What is the Korea Singapore Dance Project?
Now that is a damn good question. The KSDP is a dance project started by a few dedicated dancers from Singapore and Korea, namely Christepher Su, aka Monkeyking (Singapore-Australia-Korea), Hard Training Project (Korea), G-Tribute (Korea) and Angel Tan (Singapore). It was founded in January 2006 with the aims of improving and nurturing the budding dance scene in Singapore in terms of KNOWLEDGE, FOUNDATION and SKILL.
The "Street" styles of dancing (Bboying - Bgirling, Popping, Boogaloo, Locking, Street Jazz, Freestyle Hip Hop, House, Krump, Lindy Hop, Be Bop, Wacking, Shaking…) for lack of a better term is probably the most misunderstood category of human movement out there, period. It is misunderstood partially because dancers don’t eloquently express ourselves enough and partially because of the media and some stupid ass instructors and studios who put anything together and call it "Hip Hop - MTV" dancing.
For the record, there is no category of dance known as MTV. "MTV" stands for Music Television and you can get it for $14.95 a month on Satellite. To clarify, if "MTV" were a style of dance, then it would need a genre of music to belong to. "MTV" is not a genre of music, it’s a TV station…it’s like saying "Hey, I dance Power FM style!" =P
You sound like a toy. (TOY: noun, meaning person who acts like they know about something, but they don’t.)
It just so happens that MTV has been playing music from ‘Hip Hop’ artists as part of a trend for it over the past 5 years. If you tuned into MTV in 1998, you wouldn’t have gotten any Hip Hop because Grunge was the sound of the youth then a lot owing to influential acts such as Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day. Hence, you have been schooled. So don’t forget. If you need to talk about this style of dance call it "Commercial Hip Hop" if anything.
Which leads to the topic of the first blog entry….
What is Hip Hop Dancing?
This is a very difficult question fraught with many different points of view. It’s problematic, yo. To me, if you are dancing Hip Hop, you MUST have up beat, down beat and jacking in your rhythm. Up beat is when you rock your body upwards on th 4th beat. Down beat is when you bring your body down on the 4th beat. Jacking is the inverting of the chest and flexing outwards of the shoulders on the 2nd and 4th (or just 4th) beat. 99% of music videos out there don’t have these movements in their clips, so imma post a clip up of up, downbeat and jacking later.
Is ‘C-Walking’ Hip Hop? No, it’s not. The ‘C’ stands for ‘Crip,’ a very large group of gangsters in the US who rep the colour blue. It might be all well and good to do a C-Walk in Sg, but don’t go around doing it if you ever find yourself in the US. C-Walking is to Hip Hop what the Macarena is to Flamenco. Or the YMCA is to homosexuals —NOT RELEVANT!
Back to the Korea Singapore Dance Project……..
Over 2006, the KSDP will be booking studios across Singapore to run workshops for different ‘Street’ styles of dance. If you want a certain category of workshop (Hip Hop, Popping, Krumping, etc) let me know and we see what we can put together. For now, let me knowledge you a little somthing about Project One: "Floorskillz Bboy Competition + Singapore Workshops"
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Project One: "Floorskillz Bboy Competition + Floor The Love"
Knu Funk Crew from Seoul are coming out to Singapore to compete in Floorskillz, the annual Bboy Competition in Singapore. They will be in Singapore from March 15th to about March 19th, and while they are having "Floor The Love" free hip hop, breaking and house workshops in Singapore.
You can register your interest here on this Friendster page or email me at rhythmsneakers@gmail.com Peace from the Far East
Monkeyking in Seoul.
http://koreasingadancers.multiply.com
www.friendster.com/profiles/danceproject
