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The word hip-hop encompasses both a type of social dance and a broader sub-culture. This sub-culture is based in four expressive elements: graffiti art, deejaying, emceeing, and dancing. Today there are a myriad of dance forms and styles residing under the umbrella term “hip-hop dance,” including locking, popping, b-boying, and hip-hop party dances. This chapter gives an overview of these forms, with a particular focus on party dances. Party rockin’ has been present since the beginning of the hip-hop scene in the 1970s, with dances like the Gigolo and the Patty Duke. However, in the 1980s these new social dances took on a flamboyant b-boy-esque battle style, replacing circles of b-boys/b-girls with party rockers. These new hip-hop party dances came into existence as a result of hip-hop music, with rappers making call and response records such as Do the Wop by B-Fats. The author also examines the commercialization of hip-hop dance.

This chapter offers a brief overview of jazz dance styles. Styles that are defined include authentic jazz dance, tap dance, club jazz dance, jazz-influenced dance, rhythm-generated jazz dance, theatrical jazz dance, Afro-Carribean jazz dance, Broadway jazz dance, classical jazz dance, commercial jazz dance, concert jazz dance, contemporary jazz dance, Latin jazz dance, lyrical jazz dance, pop jazz dance, West-coast jazz dance, vernacular jazz dance, hip-hop dance, funk, and street jazz dance. Styles are grouped in a way that suggests shared roots and aesthetic principals. Readers are encouraged to refer to this section as a glossary but to keep in mind that many of the styles fall into more than one category and can even overlap with other styles in its group.

Chapter 6 puts hip hop and its pedagogy into the context of this French theory of practice, considering how a climate created by French intellectuals focusing on practice and understanding bodies as sites of cultural production and knowledge allowed hip hop to be taken seriously by ministers of culture and a left-wing elite. Reading the work of Leroi-Gourhan, Bourdieu and De Certeau anticipating and accompanying a shift to an idea of culture as practice, using dance as a subject, an example or a metaphor, provides here a context for the appreciation of the counter-cultural form and an explanation of its “recuperation” by state agencies for social purposes, and in particular the institutionalization of its transmission or pedagogy. Chapter 6 also documents how hip hop dance technique is learned, complementing these theories of practice, and the concept of mimesis is discussed in the transmission of hip hop moves. The use of the mirror in the dance studio allows a double reflection on the aestheticization of the form in class training and the constitution of a community in performance.

The manifold varieties of jazz dance have always dominated dance in mainstream American cinema. Given jazz dance’s African roots and its many manifestations in the African-American vernacular, it is not surprising that its use in film almost always implicates issues of race and racism. This article looks at vernacular jazz dance in mainstream American cinema as a focal point of American race relations, focusing on two particularly influential areas of popular vernacular jazz dance: first, the authentic jazz dance developed alongside the jazz music of the 1920s to 40s and featured prominently in films of the same period; and second, the hip-hop dance which first appeared in film in the 1980s and which continues to be hugely popular in contemporary commercial cinema (as well as music television). Early jazz tap figures discussed include Bill Robinson, Jeni LeGon, and the Nicholas Brothers.