Audition & opportunity to study
Interviews
Colin McDonald aka Bboy Tuway aka Tuscany
Hip Hop journey
I started dancing when I was 10 years old in 1978. I took dance originally as a vocation, then I became a professional: teaching, performing and touring all styles. I achieved to choreograph George Michael’s Net Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium in 1999, with 45 dancers, 50 choir singers and a full band in front of 25,000 people.
His thought on the UK scene
The dance scene is absolutely thriving. There are multiple competitions, hundreds of dance classes and a myriad of old to new school dancers are still participating. The covid-19 situation has and I think it will enhance the community. Most of the people have used online methods during the pandemic, and even though virtual jams stopped, online jams increased making the scope and reaching a wider audience. Now individuals like myself and many others are trying to educate and ensure that dancers are more focused on the business side to increase sustainability, in the early days many artists were ripped off.
I don’t think that the UK Hip Hop Dance scene differs from other European countries, from what I have seen all of them stay true to the essence of the Hip-Hop culture.
The importance of knowing the history behind styles
It is imperative for a dancer to know the history behind their style. Knowledge is the only way the Hip Hop community can move forward: members must know its past, good and bad! What is missing I think is historical archiving
Missing the old days G1 tells his journey comparing the 2000’s to the after-pandemic situation
Hip Hop Journey
I have been dancing all my life. I grew up in Sierra Leone, in an African household music where dance was part of daily life. My background comes from the “modern day” afro beats, a music called Highlife, artist like Fela Kuti, Osibisa, Bunny Mack was played at every family events.
My Hip Hop journey started in 1987 when I moved to the UK to study at the University of East London. It was the years where Hip-Hop music were played everywhere at student parties, on radios and clubs. Soon Legends, a club that every Wednesday played nothing but new jack swing and hip hop, became my house. Then I started to go under the arches in Vauxhall to the “Dance Wicked night” hosted by Trevor Nelson where dancers were coming from all over the UK. London was a real melting pot of culture, ethnicity and races. Back in the days we were partying nearly every day of the week: the were so many different clubs with amazing DJs!
90’s and 2000’s
In the 90’s dance classes sprung up all over the UK and street dancers started to take their vocation more professionally. Crews like the Blue Boy started training for performance and theatre. The UK B-Boy Championship was held for the first time attracting crews from all over the world.
From the 2000’s along to the Breaking Convention, numerous competitions and clubs emerged giving not only the possibility to dancers to perform on stage but also the chance to explore more dance styles. Dancers started to travel to bring their work to abroad competitions.
We had the right balance of social, commercial and underground events.
UK Hip Hop dance scene after the pandemic
The scene is very vibrant nowadays, it covers all the styles of Hip Hop, from the old to new, but as a social dancer I feel that the social element of the Hip Hop community has been compromised with the business side. Especially after the Covid-19 situation, that shut down different great clubs, the focus seems to be on the battles and on making money. Do not get me wrong, that is great, but I think we have lost some of the soul out of the culture and the scene still needs to fully recover from the pandemic.
The commercial side of Hip Hop is a catch 22 situation: in the modern day dancers have become professional, and they created their own dance career while a lot of the old school dancers who had daily jobs weren’t professional at all. However, when big brands come in, with big money and with their own rules, the profit goes over the culture. The essence of Hip Hop is put at risk, we must be careful that the culture doesn’t get watered down.
Knowledge of Hip Hop history
When you learn ballet, you start from studying the history, the technique, the same applies to Hip Hop dance. There is an original vocabulary, there is a culture and a heartbeat. If you’re not learning all these elements, you’re not getting the full picture, dancers need to study the full version of the history, otherwise the scene will be weakened.
Sunanda aka Bgirl Sunsun and Bboy Lil’ Tim
B-girl Sunsun journey and achievements
When I was three years old my father taught me to stand on my head, and since then I have started to dance. At first, I went to ballet and tap classes and after I did gymnastics, I used to mess around dancing there as well. In the 80’s I was going to a lot of Hip Hop jams and clubbing but is around the mid-nineties I started breaking.
I was on stage in theatres and events all over the country, such as Breakin’ Convention 2010, with other relevant dancers in the Hip Hop scene as Popping Pete, Sugar Pop, Tony Gogo, and Flowmaster. In 2012 I co-choreographed the NSH segment of the London Olympics Opening Ceremony.
I have more than 25 years of teaching experience, working for a variety of Institutions and internationally. In the last years I have been teaching a breaking technique module at the University of East London for the Urban degree course. In the last years I have been teaching a breaking technique module at the University of East London for the Urban degree course.
Hip Hop scene nowadays in UK
There are many branches of a tree of the Hip Hop scene, you’ve got to like the different elements. There’s the rap MC scene, the graph, the dance and the DJs. Sometimes they get a little be separated from the dancing, apart from the DJs that crosses over on and off, however there are jams that try to bring it back together. The real kind of underground scene is still quite small, in the sense that the normal Joe Bloggs who goes to clubs and battles here and there, wouldn’t go to these kinds of jams.
The pandemic has created a two-year gap that stopped the momentum especially for that age group going from primary to secondary school. Before I had an army of kids which I have been building up over about 5, 6, 7 years, some of them have come back but others haven’t. I think they lost and changed their habits; it really affected the youngers more than it affected us. We need to work a little harder now, for education and to pass the knowledge down, we need to get back out there, get the funding and communities back in.
Today the London scene seems to be focused more on business rather than on the community.
Definitely some of the Hip Hop is based on business. There’s a big divide now with the commercial competitions and the community jams. They wanted to separate that, trying to call it the elitist where certain people aren’t welcoming in certain jams, they throw money at people sometimes leaving the community a bit left out of what they should be part of.
It’s supposed to be different cultures and backgrounds, people coming together to share. Today with somebody’s breaking jams it feels like you are going for a big commercial job and if you don’t fit in the category, you don’t feel welcome to go. That is not what Hip Hop is about, they are forgetting where it comes from and what the culture is about rather than how much money can we make out of this.
Lil’ Tim, a few weeks ago, there was The RedBull BC One Cypher UK, what do you think about event owned by these big companies?
that is an example of what B-Girl Sunsun was saying. I love Red Bull events, but I thought that they could have afforded the music license instead of making all this clunky music. In a way they are changing the music that we dance to, it’s not like the original. DJs aren’t even allowed to play James Brown anymore. They have got a category and a catalog of music, their own music and all the DJs must play that; they are taking the soul out of the competitions. You watch it and after 10 minutes I get bored of listening to that same rubbish music.
We need back the community jams that we used to go to, we were going all over the country and there is when you get the proper vibe! When I was first introduced to the Hip Hop culture, you had everything under one roof, you had the MCs, the DJs and the dancers. Everything is just being separated, but now people are trying to pull it back together again.
How important is the knowledge of steps, styles and culture?
How can you dance or do a movement if you don’t know what it is? It’s just not going to come out right. It is a way of keeping it alive, if we don’t pass that line, hip hop is going to die. It is getting water down already. We need to not let it happen, by keeping the community jams running and keeping our community strong. When you go to these jams is where you’re going to see the real culture of Hip Hop, where everybody is meeting up from all corners of the UK just to come to an event.
and for you Sunanda?
Well, yeah, it is not just about dance, about doing steps and this is what I teach also to students at UEL. What I always tell them to do is go and watch the Freshest Kids, a Hip Hop B-boy documentary, that has got everything there that you can see, obviously there are loads of documentaries, but it is very important to watch them. A lot of young breakers don’t even know their own history.
It is about a culture and feeling those steps. To be a B-boy or a B-girl is not just to know how to do a head spin or a freeze. It is about: Why am I doing this? Where does this come from? What expression am I doing out of this and how am I feeling this move and why?
I think history is important, especially with regards to the style of dance. When you go back to the Uk history you see like common garden where, as Tim said, they were all coming together: the graph, the rappers, the breakers, the DJs and a lot of us cross over anyway into different elements. Many young people don’t realise how important it is.
Amelia Aramu
Amelia is an Italian dancer that moved in the UK in 2012. Creator of the Sarda Family Crew, Artistic director and coordinator of over 15 crews for almost 15 years in Sardinia (Italy), she has competed with her crews in different choreographic competition and battles in the Italian Hip Hop scene.
What do you think about the UK Hip Hop dance scene?
I find the UK Hip Hop scene very welcoming; all the dancers are willing to share their passion with everyone. I remember when I moved here there was a place in Piccadilly Circus called The Trocadero where dancers from all over the world used to meet up, practice and train together. But sometimes it is difficult to meet with friends on a regular basis, London is a hard city to live in, people work different shifts and to travel between various parts takes up to 1 hour.
The UK scene offers numerous commercial opportunities from dance classes to concerts, to movies and events. There are audition every month, agencies that helps dancers to find jobs and to make out a living from their passion. In addition, it is full of schools and gyms where to teach.
As nowadays dancers, choreographers and performers are mainly focused on business, I think it would be useful to create a well organised online portal to know about events, opportunity to study and work in the industry.