of this foundation is the idea of holding rhythm in your body.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can do all the fanciest things in the world if you're, you know, you're moving your arms all these.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a battle once where, you know, there was about 36 people, came from around the world, and they narrowed it down to 16 from those 36 after the first round.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was some incredible people who got eliminated because they weren't using their torso.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: That torso was absent.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was fancy, it was cool, it was flexible, it was crazy, but they weren't really dancing.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one of the judges leaned over to me and said, I'm looking for anyone who's not using their torso right now.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the ability to like allow your center to like feel the music, that foundation needs to be added in.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that all over the place.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you watch dancers who learn a lot of choreography and they haven't learned that foundation, their body looks stiff.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: They get stuck not being able to loosen this up and feel the music.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens in a in a number of genres, but you don't even need to specify a specific street dance or funk style uh to get this going.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to teach dancers about like rhythm and torso and the the freedom of allowing this to bounce in all these different directions.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's literally the first thing I need my dancers to learn before it becomes a bad habit they have trouble adding back in later.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: I love what you I love like what you just said about the judge critique because I'm gonna I'm gonna just say it, y'all.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I've said it.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_04: Use your play because that's what we know.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_04: That's like my technical brain.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm like, I I feel like I can give some helpful critiques in hip-hop, but am I a specialty hip-hop judge?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: So, and I don't think you're gonna find a lot of them at competition either.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like that's yeah, well, that's kind of what happens.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have you have people who you know who understand all this stuff and they you know they want to give the best kind of critiques possible, but there are little things that you don't realize don't make sense to hip-hop, even though it sounds like it might make sense.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because even my studio owner, who's watching me teach those kids for the 10 years before that, was like, well, just bend your knees more.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, no.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not something that you know unless you really learn it.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, unless you really are actually in the classroom learning.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because even on the surface, if you watch me, like if I was teaching you a class right now and I was bouncing in front of you, you'd be like, well, yeah, your knees are moving.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you'd be you wouldn't even be realizing that, like, no, the torso has to, that's the part of the difference.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it is interesting to see that.
• 41:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And people always kind of say, well, plie means to bend, but you know what students think when they hear plie.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: It ain't gonna help with a forward or back jack, you know.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, exactly.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: That ain't gonna do nothing for you.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the and that's the that was my only concern with those critiques, is that you know, we kind of laughed at it, but then I went, huh, those kids did that technique right and they might have lost points for it.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were applying another genre to it.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I will say, as I used to choreograph for competition studios and would always play hip-hop and do their do their hip-hop pieces.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I always threw house, I always threw locking, I always threw popping.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while, and I don't do like the boy can do the coffee grinder trick thing.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like some like like some of my students know floor work, like I would let them do that if it served for the moment.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: But like one thing that I would would be an eye roll for me as a choreographer is seeing the plie comment and not seeing the well-versed, like, oh, this is a jack or this this wave ISO or this twist of flex wasn't quite clean.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like there were elements and technical aspects of hip-hop that I found were missing.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when I went to go judge a competition for the first time and got to see their hip-hop groups, it was nice to actually connect with them and be like, hey, I loved what you did in this house section.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, when you're doing the farmer or when you're doing shuffling, like, you know, actually like being able to like point out a way to help the quality of movement in their technique is different than just being like, throw a plie.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's like, I don't know.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's one of those things where like you see a ballet piece and you're like, I think you could have done like a flatball change instead of a kickball change into the thing, or like a jazz, you know what I mean?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like it's it's literally throwing a different technical aspect into a different genre.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_04: So not everything.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I mean, say, listen, sometimes it translates, but sometimes it doesn't, you know.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I think I that's the thing.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh every single person that's listening to this podcast has probably gotten the user plie critique on every hip-hop dance that they've gotten.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that the like I mentioned, like, and we actually had a judging discussion not too long ago, but like it's just it's it's really hard to be able to find hip-hop judges who specialize in that that also have a classical background because majority of the dances that you see at competition are not hip-hop.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_04: So to like bring in a hip-hop specialty judge for just a few entries, the competitions are like, well, the comp contemporaries rolling the world.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: I need someone that's really technical.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_04: So then the technical judges are trying to critique the few hip hop dances, and regardless if their teacher is not good or one of y'all and fantastic and knows what they're doing, then you know, they're throwing the use your plie critique.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_04: And most of the time, and I'm not c not trying to call out that every hip hop dance I've seen at competition is.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: Bad, but I'm gonna say, like, I haven't seen that many great ones.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: And I will tell you if they're great.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_04: And I thank the hip-hop teacher every time I know that it's great because I'm like, thank you for bringing actual hip hop to competition.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_04: We can tell as judges if it's if it's actual hip hop.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Even if I don't know how to speak about it properly, I can see what it is.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like it is rare to see that.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then I feel terrible because I don't have all the language that I want to be able to say, yes, all of those steps you just mentioned, that like I can look at it and say, yes, that is a that is a legit hip-hop step, and they're doing it correctly, because you can just tell.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: You just you can feel it in, like, you can feel the energy, you can feel the foundation.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's it's such a conundrum.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_04: You want to like expand the critique, like you were saying, Voltaire, like how rewarding it is for you to be able to really expand on that specific move and give them guidance on how to make it better.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like there's a lot of judges in hip-hop, particularly, that can't do that because we just don't know enough about the day the genre itself and haven't studied it to the extent of others that might be sitting, you know, or consider themselves a more hip-hop specialty judge.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, and I've said this before and I'll say it, and this can apply to so many different genres, but like to the people listening that are like, well, I we bring great hip-hop to the stage, I want a hip-hop judge, then you have to kind of tell the competition, like, yo, um, we're hip-hop studio, we really want to make sure we have a strong hip-hop judge on the panel.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_04: Can you at least give us one judge that's like a hip-hop judge?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: And if they respect you and want your business, then they should make that happen because there are some spectacular hip-hop judges out there.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's just a matter of finding them and then also being able to like make sure they can handle the rest of the genres as well.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_04: And because the same can be applied.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like, if a hip-hop judge doesn't have a classical background and then ballet hits the stage, like, what do they do?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_04: They probably just sit there in silence and then take off point when they don't understand why.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: So same applies, it goes both ways.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's just it's hard.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know what the right thing to do is in the industry, honestly.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is tricky though, because like oh my god, I choreographed for like what eight or nine years in Virginia, and every packet that I got back, the plie comment, it was like it almost was like an automated state.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I could like if if I turned it into a drinking game, I would be wasted after reading every single one, you know?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: But but I do think there is something to be said about like, and I think it all falls under the respect factor and it being so new and choreographing these dances, I would always get that comment.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, yes, there is validity, and it's hard to find someone who is hip-hop trained and classically trained, so they can give both.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that competitions, if they're gonna have studios come and present hip-hop dances, that they should get the right judgment slash representation on the other side of that table.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because those kids are gonna have a whole an entire season of the same.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: That don't really make any sense.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's counter and it's like counterproductive.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I don't know.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just I I just feel like every kid and like the one competition I was able to judge through you was amazing because they had the studio that was bringing all of these, like, and for the most part, they were like commercial hip-hop dances, but like the foundation was there, the elements of like, and I'm originally from California, so like LA and commercial hip-hop and commercial jazz is like very easy for me to identify, but they had that, and it was nice to be able to bridge the gap for them and give them notes that they could actually continue to foster their their their their artistry, you know.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I just think big picture wise, it just like sucks to go like if you're a student going through the whole season of like getting more more plie, you know.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's like the other thing that's really interesting too is most of the time there aren't studios that will request for a hip hop judge because they know their hip hop isn't good.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_04: So they hope that there's not a hip-hop judge on that panel because they're gonna get called out.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: And you you know what I mean?
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_04: If the amount of the amount of these I think that's the other reason, like we like there's like for that specific competition, and I casted you on that because the competition came to me and said, we have a strong hip-hop studio coming, we want a really strong hip-hop judge, and I said double tear, you know, like that's how that worked, and more competitions need to do that.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_04: But I think the other thing is unless they're a legitimate hip-hop studio, they're not gonna request for a hip-hop judge because they know they're gonna get kind of reamed out, probably.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: But also, though, like we kind of need that, right?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't see because you don't see people like perpetrating like ballet or jazz.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some people are, so some people are, but like you don't see people hacking it with like contemporary ball, like so.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: The same respect, I feel like should be extended in that way.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I also think that like like we kind of mentioned, we uh even if we're not like specialty in judge in hip-hop, you can tell if it's good or not.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that majority of the judges who see the bad hip-hop hit the stage or competition will literally tell them.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_04: Even if they're like, I'm not a specialty in this, but this like is this hip-hop?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: Like, y'all have been just doing like flatte turns and back handsprings in hip-hop dance.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right to a rap song.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and you think this is hip-hop and you put tennis shoes on.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: Like, not really hip-hop for me.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: You know, most people will call it out.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a no for me.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_04: I know you had something to say.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, yeah, I'm listening to all the stuff you guys are saying, and I mean, uh, you know, I could I could go for hours with stories about stuff like this.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I do know of a a friend of mine reached out to me.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: A few people have said this to me uh over the years, and a friend of mine reached out to me last year uh about a competition, same kind of thing, where she was actually judging with real hip-hop, and the choreographer like reached out to her after, pissed, because it was unfair to apply those standards to and that's not cool.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's the part that that's the part that's trouble.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, the real the real uh you know, the real answer to this problem is across the board, everybody needs to be cool with the idea that the standard for hip-hop is gonna be fixed.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that's so hard to do because again, I mean, if if I go to a studio and I say, let's revamp this hip-hop program, it's gonna be what it really is.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: When we go to competition, if if the competition isn't on board with that, then then we're gonna get the scores that reflect that.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if the scores are gonna look bad, then the parents are no longer on board with it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: So unless we all collectively decide at the same time, it doesn't really work, which is why hip hop always kind of gets you know put on the back burner when it comes to fixing that problem.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there there really isn't a good, clean solution because you always end up coming around to the same idea, which is always kind of like, well, you know, I the thing that happens with getting a hip-hop judge uh versus you know all these other styles is kind of like you know what happens in you know shows.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've had, you know, I had a ballet teacher say, Oh, make sure your girls' hairs are in a bun.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what if it shouldn't be in a bun for this piece?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's really not supposed to?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, well, they need it for ballet.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, they need it like this for hip-hop, but it's never okay to say that about hip-hop.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's always kind of like this like double standard that gets applied.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, why does it have to be that hip-hop gets less of that?
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why does it why is it okay to do this to hip-hop, but not to another style?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's always the same kind of question.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've participated in the debates on Facebook and I've also not participated in the debates and just watched because at the end of the day, sometimes people just really don't view hip-hop like the culture that it is, so they're just like, it's just hip-hop, you know, not that big of a deal.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a there's a bigger picture here, but I mean, realistically, it has to be like studio, teacher, judges, parents.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like they all need to be on the same page, or it doesn't work.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because if one person isn't on the same page, there was already a system in place to uh to to judge and score well dances that aren't hip-hop.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to you don't have to apply the right techniques in hip-hop to get a good score, and that's a problem.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_04: Totally, yeah.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: They could just like the crowd could just be going wild and in, you know, for no reason.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_04: They don't know, they're just excited their kids are on score.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Familiarity.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_04: But the music could be just bang, boom, all these like awesome mixes with like sound effects and all, you know, we've heard it.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like we've all been there, we've all heard it.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then this dance wins because of like crowd participation, because the judges don't understand that like what we were watching wasn't that good.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone was just real hype.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, I someone's actually asked me that question, I think, submitted a question asking that like, does crowd particip participation come into effect when you're scoring dances at competition?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I always say no because I hate when people are screaming in my ear.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, if anything, it makes me angry.
• 52:26
  unknown: Yeah.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, please be quiet.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I know we're excited.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: It may inadvertently do so for certain judges, though, who are getting excited because they feel excited.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: And like, I've actually seen many hip-hop dances take entertainment awards home and deserve it, for sure.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely deserve it, because it was a well-chore graphed routine with the foundation of hip-hop, with awesome visuals, with really cool musicality.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like, there's so many layers to make a successful hip-hop routine at competition.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I've sat and I've watched, and like I said, I've always thanked the teacher.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_04: Like, thank you so much for bringing real hip-hop dance to the stage with all of these different moves that we you all have brought up that are the foundation that is what we should they should be learning the fundamentals in hip-hop class and not just drilling routines or you know, working on other elements.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it can be applied the same kind of concept can be applied to so many other dances.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've seen like an aerial or like turns in second and a top dance, and I'm like, that's not top, you know?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like, we have to stay true to the genre that we're submitting and not just kind of like fake it till you make it.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's what it what it is.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: But again, I do think, especially depending on like your region, your location in the country, it's hard to find a quality hip hop teacher too.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think a lot of people struggle with that.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Most places.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I get a lot of the work that I do is is the fact that I I do guest work and I train teachers around the country because there's not there's no way to access that information.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I get a lot of work specifically in the Midwest because of that.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: And but also too, you know, I think I think one thing like silver line like one of the many good things, the pandemic is awful.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say that the pandemic is the best thing ever.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: But one one good thing out of the pandemic is the access to a lot of classes and a lot of foundation things.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've been and worldwide too.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like I just followed this Korean house dancer who is just he's putting just instructional videos out literally every day.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a 15-second thing of a new move.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like it's like if you really want to know and you really want to expand your vocabulary, the resources are there.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Totally, you know, and and and now I think it's it's just based on like how much work do you want to put in to actually know that to be authentic, or do you just want to be flashy to get a good score?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like that's what from time to time.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, and that's very much the similar to what we talked about in previous episodes like what is what is the goal?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_04: Are are we trying to train these dancers with proper technique and foundation in all genres, or are we just shooting for a win?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: Because if the win's all you care about and you're gonna make it all flash and glam, and we pull it back and we realize that you're not doing anything based on this genre and you're not showing me the technique of this genre, then like are we really winning?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_04: Because you're gonna try to go into the professional world or you're gonna become a hip hop teacher, and that's what you're gonna be teaching your students, and then we're you know, it's just a vicious like like a circle, it's never gonna end.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that comes down to the teacher, you know, or the like whoever it is.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I like my teaching philosophy is by the time I'm done with my students, they should be better than me.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, we should be able to have a friendly cipher, and you should be able to just wipe the floor with me and probably beat me because I am older and you have youth on your side.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: But like my thing is I want to equip you with the knowledge and the vocabulary to then go out and seek whatever it is that you want to and to be able to respectfully navigate in that field, you know, and it's it's it's more big picture, I find, than it is like personal and like for the business, you know.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I want you to go out there and I want you to know what you're talking about, and I want you to be able to have an exchange, whether it's verbally or dance, like in a cipher.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you to be able to respectfully navigate wherever you go and learn and grow as a student continuously.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so yeah, I love that.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: So my question as we wrap up, because it got brought up very briefly a few minutes ago, and I wanted to touch back on it the TikTok dance craze.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: What um, because uh Voltaire you said, you know, if you want to become a hip-hop teacher, I have definitely seen hip quote unquote hip-hop teachers that are young, the youths, are are truly just teaching like TikTok-esque kind of things.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, maybe every now and then you see, you know, some kind of legitimate hip-hop step in a TikTok dance, but most of the time you don't.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Those are even overtaking, like people.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen people on the on the Dance Teacher Networks talking about I'm gonna have a TikTok class now because this is what these kids want.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so, how do how do we feel about that?
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Seeing as how that kind of skews towards what people think is hip-hop?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_05: Hmm.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_05: Ugh.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_05: Horrified.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Horrified.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is horrified.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I uh I I don't I personally I don't like it at all.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the the big problem, just like we keep talking about, like there should be like a collective understanding of what a hip-hop class should be.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the big problem with that is that if a studio or a studio owner or teachers think that this is oh, this is all part of hip-hop, like why not?
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: If the kids like it, why not?
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the problem because you wouldn't do it in ballet, like we keep talking about.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with these, I mean, there's so many different technical problems with the hit with the TikTok dances, but I mean the concept of, you know, look, if I if I've spent the last 20 years of my life training in hip-hop and I go out to New York and I learn and I study and I've you know done the battles and done this and done that, and you know, work as hard as I've worked to get this job, just so that I don't get it because somebody who wants some TikTok videos is going to do it instead.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a problem for the arts world too.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's a problem that you're even influencing dancers to make this dance education.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even if even if it's easy money, yeah, sure, maybe 100 kids will sign up for that class, but you are you are doing a disservice to dance education if you are allowing that to be uh a hip-hop replacement or an add-on to hip-hop, because now not only have you done that, and yeah, it feels innocent, and I mean I try not to judge too much.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people all the time, do what you want to do in your classes.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the big problem with that is if I'm teaching foundation next door and you're teaching hip uh TikTok here, everybody's just obsessed with TikTok.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: So where's everybody gonna go?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you could take the TikTok hip-hop class or you could take the the breakdancing hip-hop class, and you should take the breakdancing.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not just because that's what I want to do and I'm gonna do it with you, but you should be learning foundation.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: You should be learning how to make your body move better.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't be just learning the same thing.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a student came to me a couple years ago, back, you know, when all other dances were were the bigger things to do, and she's like, Oh, I thought we were gonna learn this, I thought we were gonna learn that.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: I said, They don't pay me to teach you what you learn in research.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like flossing.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: I keep thinking of flossing like the thing that kids used to do that they were like, Let's put flossing in the dance.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, No, let's not.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't do that.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, I mean, some people, like I said, there's a certain like innocence to it.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I try not, people have gotten mad at me over this, uh, where they, well, I, you know, like I've literally had people delete me on Facebook because I said don't dump at the floss or anything like that.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your dancers, but like, but I'm pretty particular about it specifically because of what I do.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I want to find dancers who aren't mistakenly here just because they play Fortnite, for example.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, well, if that's what connects them to dance, be like that's the only thing that connects them with dance.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: What connects them with this dance class isn't the fact that they like dancing, it's because it's part of their video game.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't teach a video game class.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna continue.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if if on day one they do that, I go, okay, you got out of your system, but now you're gonna learn something.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: And next time when we practice freestyle, you're not gonna use that because that's not your that's not what we're gonna build on.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, I mean, TikTok dances in particular, I mean, I think I think I think nobody has business teaching it.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a social thing kids are doing.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you really shouldn't be teaching a class on it.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a way to make money.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, hey, listen, if you're listening to this and you're teaching TikTok dances, uh, please don't take offense.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do what you gotta do.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not really, it's it's not a you're not preparing kids for college or auditions or anything.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just know what you're doing.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do it with the knowledge that this is for fun, this is for business, this is for a particular point in time, that this is what we're doing, and then maybe offer other things.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: What you just said, particular point in time.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: I always so I label things like the Harlem Shake and flossing as fashion trend dances, and I don't do them because just as quick as it comes, it'll go.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas foundation is forever.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's just a sauce.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, like you gotta have the sauce.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's one of those things where it's just like, yeah, as as John just said it, like you wouldn't do that to ballet or jazz or even tap, and especially tap heads.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, you would never ever make a fashion trend thing and be like, this is tap now.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: I can't even think of what that would be.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I can't even think of an option.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but like it's so easy, like that's how diluted and easy it is to just pawn it off as hip hop because it looks cool, even if it doesn't have that the foundation in it.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, here's a question though.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we're talking about 1970s foundation's social dances.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: Ari, back to John's earlier chat about that.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: In 40 years, is flossing in a TikTok dance gonna be the same kind of comparison, do you think?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I'll tell me why, please.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: At one point in hip-hop's journey, it went like this.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, at one point, particularly from what I understand, from what I've read and what I remember experiencing even when I was younger, uh, music videos.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_05: Music videos changed everything.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you take an artist who doesn't know street dance but has street dancers, take Michael Jackson for example, right?
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch Michael Jackson's bad music video, the choreography he does is not hip-hop, right?
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: You look at that choreography, it is not hip-hop.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are street dancers in that.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's street dancers that I know that are in that video and they're doing their thing.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: That stuff gets sprinkled into the choreography.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: Their stuff got tossed in.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: So now, the time like the what Voltaire said about like that community, like the history of all that stuff.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: That community, that was your, you know, I used to say people the time, who was the first hip-hop teacher?
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody ever knows how to answer.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: I said the person you battled.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: That person in that circle, people that were there with you, they taught you something about yourself, and you go back and you work learn and you work on yourself.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was community-based.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Social dancing for a long time was community-based.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think of those jams that we were talking about.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Think of something like the movie House Party, right?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: You think of these ideas and it's community-based, right?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when you look at music videos, you go from you know being at a house party or at a jam to learn about these genres to being at home watching MTV.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: The difference here, now, those people who grew up watching MTV, they saw hip-hop, which was basically just whatever the choreographer was choreographing with sprinkled in hip-hop.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that changed the way that choreography looked.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just kind of like an aspect of it, because you still see a lot of hip-hop in that movement, but it's definitely watered down, mixed with jazz and all these other things.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the big difference between something like the floss and all these other dance moves that get done now is again, the the similarity is it's a social thing.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the social atmosphere.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: The difference between the social atmosphere now and the social atmosphere back then is that the social atmosphere back then was about individuality and it was about understanding the community and the music and and and truly vibing off of it.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between going to a house party in you know the early 90s and music is playing, and you're trying to get into the circle and you're trying to get people to see what you do, and setting up your camera and doing a five-second thing of your arms moving.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the same process.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that process, the only thing that TikTok dances have in common with hip-hop is that it's a current social thing.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: And hip-hop has always a current and hip-hop still does have a current social thing.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't exist on TikTok, you know.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, so the big difference here is that it that it no longer the social world and the hip-hop world no longer hang out together, in my opinion.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's that the so the regular social world is not a hip-hop type of world, it's not, it's not a do better.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's the do this dance move challenge and all that other thing.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's doing the same damn thing.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't happen.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Voltaire, think about it.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: Think about going to a battle, and the whole challenge is I'm gonna do a headstand, so you do a headstand, and then you do a headstand, and everybody just cheers the same way each time.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what happens.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: That would be nuts.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even like another element that I'm also thinking of too, as we're talking about this, is like TikTok is for views and money, right?
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas like hip-hop, you're like, there's an identification.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I really like hip-hop saved me in a way, whereas like I came out of a very strict ballet school, I hated everything about myself, and then I found a genre of dance where I could accept everything and throw everything that I know into it.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly now have this new idea like this new sense of self.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't to make money, it wasn't to get views, it isn't to be trendy.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: It literally was just like my own like safe haven.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like a like that's another big thing where it's just like hip hop.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like it equips you for so much more.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas like TikTok is literally just for numbers and an app that'll probably die, like MySpace or something else.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_05: R I P right, MySpace.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I I hope not.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: I hope not for those TikTokers out there.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: I like I love you.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: Some of my best friends are some of the most viewed TikTokers out there.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so it truly I have no disrespect towards it, but I just I don't like they're not the same.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they can't Well, I mean, just like you said, it's a you know, it's it's it's definitely a fad thing, you know.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and just like you, I really I really don't ever aim to be a fad dancer.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a foundational dancer, I want to be long last.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I firmly believe that I have a 17 year and counting career of just dancing.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't I didn't, you know, flow with whatever was going on at the time.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see it, I'll recognize it, but uh I'm always teaching something very specific, and that's what was that's what was able to get me out of teaching in just my area because I would teach around here, and you know, for better or worse, this is what I do.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: For better or worse, I'm gonna teach you breaking, popping, mocking, hip hop, mainly other stuff a little bit here and there.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: But because I was doing that, people are either gonna love it or completely be like, that's not what we do.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: We just want a bunch of choreography, we want, you know, just pump punk choreography for these dancers.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: So but that gave me more opportunities because I was able to just kind of stick with like the bigger picture, and those fads come and go.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you're if you're doing these fad dances, that will disappear.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, TikTok, TikTok will, its day will end.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: It will.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, if you listen to people who talk about like how to capitalize on social media and stuff like that, they'll say, Yeah, jump on TikTok right now while it's good, because eventually it won't be good.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually, I mean, listen, Fortnite dances were the massive thing not that long ago.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_02: They really were.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there was stuff before that, you know.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just these the concept of where the social dances come from keeps changing now, and it's jumped off of the the actual community.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's just so these TikTok dances will be old eventually too.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I really I don't pay much attention to them.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna download it and I'm not going to I I do think the TikTok dances were like early pandemic.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know that I see them as often anymore.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, truly, like it just in the past year.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I remember like March of last year.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, oh, everybody's doing these TikTok dance challenges.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then now recently it's like I remember this time last year, my students would be like salivating at the opportunity to go do another TikTok.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Not here.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_02: Don't come here and do that.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't bring it up.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, in a way, and like it makes sense.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's been such a weird year, and we've been so connected to our phones and this and the internet.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, give some people something to do, but like I don't know, I can't get into it.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like I get it.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always say the same thing about like I would say the same thing about uh TikTok that I say about like most other when I like start talking about dance genres and I start talking to a teacher about their choreography, and I'll say, I'm not telling you it's not good for whatever it is, I'm just telling you it's not hip hop.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's really like that.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, like TikTok, cool.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if people love it, you know, if if my family or my friends or my students love it and they have fun doing it, awesome.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hip hop.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's also interesting to see.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was visiting a good friend of mine in in LA, Matt, and his house, he would rent out sections of his house so that some of the top TikTokers could go and film a series of the things.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like watching that, I was like, man, this is like it's such a business thing rather than for the culture of hip-hop.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think again, it's that classic case of like something can be hip-hop influenced, but that doesn't mean that it's hip-hop.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think I think respectfully they that it all has a place, but just being cognizant of how we label things and not diluting what hip hop could be or is.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh, I love it.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_04: Uh listeners, I really hope that you learned a thing or two about hip-hop dance from these wonderful guests because they laid it, they laid it out for y'all.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_04: I hope you walk away from this with a different view of what those competition dances are gonna be looking like this year.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe making some changes as needed, maybe keeping this in your head when you're watching in the audience or watching on the live stream and really knowing what hip hop is supposed to look like.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna have so many links in the show notes of references, and we always recreate our podcast into actual blog articles as well that you can check out, and we will link to videos, we will link to so many resources for you all to keen continue to educate even more about hip-hop dance.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_04: So thank you so much for both of you, John and Voltaire, for spending your night with us and chatting all things dance.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's such a pleasure to have you both and your knowledge and expertise in this in in hip hop overall as a genre.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_04: So I really appreciate it.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_04: And hope you enjoyed your time on the pod.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_04: And what we typically do is we have our guests lead us out with any final thoughts, any you know, any final things you want to say in regards to hip hop.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_04: It can be about hip-hop in general, it can be about competitive hip-hop in the competition world, anything you'd like to lead us out.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's just research.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I feel like it's so much more rewarding when you go on YouTube or wherever to just research the OGs of hip-hop, how it how it all originated, the crews that came out of that, and then just yeah, from there the paper trail will lead you in all places that you wish to seek it.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, my I mean, my advice to dancers is, you know, I know that just like we were talking about, like the TikTok dances or anything that feels a little bit more familiar, that's fun and that's easy and that's part of that social realm.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tell my dancers, you know, don't let go of that.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't put it away somewhere where you never use it.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're looking to pursue dance or if you're looking for true professional development in any field, whether it's in arts or dance or hip-hop specifically, take the time to really understand hip-hop and just like you know, just like we said, research.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the truly long-lasting artist is gonna be the one that that has that has that actual foundation.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So to really make this thing last in dance and in hip-hop, you really should be looking at hip-hop from its roots outward rather than whatever you like, because that that'll keep you as a fad dancer and you will come and go just as quickly.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this wonderful episode all about hip-hop.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_04: Shout out to our special guests, Voltaire and John, for joining us.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_04: Be sure to follow them on Instagram.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_04: You can find Voltaire at TisVoltaire and John at John underscore comics.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Also, be sure to check out some of our guests' projects.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_04: You can check out John's Essential program, which is a full hip-hop training guide designed for dance teachers at johncomics.com.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_04: And Voltaire's latest project, Dance Freecast, a new nonprofit aimed at providing professional training and visibility towards free casting the world of professional dance and theater for the five pop community.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Head on over to your favorite podcast app and hit subscribe so you'll get notified each time there's a new Making the Impact episode.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other major listening platforms.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if you haven't already, leave us a review.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_02: We love hearing from our fans.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_04: If you haven't already joined us on our brand new Facebook group, we would love to welcome you to our new dance community.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Click the link in our show notes or head to Facebook and search for Making the Impact, a dance competition podcast community.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_04: Dancers, dance parents, teachers, studio owners, and professionals are all welcome to join and jump in on the conversation.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: We hope to see you there.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Season two of Making the Impact is in full swing and you won't want to miss what's coming up.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: Stay subscribed for our upcoming episodes with topics including how to take your solo to the next level, teamwork in the studio, and beyond, and the April edition of QA with Courtney.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks so much for joining us for season two of Making the Impact.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_04: Until next time, keep dancing.