I have been taking a hip hop class at Rhythmhood for the past month or so. Today was the last one I’ll attend for a little while, since I’ll have a Charleston Traffic Jam! class at that time slot. While Charleston is going, I’m going to try out Rhythmhood’s Whaacking class. Most of the Rhythmhood hip hop classes were taught by the fantastic dancer B. Parish. During the session last Wednesday, he reviewed the fundamental principals of hip hop dance that he outlined during the beginner circuit.

The first concept we learned was bounce. Bounce matches the 2 and the 4 emphasis of the music. The body rises and falls over these two beats, rising up slightly around the 1 and 3, then falling on the 2 and 4. Conversely, one can emphasize an upward motion, where the head reaches towards the ceiling on the 2 and 4. We added arm movements, bending the elbows away from the floor in opposition to the downward or upward motion of the torso.

The second hip hop dance fundamental we learned was lean. Compared to other dance styles, the upper torso hinges more for hip hop. B. Parish talked about crunching one’s abdomen to get the torso to hinge forward correctly. A similar crunching of the side muscles gets the sideways motion to feel right. Backwards lean is easy and relaxed. Varying the direction of the lean is an easy way to make the dance feel more spatially dynamic.

We walked forwards and backwards across the floor while practicing bounce and lean. Sideways walking was much more difficult than forwards and backwards. The sideways crunch was less familiar to my body. We experimented with varying rhythm between single and double time. With double time, B. Parish suggested to think of each bounce as a pose. There was a pose when the foot lands, and a pose when the foot is in the air.

The third principle we learned was groove. One can dance with bounce and lean, but feel like the movement is disconnected and jerky. Groove smooths out the movement between the end points of the bounce. The body does not only lean into the beat like a metronome, but instead reacts fluidly to the sound at all times. Grooving to the music does not have to involve complicated or exaggerated movement. It can be simply bouncing and leaning to the beat, letting the body react to what one is hearing.

We concluded the last class with free styling. B. Parish offered a few tricks for hip hop-improvisation. He demonstrated how a pose can change the body’s relationship to space. After striking a pose, one can then grove in that position and explore the new angles that the pose makes possible. B. Parish showed how specific movements can be used to draw attention to a specific part of the body. A finger point, for example, draws the attention momentarily to the hand, or to a part of the body which the finger is pointing to. The dancer can then show movement with that part of the body. We practiced drawing shapes with our hands, feet, and hips. We briefly spoke about changing the timing — using slow motion periodically— but were cautioned against getting away from the groove for too long. During all of the freestyle practice, we were reminded to return to bounce and lean to make sure it felt like hip hop.