Hip Hop Dance

991 Words2 Pages

Hip hop dance was important to African American culture because it allowed them to create their own culture, their own music their own style. When watching Flex is Kings, there are many young men in a video demonstrating what hip hop dance culture has evolved to in the 21st century. They are a contemporary urban dance movement. One can see the emotion and the “seriousness” in their movements. Hip hop dance is these people’s lives’(“Flex Is Kings”). Flex is a type of street dance, sometimes is called “bone breaking” due to their moves looking like a person either has no bones or that they are literally breaking them to create the skin cringing dances they create(“Flexing”). Dancers such as Storyboard P have mastered the art of flexing. He mentions in one of his interviews that when dancing one is revealing who they are (“Storyboard P”). African American people lean on this particular art form to elaborate how, as a race we have been able to display our culture to mainstream America. Mainstream is basically a majority of people (Mainstream). Hip hop, however, has transformed into mainstream culture, therefore losing itself. "Black culture, which has a long tradition of struggling against (and at the same time, working in close collaboration with) the dominant white culture, has rounded the corner of the 21st century with what looks in one sense like an unequivocal victory. Young America now embraces hip-hop as the signal pop-music genre of its time. So why does that victory feel strange: not exactly hollow, but a little haunted?" (“When the People Cheer”). As hip hop itself has begun to change so has the form of dance. Hip hop dance now has a mixture of what the Flex kings do in their videos and dances such as the popular dance “N... ... middle of paper ... ...tp://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959?page=2>. Josephine Baker: The Activist Entertainer. Perf. Josephine Baker. Josephine Baker: The Activist Entertainer. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014. . "The Official Josephine Baker Website." The Official Josephine Baker Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2014. . "- Slave Rebellion.org." - SlaveRebellion.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. . "THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RAP & HIP-HOP CULTURE." THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RAP & HIP-HOP CULTURE. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014. .

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