House dance

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House dance is a freestyle street dance and social dance that has roots in the underground house music scene of Chicago and New York. [1] [2] It is typically danced to loud and bass-heavy electronic dance music provided by DJs in nightclubs or at raves.

Contents

Elements and characteristics

The main elements of House dance include "jacking", "footwork", and "lofting". [3] The element of "jacking", or the "jack", – an ecstatic, sex-driven rippling movement of the torso – is the most famous dance move associated with early house music. [4] [5] It has found its way onto numerous record titles like the Jack Trax EP by Chip E. (1985), "Jack'n the House" (1985) by Farley "Jackmaster" Funk (1985), "Jack Your Body" by Steve "Silk" Hurley (1986), or "Jack to the Sound of the Underground" by Fast Eddie (1988).

House dance is often improvised and emphasizes fast and complex foot-oriented steps combined with fluid movements in the torso, as well as floor work. There is an emphasis on the subtle rhythms and riffs of the music, and the footwork follows them closely.[ citation needed ]

Notable dancers

In the early progressions of the dance, there were hundreds of phenomenal dancers that were key in its progression in this social dance scene. However, out of the many there were few instrumental in the introduction of house dance culture across the globe. Some of these dancers are Ejoe Wilson, Brian "Footwork" Green, Tony McGregor, Marjory Smarth, Caleaf Sellers, "Brooklyn" Terry Wright, Kim D. Holmes, Shannon Mabra, Tony "Sekou" Williams, Shannon Selby (aka Shan S), Voodoo Ray, and others.

In Los Angeles, as seen in the local television series, "Pump It Up" hosted by Dee Barnes, the "underground" house dance episode, co-hosted by Stefan of L.A. Posse, recognizes some of the following to be instrumental to the house dance culture in LA: The Scheme Team, Club House, L.A. Posse, Just As Hard, The Groovers, and the Soul Brothers. [ citation needed ]

Competitions and festivals

Related Research Articles

House is a music genre characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground club culture in the early/mid 1980s, as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rave</span> Dance party

A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, techno, hardcore, house, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.

Jungle is a genre of dance music that developed out of the UK rave scene and sound system culture in the 1990s. Emerging from breakbeat hardcore, the style is characterised by rapid breakbeats, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies, and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, as well as hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the "Amen break" or other breakbeats from funk and jazz recordings. Jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre which emerged in the mid-1990s.

Chicago house refers to house music produced during the mid to late 1980s within Chicago. The term is generally used to refer to the original house music DJs and producers from the area, such as Ron Hardy and Phuture.

Ghetto house or booty house is a subgenre of house music which started being recognized as a distinct style from around 1992 onwards. It features minimal 808 and 909 drum machine-driven tracks and sometimes sexually explicit lyrics.

Hi-NRG is a genre of uptempo disco or electronic dance music (EDM) that originated in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Progressive house is a subgenre of house music. The progressive house style emerged in the early 1990s. It initially developed in the United Kingdom as a natural progression of North American and European house music of the late 1980s.

Byron Stingily is an American R&B and house-music singer born in Chicago, Illinois, known for his falsetto voice. He is now a part-time principal at a school in Chicago while still performing.

Jacking, Jackin’, or the jack is a freestyle dance move in which the dancer ripples their torso back and forth in an undulating motion. It emerged within the context of Chicago house music in the 1980s.

The Melbourne shuffle is a rave dance that developed in the 1980s. Typically performed to electronic music, the dance originated in the Melbourne rave scene and was popular in the late 1980s and 1990s. The dance moves involve a fast heel-and-toe movement or T-step, combined with a variation of the running man coupled with a matching arm action. The dance is improvised and involves "repeatedly shuffling your feet inwards, then outwards, while thrusting your arms up and down, or side to side, in time with the beat". Other moves can be incorporated including 360-degree spins and jumps and slides. Popular Melbourne clubs during the dance's heyday included Hard Kandy, Bubble, Xpress at Chasers, Heat, Mercury Lounge, Viper, Two Tribes at Chasers and PHD. Melbourne's first techno dance parties Biology, Hardware and Every Picture Tells A Story were popular with Melbourne Shuffle innovators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breakdancing</span> Style of street dance

Breaking, also called breakdancing or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American community in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in the dance, breakdancing mainly consists of four kinds of movement: toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes. Breakdancing is typically set to songs containing drum breaks, especially in hip-hop, funk, soul music and breakbeat music, although modern trends allow for much wider varieties of music along certain ranges of tempo and beat patterns.

Baltimore club, also called Bmore club, Bmore house or simply Bmore, is a music genre that fuses of breakbeat and house. It was created in Baltimore, Maryland in the early to late 1990s by 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell, Frank Ski, and DJ K-Swift, among others.

Electronic dance music (EDM), also known as dance music, club music, or simply dance, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA.

Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesizer-sequencer, an innovation attributed to Chicago artists Phuture and Sleezy D circa 1986.

Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often characterized by a repetitive four on the floor beat. Artists may use electronic instruments such as drum machines, sequencers, and synthesizers, as well as digital audio workstations. Drum machines from the 1980s such as Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro instruments are popular.

Footwork, also called juke, footwork/juke or Chicago juke, is a genre of electronic dance music derived from ghetto house with elements of hip hop, first appearing in Chicago in the late 1990s. The music style evolved from the earlier, rapid rhythms of ghetto house, a change pioneered by RP Boo. It may draw from the rapid rhythms and sub-bass frequencies of drum & bass. Tracks also frequently feature heavily syncopated samples from rap, pop and other sources, and are often around 160 bpm.

Abel Polo, known by his stage name Abel el'toro, is a DJ, producer and promoter from Sydney, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deadly Buda</span> American musician and graffitist

Joel Bevacqua is an American rave DJ, music producer, promoter, and writer known as DJ Deadly Buda. He is also known as the graffiti artist “Buda.” Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he is credited by authors Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon in their "The History of American Graffiti" as being "Pittsburgh’s first graffiti superstar" and inventor of the “monster rock style” of graffiti lettering. He is also recognized for instigating Pittsburgh's rave scene in 1991. In 2005 part of his techno dance music collection was a notable acquisition of the US Library of Congress: Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galestian</span> Electronic music artist

Arthur Galestian, known mononymously as Galestian, is an electronic music artist, producer, DJ, and radio personality – primarily known within the sub-genres of deep house, progressive house, melodic house and techno. In 2017, he signed as an artist to Grammy-nominated Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto Black record label with a debut release called "Rituals". In 2018, he was featured as a guest on Paul Oakenfold's Planet Perfecto Radio, which reached over 27 million listeners in over 70 countries. In 2019, Paul Oakenfold and Galestian collaborated on a song entitled "Summer Nights" to celebrate the 50th release of Perfecto Black.

Belgian hardcore techno is an early style of hardcore techno that emerged from new beat as EBM and techno influences became more prevalent in this genre. This particular style has been described as an "apocalyptic, almost Wagnerian, bombastic techno", due to its use of dramatic orchestral stabs and menacing synth tones that set it apart from earlier forms of electronic dance music. It flourished in Belgium and influenced the sound of early hardcore from Netherlands, Germany, Italy, UK and North America during the early-1990s, as a part of the rave movement during that period.

References

  1. Phil Cheeseman: "The History Of House", DJ Magazine, 2003.
  2. "What is house?" Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine , discussion board on www.dance.net, 2008.
  3. Czarina Mirani: Spin Slide and Jack: A History of House Dancing on 5 Magazine, 2005.
  4. Barry Walters: Burning Down the House, in SPIN magazine, November 1986.
  5. Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture. Routledge, 1999. pp. 28-29.