Fusing Dance, Video, Visual Art & Music

The advent of online media has collapsed geographical borders between artists around the world. So, can there be a new fusion of dance, video/film, visual arts, music & other crafts to create something new and awe-inspiring? 

Now, it's easier to share ideas, communicate, and collaborate on projects with social networking technology. We have the ability to pitch ideas out into the Interwebs, even in a rough draft fashion, and mold them through online collaboration. If the artistic landscape was previously segregated into different disciplines - dancers mingled with dancers, musicians stuck with musicians - then now, it's possible to bridge those differences at a faster rate. Also, there is a significant trend towards the DIY - do it yourself - culture since the tools are more readily available to create your graphics, upgrade your photos, and shoot and edit your own videos. Dancers are no longer just dancers, filmmakers are no longer just filmmakers. We put on multiple hats and run with them.

If you paired a visual artist, a dancer, and a musician together on one collaborative project, what would they come up with? The possibilities are endless, aren't they? All it takes are open, humble, and creative minds that love to explore. The kind of cross-pollination of ideas is still a huge canvas to discover.

Some thoughts of where this could go:

- Music videos with dancers telling the storyline of a song completely through their movement.

- Spoken word poets performing live as visual artists make paintings and collages to their words.

- A fusion of spoken word and dancers together telling a story live.

- Filmmakers using mobile video editing setups to create visual experiences based on a musician's performance.

- Short films being made as inspirations from a musician's song, expanding the characters and world from the song.

- Using social network technology and crowdsourcing via twitter and facebook to allow an audience to influence certain aspects of a live performance.

Currently, there's a movement online with production companies and collectives like Wong Fu Productions who are bringing artists like Far East Movement, David Choi, and Quest for live events like the International Secret Agents Concert on Sept 6. This is an example of how creative minds who make the most of the accessible tools of artistic creation are establishing their own mark.

Perhaps one aspect of the future of street dance lies in embracing these opportunities to work with artists from different fields. The expansive media culture that we live in allows for the rules to be broken and for new ones to be written. Even with online dance videos, can there be more than dance tutorials and documenting of competitions on Youtube? Combining the talents of filmmakers and dancers is still largely unexplored online. What if filmmakers were brought on stage with live performers to create images or video segments that the dancers interacted with? Can the story of a person's life be told in a live event combining film, dance, and music with interactive elements, besides being presented in the usual documentary film fashion? What if you could literally "walk" into someone's life on stage and experience their key moments?

If anything, the human spirit is so creative in its curiosity, that we can only hope for the new possibilities to arrive soon.

New Profile Image from Juan Larrazabal!

This is the new profile image for LA Hip Hop Dance: hand-drawn by artist Juan Larrazabal, an artist based in Los Angeles. Pretty crazy, huh? His work can be seen at www.koolskull.tk. Thank you Juan! 

We wanted to collaborate with Juan as his art has been seen in the streets of Hollywood the past few years. Plus, we're excited to start collaborating with artists from different worlds - dancers, painters, musicians, filmmakers, etc -  to create and inspire together. Woohoo! Time to play!

Street Dance on Stage: Exploring the Theatrical

Bringing street dance to theater has taken on many forms in the past three decades. Most recently in LA, we're seeing the touring edition of "Groovaloo" at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The Groovaloos won NBC's "Superstars of Dance," bringing them as a group to the mainstream American television audience. Now, they and many other hip hop-based teams are venturing into stage shows that will bring greater exposure to street dance styles like popping, locking, and bboying. 

What will be theater's effect on street dance? In some ways, putting a show together makes it more accessible to experience aspects of the styles as well as the culture. For an audience member who isn't directly involved with the bboying world, it will be easier to get a glimpse of that by buying a ticket to a show. Some dancers will become household names through this exposure. And the demands of putting on an entertaining show require street dancers to prepare for choreography routines and possibly on-stage narratives that will push their craft. 

But is it possible to bring new elements to a street dance show that aren't found in our familiar environment of battles, cyphers, and sessions? Take Cirque du Soleil, for example. Cirque is well-known for taking elements of clowning, pantomime, acrobatics, contortionists, and other street performers and bring them under one fantastical umbrella. These shows take us to bizarre, imaginative landscapes that incorporate these diverse performance arts to create spectacle. Can street dance shows go in that direction? Will there be new ideas on movement, storytelling, and musicality that will be explored by progressive minds bringing street dance to the stage? More than likely, it will take individuals with clear, passionate vision to re-conceive street dance in a whole new light for the theater.

One advantage that the theater has over film is its immediate spontaneity. There is a connection formed between the dancer and the audience, which is in the moment and can be different at each performance. If street dancers have strong skills in freestyling, could there be certain aspects of a theatrical show that could evolve through a performance by interacting with the audience? Could there be alternate set pieces that play out like alternate endings for a film? Of course, there are staging complications with these ideas including the already challenging aspects of running a show and keeping your performers safe. But it would be interesting to see how the unique aspects of freestyling in street dance could affect the structure of a stage show.

Hopefully, this new period of street dance in theatre will be ripe with exploration and risk-taking.

Why "Play" is Crucial for our Dance

"Play" is a compelling idea. We remember it from our childhood whether we played with toys or played games with others. So how does it relate to dance, especially freestyle street dance like popping, locking, and bboying?

First, what is play? Stuart Brown from the National Institute of Play has done research-based analysis on how play stimulates areas of the human brain, and allows us to express greater freedom in creativity and social communication. Essentially, we're healthier when we have regular periods of play. It could be a hobby, a passion, or a consuming desire to experience new ideas with curiosity for the possible.

Without play, there's something missing at the heart of our self-expression. Play allows us to be ready to experience the wonder that comes from discovering new insights, sensations, and ideas when we are pursuing our passion. Play opens our minds and our hearts to sharing joy with each other. It connects us and inspires us to embrace our peers. We can be child-like, not childish, in our play, recalling a sense of innocence, a lack of self-consciousness, and a willingness to live in the moment.

All of those qualities are crucial to freestyling. Popping, locking, and bboying in a freestyle cypher context calls us to be present in the moment and to illustrate the music with our bodies and minds. Self-consciousness and the tendency to think too hard about what moves to do can kill a sense of playfulness in our dance. Yes, we can apply thoughtful critique and analysis to dance movements and culture. But there is a simple joy that's missing when play is absent.

So the question is, how have you played today?

Street Dancing in the 2009 Economy

It's going to be interesting in the coming days to see reactions and impressions of one of the biggest events in LA this past weekend: Freestyle Session 12th Anniversary and How Tha West Was Won, both at Club Circus in Hollywood, CA. 

Some of the highlights included:

1 on 1 popping final: Poppin J (K-OGS from Korea) vs. Jsmooth (Machine Gone Funk)

1 on 1 locking final: Flo Master vs. Win

Semifinal bboy crew battle: Zulu Kings vs. Monsta Squad

Final bboy crew battle: The Squadron vs. Monsta Squad

Power move exhibition battle: Demon vs. Marcio (both from France)

There is much more to be written and discussed, as we'll see online at forums and Youtube comments pages.

But, we definitely felt the impact of our current economy at FSS/HTWWW. The crowd at both events were significantly smaller than last year's edition. Although there were plenty of vendors, you could see that folks were saving money for travel and housing costs. Many dancers came from outside the U.S. to compete in this event, hailing from South Korea, France, Russia, Canada, and many more nations.

How will these harder economic times affect the street dance culture? Will we see fewer people traveling to compete at events outside of their home country/city? Or will there be fewer bigger events within the calendar year?

As dancers, we're not immune to the global financial crisis. We're already feeling the impact with our families, jobs, schools, etc. It's interesting to see how this might affect our dance mentality. Will we give a greater appreciation to our dance today as there's no telling what will happen tomorrow? Will we take fewer classes because it's expensive to take studio classes even once or twice a week when they cost anywhere from $10-20?

One might think a generation of youth could turn to dance as a more cost-effective form of physical activity, artistic expression, and entertainment. After all, if a new, aspiring dancer was exposed to street dance culture via Youtube, it doesn't cost them to view videos besides having access to a computer, electricity, and an Internet connection. You can start practicing, meeting up with friends locally, and spend hours of free time working on your craft. It might be cheaper than buying a movie ticket. 

Harder economic times can also lead to us playing less of a consumer of pop media culture and drive us to create. It would be amazing to see a creative renaissance within street dance styles, with new directions inspired by the mood of this economic climate. The less time we spend consuming media culture, the more time we could apply to dance. Now, this isn't a call to abandon media culture or even a critique of it. But it's a hypothetical thought that we could consider. It's worth taking a look at some of the creative movements that have come up in world history and how they were influenced by social-economic upheaval. 

Perhaps another development that could occur is a greater appreciation for other styles besides your own. Harder times often lead us to be more merciful to others and to be more community-minded. With lightning-speed communication technology at our fingertips, perhaps our conversations will change in ways that will allow more intimate collaboration between different communities.

If anything, we know that as dancers, we are intimately involved with the rest of the world through what we do. It's clear that we're part of the global community. Now, the question is how can we bring change on a global scale through our passion?

Sweepy & Jr Boogaloo Poppin Classes - Thurs, Aug 21

Props to MGF and the Funk Dungeon for setting up these classes with Sweepy & Jr Boogaloo. Going down Thurs, Aug 20 from 9pm - 12midnight @ Evolution Dance Studios, 4200 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood, CA. $20/person. Also props to Kid Boogie for posting this on westcoastpoppin.com.

Structuring Street Dance Education

Can an organized, structured learning environment be created for street dance education? Imagine a series of schools established for poppers, lockers, and bboys/bgirls across the world. OG masters would provide regular instruction while students would have regular training. Students would also have focused time to experiment and push their craft in new directions. This learning environment could be privately funded through tuition or publicly financed by grants. 

What would be the pros and cons of having an educational institution for street dancers on the level of Julliard or performing groups such as the New York City Ballet? There would be more financial benefits for established dancers to teach. Also, it would be likely that more professional level groups would come out of the student body and enter the performance world. Arguments have been made that the "rawness" of street dance styles could be lost if they were taught in a formal academic setting. Also, there have been debates about the "homogenization" of the culture if an established  group of teachers dominated the learning environment. 

But can there be a beneficial compromise? There is a possibility that we could have a learning environment that had the best of both worlds. What if students had individualized learning tracks while being matched with a mentor for a period of time? Or what if the curriculum was evolving for a student and reflected what he or she was focused on at a particular time? Often, we may shy away from structuring a dance education because it reminds us of the worst experiences we've had in our general academic education (ie, middle school, high school, etc.) 

However, dance education is one field where a lot of experimentation can be done in terms of finding the best way to teach students, using different learning models. There's a lot of flexibility in creating a dance education program since it involves mind-body aesthestics. Shouldn't dancers also nurture their minds as well as their bodies as they grow? Creating a greater awareness for students of other art forms, aesthetic mentalities, and even a sense of history could play a role in their lives as dancers. 

We're now in a period when there's more people signing up for dance classes and trying new styles that they've never seen before. In the end, it will be crucial to see who teaches these new minds and bodies.

Globalization: Digitizing Street Dance

We're now seeing street dance quantified in the form of video clips online. With the widespread reach of Youtube, ideas and concepts within street dance are being exchanged in the most digitized quantifiable form currently possible. This is in the form of moving images as seen in online video. Now, you can be exposed to a style that is popular in a region thousands of miles from where you live. 

Is this a globalization of dance culture at a pace we've never seen before? Hip hop culture has spread worldwide and has been well-documented by essayists, photographers, and filmmakers. Now, the added element of online video sharing and social networking has collapsed geographical borders. Of course, seeing a video online can't replace actual face-to-face instruction from a teacher or replace the awareness that happens when you are regularly part of a burgeoning dance community. But the online world is now playing a greater role in a new generation of dancers that are hungry to learn a style when other opportunities aren't available.

With the number of dance videos and instructionals exploding online, how does one find the video that you really want or that will give you the best information? On Youtube, there are popular videos that are favorited and highly rated, which can be passed around in a viral fashion. These videos seem to pop up more frequently on users' radars. Videos that aren't favorited may disappear from the top rankings of search engines over time.

There are interesting parallels to the beginnings of the Internet in the consumer world during the mid to late 1990s. At that time, web pages were popping up everywhere. When you used a search engine like AltaVista or Lycos, you'd get a wide range of results. And sometimes, you had to dig deeper to find the website you wanted. Google changed the online world when it hit the scene in 1998. Using the now-famous PageRank system, Google's team adapted an academic-inspired approach to ranking websites based on how others were referring to them via links. Therefore, more "relevant" pages would appear at the top of your search results. The world of online search has grown tremendously through the 2000s. Of course, Google is now part of our daily lives and it's hard to remember a time when we didn't use it.

Can an effective search engine be employed for street dance videos online? Youtube already has a search engine using tags and number of views as the basis for compiling search results. But is there a more effective way to organize and structure the large number of dance videos online? Right now, it seems that we've brought online video as a factor that can affect the different subcultures within the larger street dance world. We all have had frustrating experiences trying to find the best tutorial for a particular style. It can be difficult to decide which video to view, especially if you don't have prior knowledge or exposure to that style. The possibility of getting misinformation increases if there aren't "administrators" online who will critique these videos. Currently, we rely upon the whims of the "crowd" to rate or comment on these videos to determine their value.

In this present day, we live in an information economy. Ideas are being exchanged at a faster rate than ever before. Conversations are happening between parties who had less access to each other in the past. Something wondrous and terrifying is happening with street dance now online. A larger question to ask may be, how will this digitizing of street dance affect the spirit of the art form?