I'm Rob Wilson aka Short Circuit and this is Light Feet. Light Feet is a subset of hip-hop done to light feet music. It began between 2004 and 2005 in Harlem, New York. And if you know anything about basketball, part of the summer league was held at various courts in Harlem, including the Rucker Park, where a man named... Al B would perform at the halftime event and do a move that became known as the Harlem Shake.
Yup, that Harlem Shake. The name of this style was given to them by an MC named AG aka the voice of Harlem who was also the person responsible for putting together the first Light Feet crew, called Team Light Feet, which featured all of these dancers. And that's an abridged story of how Light Feet was born. There are a few techniques used in Light Feet dance in this era, but it all starts with the Harlem Shake.
This is the first foundation you need to learn. And the next up, the bad one. The rocks in this technique help you learn how to place and posture your body in this dance.
Tone Whop, this gives you your spank. And Light Feet is what we call your groove. It's the source of your movement. Rev up.
This move comes from the tonewap and also helps gives you that spank, but it has so many variations. In my opinion, I consider this a level up from the tonewap. Tic-tac-toe.
Tapping your body and making noises. Lock in. This is the period to your statement.
Make sure you do this on the eighth though. The eighth count. Ankle breaks. It brings more dynamics to the style. Hat tricks and shoe tricks became a part of the style later on and they add so much.
And that was the basics of light feet. If you want to learn how to do the style and get that spank, make sure to take STEEZY Studios'light feet program. Click the link in the description to check it out.
I'm Rob Wilson, AKA Short Circuit. I'll see y'all next time. I'm Andrew Furr, and this is shuffling. Originally known as the Melbourne shuffle, shuffling started in the early 1990s.
And you guessed it. Melbourne, Australia in the underground EDM and rave scene. The dance style became much more popular during a surge of shuffling videos being posted on YouTube around 2008 to 2009. The main foundation of shuffling is the running man.
If you can do this, you're about 75% of the way to being able to shuffle. The actual shuffle is a variation of the running man, but keeping your feet to the ground is very vital. You're only supposed to lift when you switch feet. The key is to look like you're gliding, and that only happens when you stay close to the to the ground.
The fun part is that you can shuffle in any direction. The Charleston is another important move because it's an actual base foundation of a UK variant of shuffling called cutting shapes. Kicks are another vital part of shuffling basics. As you can see many of the movements in shuffling pull from other dance styles so you'll see dancers use moves like the Spongebob, some sea walking, and adding your own flair.
Often your arms aren't set in shuffling so dancers will play with using our movement from tectonic, a French dance done to electro music, or just being playful and adding to your own character. Some important tips to looking and feeling like a shuffler. Don't look at your feet. It makes you look less confident.
Weight shift tips. Once you have the front back shuffle down, practice your side kicks. Practicing micah knikes, this move has a lot of names, but it helps with your ankle mobility, which is vital to this dance form. And of course, stay on beat. Thanks so much, y'all.
Hope you enjoy. Bye. I'm Luis Prado.
and this is Breaking. Breaking, or b-boying, was created in the 1970s during the disco era by black and Latino people in the Bronx, New York. More specifically, at the address 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where the first hip-hop party was held.
Breaking was a party dance, but also a battle dance. You were meant to rep yourself, your neighborhood, or your crew. It was born out of poverty and as a way to escape and express yourself. Foundations-wise, breaking starts with top rock. This is the introduction to who you are as a person and as a breaker.
A few main top rock steps are... The Indian step, the front step, and the salsa step. Then we got go-downs.
It's the glue between your moves when you go from a standing position to a lower position. Some common go-downs are a basic drop, a W, and of course a sweep. Then we got footwork.
As Eddie Stiles says, footwork is the blueprint for breaking. It helps you understand body awareness and control. Breaking.
Breaking is a style that borrows from a variety of other dance styles, but the one aspect that is unique to breaking is footwork. A few basic footwork steps are the six step, the three step, the one step, which some people call the coffee grinder, CCs, kick outs, and hooks. Next up, we have freezes.
This is the closing statement for your round, your punctuation. You don't just talk to someone and leave mid-sentence. You end your sentence.
A few examples of freezes are baby freeze, chair freeze, elbow freeze, air baby, Nike freeze, and a flag freeze. Keep in mind that you should face your freeze at your opponent to end your conversation, not facing the other way. Next is everyone's favorite. Power moves. These are the showstoppers, the flashiest moves and often the hardest physically.
These are moves in which your body is in motion, but you will always be spinning in one direction. It could be on your back, your shoulder, your hand, etc. We subcategorize power moves as ground power and air power. For ground power, we got windmills, flares, halos, head spins, and back spins.
For air power, there's moves like 1990s and 2000s, swipes, and air flares. Okay, I can't do air flares. Lastly, we have burns.
These are character moments, a way to show that you are trying to have a conversation with someone. It's an invitation that they can accept or not accept, however they want. I'm Yaya Ivankova-Armstrong, and this is Robo. Robot as a Dance 4 comes from mimes of the 1920s who imitated robots. It became popularized in the late 60s to 70s by Robert Shields as well as Michael Jackson who performed the dance on the television show Soul Train while singing Dancing Machine with the Jackson 5. The core foundation of robot is Dime Stop which means to stop completely and instantly after a movement.
It's vital to keep the concept and character of a robot while doing this technique. and try to look as unreal as possible. There are about 18 conceptual techniques that you can use alongside your dime stubs in order to enhance your robot.
A few popular ones are Stab motion, which is a sequence of dime stubs at regular, evenly paced timing. Strobbing involves irregular, sudden, sharp dime stubs and loss of continuity of a body part. Speed control, which as the name implies, is when you move from fast to slow or slow to fast. Slow motion.
Just like it sounds, you move at much slower pace than natural. Fast motion. Uses tension to add more speed to your movements. Rebound.
Where a body part moves quickly up, back or away from an invisible surface after hitting it. Animated bounce. When you imitate a repeated bounce.
And there are many more techniques. Fun fact. the word robot didn't even exist until the 1920s when a Czech writer and playwright by the name of Karel Čapek wrote a play entitled R.U.R. standing for Rozum's Universal Robots.
I'm Sherwin Salonga aka Beavs and this is Crump. Crump is a raw, expressive, and storytelling-based dance style that started in the early 2000s in South Central Los Angeles. There are five original creators and pioneers in Crump. Todd Eyes, Big Mijo, Lil C, Miss Prissy, and Slayard.
We call them Mount Buckmore. This dance has its roots in another dance called Clownin', and it pulls a lot of its balance points from sea-walking as well as clownin'. I like to split the techniques in Crump into old school and new school. Old school moves are clowning inspired and more linear in structure.
We got moves like the whoa, banging, which is used in moves like day ones, call the dogs. Then we got whips, hops, sea walking, like heel toe. And we got new school, which is more rugged with a bully mentality, like the wobble.
stomps, chest pops, arm swings, arm placements, jabs, focus points, the bounce, the gallop, the kickback, and of course character. For instance, my crump name is Beast and I often take the character of Beast when I dance. Then there's language, which is comprised and hand gestures power open hand and talking or style then our three main stances crump stance shoulder width to move around more technical stance and your off-balance stance And that's a glimpse of Krump. I actually taught an intro to Krump program on STEEZY.
So if you'd like to get into the nitty-gritty and dance this style, click the link in the description and let's get training. I'm Tango Litas and this is Dancehall. Dancehall music started in Jamaica in the 70s and the dance style grew in popularity in the 90s mainly due to the pioneering efforts of the great Gerald Levy, also known as Bogle, also known as Mr. Wacky, also known as the man, the history, and the dance. But Beyond music and dance, dancehall is also fashion, a place to celebrate, and a lifestyle onto itself. So, let's start with your body frame and a few foundational techniques.
Then we'll get into a couple moves. Posture is so important in this dancehall. You want to have soft knees, shoulders relaxed, and your waistline forward. Then you want to develop your waist and hip control to be able to do things such as winds, jooks, which is Jamaican patwa for poke.
and rocks. We have our social dances. A few examples of these are three dances created by the one and only John Hyde.
We have Thunderclap, Signal the Plane, and Pond the River. We have Smooth Steps. We have Zip It Up by Bogle, Summer Bounce, also created by Bogle, and Good Chemistry by me, because why not?
Then we have Badman or Gunman steps. These dances often come with the use of gun hands. In Jamaica, violence and gun crime is a societal reality. So this character in Dancehall was created to express that reality through dance. We have Gunman Skank, created by a group known as the North Coast Boys.
We have Rifle Walk, created by Coot Boss. In Dancehall, we want the people around us to catch the vibe. We want you to feel the energy.
So it's really important that you use full body engagement. Use as much of your body as possible. Dance from head to toe.
And don't fight against what feels good. Do what feels good. So, if you enjoyed the little bit of dance-off we spoke about today, please make sure you take my beginner dance-off program on STEEZY.
Just click the link below. It's all you have to do. And enjoy the program.
Peace, y'all. I'm Shivani. And I'm Chaya.
And this is Bhangra. Bangra Bangra hails from the state of Punjab in India and is a folk dance that dates back centuries. It's a dance created to celebrate and rejoice during the harvest season.
The dance was historically done by men and women would perform another folk dance called Gita. But as centuries have passed, both men and women are connecting to their culture through Bangra. The basic body posture in Bhangra has up and down shoulder movements.
You're not supposed to be stiff so let your upper body be loose and follow through with the shoulders. And you want to stay in a ready position with soft knees, a tucked pelvis, chest puffed, chin raised, shoulders down, arms big, look proud. Now getting into some Bhangra footwork.
Do keep in mind that each basic footwork has a variety of upper body movements that can be performed with each of them. These are just a few of the variations. First, we have Bedi, the most common footwork you'll see done with a tapping motion on the balls of the feet.
Next, we have Thammal, raising the knees high in a pendulum motion while hopping. Lastly, Panjab, crossing each leg one over the other while hopping. You'll see three typical hand positions in Bhangra.
One that looks like an L-shape and typically faces outward. Another one closing the index finger and thumb together while the other three fingers are still extended. And our personal favorite, the index finger, extended while we hold it up loud and proud. Your facial expressions and character when you're performing should include a lot of nakra. What is nakra?
Nakra loosely translates to cute, witty, or cheeky. It's the main storytelling element to convey emotion. This dance is vivacious, celebratory, and energetic. So remember to lead with a smile.
And that is a crash course on Bhangra. If you want to learn more South Asian dance forms check out our tutorials at BeFunkDance.com. I'm Brittany Cavaco and this is ballet. Ballet, coming from the Italian word ballare, which means to dance, originated during the Renaissance era between the 15 and 1600s in Italy.
It was a dance done to impress the royal courts and the royal family, then became a social dance between the court members. and later developed into a concert dance form. Most of the popularity and cultural significance of ballet is credited to Catherine de'Medici, a Florentine noblewoman who later became the Queen of France when she married King Henry II.
In ballet, it's important to understand your basic moves at bar first. This is the way to get a dancer centered, warmed up, fill the strength, and have assistance to focus on each individual leg. Knowing all the movements at bar is your foundation for your ballet technique. you'll need to know to be a ballet dancer is to start with your feet.
There are five main positions. There's first position, second position, third position, fourth position, and you guessed it, fifth position. Your point, or your articulation of your feet, is vital. There are many misconceptions on how you point your feet, but what it definitely isn't is scrunching your foot or sickling it.
You want to work through your feet and elongate them. This will set you up to do all of your best ballet movements. Other techniques include plié, which means to bend, relevé, which means to rise, tendu, which is constantly a balance test. Everything grows off of these movements. Then turn, such as soutenu, which is the foundational turn, chenet turns, which is great for traveling.
In pirouettes, there are many, but at the beginner stage, you learn two types, en dehors and en dedans. And always make sure you spot when you do your turns. Then we have jumps, such as sauté, saut de chat, and glissade.
And outside of the techniques themselves, having body and spatial awareness are vital. Need to allow your leg to work separately from the rest of your body and understand how your legs and arms are working through space, always allowing your upper body to have a freeness and breathiness to it. Then there are variations, which are combinations of techniques performed to specifically specific music.
These are often pieces that are pre-choreographed and have specific steps, timing, and not much improvisation. There are classical variations and modern variations. Classical is very guided and coached. Modern day variations are more fluid and some choreographers are more okay with you adding your flair or element. However, those personal touches must stay within the ballet movement.
Because this is a concert dance, the dancer is supposed to be performing to an audience. even if there isn't anyone in the audience. They still want to emote and project as if there is one.
And that was a bit on ballet. If you want to get more in-depth with your training, you can take my ballet course on STEEZY by clicking the link in the description. Bye! I'm John Gifted and this is Waving. Waving.
is a dance that started alongside the beginnings of popping in the late 60s to early 70s. Originally, it was used as a transition between popping movements. However, the dance has become more recognized as its own style in recent years, and now focuses more on emulating the natural flow of water in any and all environments, rather than just being a transition in popping.
There are two core techniques used in waving. The arm wave, which is a wave from fingertip to fingertip, and the tidal wave, which is a wave from fingertip to fingertip, wave which is a wave from your head to your toe. Outside of these core techniques there are tons of branches and variations you can do.
Hand waves, not just playing, hand waves, microwaves, side waves, isolated or segmented waves, toe waves, Bigger ones like twist waves, rock waves, diagonal body waves, leg waves. How many times can I say waves? There are even style variants such as snaking pioneered by Poppin Taco. Or King Cobra which was made popular by the Mysterious Poppers from Long Beach after its creator Daryl Johnson saw Boogaloo Sam do the circular.
motion with his chest in 1979. Even digits which was born from the rave scene where you use your fingers instead of your whole body to wave. Or liquid made popular by dancers like David Elsewhere which utilized the hands to create infinite flowing waves. The most important aspect to being a waver is to remember that fluidity is your bread and butter and your waves need to have a clear intention and completion. Gracias, adios.
I'm Gravity Jacobs and this is Vogue. Vogue emerged as a category in the ballroom scene in the 1980s but it existed in rudimentary forms before that. It was created by LGBTQ black and Latinx people who danced in underground clubs in New York. It was a way for queer dancers to escape, create, and find a community of like-minded individuals. Vogue is a stylized and performative dance with three subsets.
You have New Way, Old Way, and Vogue Fan. Old Way comprises of more static poses, as if you're on the cover of a magazine. Some of the foundations you'd use in Old Way are poses, lines, floor work, similar to what you'd see in b-boying, freezes, also much like b-boying.
and popping, which is much like the style of popping. It's important to keep in mind that many of the foundational club and street style dances were being developed and shared socially during the same era, at many of the same parties. So, they each had a mutual influence on each other and they share plenty of the same foundational techniques. In New Way, the movements are more geometric, intricate, and use higher energy and flexibility.
This category includes elements like arms control and stretch. Arms control is what your arms are doing, so that would comprise of lines, boxing, and clicks which are sort of like bone breaking. Stretch is what your legs are doing. You do moves like splits or contortion or flexibility stunts. Then there's Vogue Femme which is a more feminine and feeling based subset of Vogue and it can be either soft or dramatic.
This category in comparison to the other two has more clearly defined codified names and elements. You have the Cat Walk, Duck Walk, Hands Performance, Spins and Dips and Floor Performance. and those are the five elements of VogueFan.
And that was a bit of the basics of Vogue. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. Hi, I'm Lindywe Rose.
And this is Afro Dance, specific to South Africa. Africa is too big, as it is a continent with multiple countries, multiple cultures, multiple music genres, and of course, course multiple styles of dance. So it is almost impossible for us to do a crash course on Afro dance so we'll be focusing specifically on some popular South African dances, more specifically Amapiano. Amapiano is a music genre that emerged in the early 2010s and is a fusion of Kwaito, South African house music, jazz and Bacardi music.
Amapiano was played at house parties and underground parties throughout the South Africa and when music makes people move, dances are created or even pulled from the past. Most of the posture in Amapiano is influenced by Tansula culture. It means to walk with protruded buttocks.
We'll have our chest forward, derriere protruded, knees slightly bent, head and neck relaxed. A few of the moves in Amapiano dance nowadays include and are influenced by Kwasa Kwasa, a dance Dance from the 90s. Though it is not necessarily used much in Amapiano nowadays, it is such a vital dance that helps us learn how we are supposed to sink into Amapiano music. It also came from Kwaito.
Sikale keke. Also from the 90s, meaning to cut the cake. It was originally a Kwaito dance, then developed into an Amapiano dance.
Pouncing cat. Even though it seems like it's a body roll, the dance is a little bit more of a body roll. The move is actually all in the hips as well as sinking downwards into the beats.
This dance really teaches you the syncopation and the musicality of Amapiano. Dakiwe. It's a sinking downward motion with the head nodding upwards. Guara Guara.
This move is a bit more of a This move comes from the music genre Kom, which is an onomatopoeia of hitting the drum. Kom! This move started becoming popular in 2017 to 2018. And that was a glimpse at some South African Amapiano dancers. Bye bye! I'm Fred Meyer and this is Wacking.
Wacking is an athletic, dramatic, and freeing dance style created in Los Angeles by a group of young gay men in the 70s that used to frequent dance clubs like Geno's, Paradise Ballroom, and a few others. Upon the inception of the dance, the music, themes, and competitions formed a it were facilitated by a DJ named Michelangelo. Whacking actually originated from another dance style called punking. So much of the foundational movements of posing and the whack itself came from this styles predecessor and much like in Vogue Whacking was created as a form of escape for young gay men to make positives out of the negatives in their lives. The main techniques in whacking are posing, used to create space and pictures as well as demand presence and express emotion on the dance floor.
Whacking, which is your action, it means to strike with force. Think of the onomatopoeias and the action scenes from the TV show Batman and Robin. You can use this technique as your main vessel for conversation and storytelling. Rolls, nunchucks, and twirls, inspired by the by Bruce Lee's nunchuck movements, you'll often see dancers use this technique to hit multiple rapid beats or lyrical moments.
Overheads Tinkers or Bolos, originally called Tinkers because of a dancer named Tinker Toy was the first person to do this move. It may seem like it's just an arm move, but it's really important to use your chest and your back as well. Other moves and variations include lines, which can be used to create shapes, pictures, direct attention, and depending on the execution, it could also be considered a move. it a whack.
And chase, which is when one arm chases after another as if there's a delay. It can be done with any arm movements, creating a gallop-like rhythm. Some footwork and turns used in whacking are the disco step, pas de bourrée, and often other jazz footwork, but there's a lot of freedom of choice when it comes to your feet. Halo turns. This is a turn where you look up at the ceiling and plant your head right back to the front.
This is a great moment to spice up an average turn. And the corkscrew spin. a tight pencil turn that uses a quick swipe of the arms to create more speed and dynamics.
You'll likely notice that this dance style is spelled in two different ways, whacking with two A's and whacking with an H-A. Like in most club and street dance styles, there's context and stories that often clash with each other, creating controversy and divide. Each of these spellings have their own important reasonings and context, so you can read more into those if you'd like to understand the style more deeply. But the most important thing is to always do your best to respect whether styles comes from and the individual stories that were born from the culture. Thanks for watching.
I'm Dennis and this is Locking. Locking is a dance created in downtown Los Angeles by a gentleman from South Central. That gentleman is my father, Don Camberlock Campbell.
The dance was created in 1970 when Don was being shown a dance called the Robot Shuffle. In the cafeteria of LA. at LA Trade Tech College. The shuffle is an extension of the popular 70s dance, the robot. But he did the dance so poorly, he ended up creating a movement called the lock, which became the base for his own dance he called the Cambalock.
Until 1974, when it was changed due to legal reasons between a record company and Don who made a record for them about his dance. The base movement in locking, well, the lock. This move was meant to be continuous, but you can add freezes to pause the movement.
if it makes sense musically. You can do a down lock or an up lock, which some people call the muscle man, or the lock lock, which is the lock times two. Some moves that go along with locking are give yourself five.
You see in the 70s, giving five was a greeting or a way to acknowledge someone. When there's no one around to acknowledge you, acknowledge yourself by giving yourself five. Give the floor five, which is like giving yourself five, but was used to give levels to the dance. Don, you stand up. to hit the floor so hard you could hear it, even with the music blasting.
The points. This simple gesture came from a moment when Don was dancing in a nightclub and a group of ladies were watching him and making fun of him. Don stopped dancing and pointed at one of the ladies, which caught her off guard, and her friends started laughing at her.
The move is used as an acknowledgement of the people, places, and things around you. Keeping time. Some people call it pacing. But this was just how my father kept the beat and the timing of the music.
Risk. This was meant to be an embellishment and accentuation of moves, almost like a wind-up. Splits. James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr. inspired kick splits.
The Ham Bone, which is originally an African American style of dance that involves stomping, as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. Hat tricks. Twirling, tossing, and catching your hat.
There are a few moves that I can't do anymore due to old age, such as knee drops and swan dives. But that's a little bit on locking. If you enjoyed this little foundation lesson, I highly recommend that you take the Beginner Locking Program on STEEZY Studio. Thanks.