Hip Hop Dance
By Cori Weiner
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
In terms of quantity, hip hop dance is without question a growing phenomenon here in St. Petersburg, with countless dance schools having multiplied throughout the city over the past five years or so. In terms of quality, however, there leaves much to be desired. Apart from not growing up in a hip hop community, as many dancers do in the U.S., two main obstacles prevent Russian dancers from performing to the highest standards. The first is in the general mindset — achieving one’s own style is not the prevalent goal here. In a beginner’s hip hop class in the U.S., the dancer may be introduced to the concept of adding his or her own style but in Russia, by contrast, it’s all about copying others’ moves as accurately as possible, including styles. This methodology seems to go against the very roots of hip hop, which stress creativity and freestyle dance. That’s not to say that Russians with talent and drive aren’t striving to make their mark. There are even two main institutions responsible for putting Russia on the international hip hop map: Hip Hop International and Modern Dance Institute. Both organizations invite dancers year round to give master classes with the goal of later sending Russian dancers to attend events where they are granted the opportunity to compete worldwide. Based in Los Angeles, Hip Hop International (www.hhi-russia.ru), provides the connections needed to invite stars such as creator of the “locking” style Don Campbell and his son Dennis Danehy. On June 1, “Stomp the Yard” choreographer Chuck Maldonado came to St. Petersburg to give classes, and on at the end of this month champions from a Russia-wide competition held earlier this year are due to fly to Las Vegas to compete in the 2008 World Hip Hop Dance Championship. Modern Dance Institute (www.mdispb.com) has similar goals: raising the bar for professional dancers in Russia and providing master classes to prepare them for the yearly Juste Debout competition in France. Selected representatives from the previous year’s competition run the master classes. Styles range from popping and locking to house and new style, all official categories of the competition itself, and classes are held twice a month. In 2009 the pre-selection for Juste Debout will be held in Russia. Aside from these large organizations, pursuing lessons can be quite challenging simply because it is virtually impossible to predict the quality of instruction based on the price of the lessons, location of the dance school, or the conditions of the studio for the various hip hop dance classes on offer in St. Petersburg. One choice is to consult the succinct and informative website www.idance.ru/school_list.php. Type in your location and dance interests, and then see how viewers have rated schools. According to Maria Bydolak of Hip Hop International, the better schools tend to be more underground, which means they are even harder for the average visitor to St. Petersburg to find. Some of those that she mentions are United Dance, Canon Dance, Right Dance and Chicago. Alena Popova of Modern Dance Institute provides quite a different list consisting of the larger schools with financial stability: Studio 17, MadStyle, Dance Impress, and FunFanatiks. These are the schools that competed in the hip hop “battle” (contest) PM: STATION in 2006. Just be sure when you investigate not to be put off by the names of the classes. R n B, New Style, Street Dance, and sometimes even Club can all be code for different styles of hip hop. Many studios offer the first class for free. A rather glaring exception is Gerbera, not offering the first class for free, and only holding classes for 40-45 min. In the end, in addition to classes, competitions, and organizations, “what is absolutely necessary for Russia is the continued effort of the cultural exchange of ideas,” says Dennis Danehy. “Without it, the level will never rise, the hip hop culture will become too commercialized and watered down, and Russia will continue to trail the rest of the world.”
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