The Rock Your City Chennai festival in April, the Big Boss Jam in September, the Original Street Dance Championship in January... these are a few of the platforms in the city, for the fast-growing hip hop dance fraternity to showcase its talent.
From working professionals to school and college students, there have been many interested in the street dance culture in the past few years, so much so that formal education in the dance form is also being looked at by a few city schools. However, the only one to have actually implemented it so far is Velammal Vidyalaya Annexure in Mel Ayanambakkam. The school has tied up with Original Street Dance, a registered dance company, that has taken its students to participate and win at events in Delhi, Visakhapatnam, Bengaluru and international jams in Malaysia and Singapore. The company, which got formally registered a few months ago, also has branches in Madurai, Tiruchi, Tirunelveli, Vellore and a number of other cities.
Its founder Antonio George has been trying to mould a hip hop dance culture in the city for quite a few years now.“There is so much distraction in the current world. Instead of spending their day drinking away in pubs, it’s better for youngsters to get into dancing, and focus on themselves. It keeps them fit,” he says.
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“I wanted to bring street dance into the school syllabus, and make it a subject. We have structured the syllabus on a half-yearly basis: four months of training is given to the kids, where we prep them on all the basics and more. The fifth month is for rehearsals, and the sixth month, we get some artistes to fly down from the US and test the kids at a formal exam,” he explains, adding that the Showtime Street Dance Company in New York City, and Kento, an artiste from Japan have helped collaborate and shape this syllabus. Having participated in battles in Japan and the US, George credits most of his knowledge and his skill to his education from street dance performers in Harlem. This is another reason why he is particularly keen on keeping street dance accessible and open on the streets.
There are a number of dance crews in the city that focus on this broad dance form, such as the HHH crew, which is currently celebrating their appearance in the silver screen, at the Vijay TV dance show Kings of Dance. However, according to George, the situation is still saturated and unplanned for the most part.
“Earlier, dance events used to happen only in universities, and at college fests. But now, people are trying to organise individual events. Now, the city has street dance events, but they are restricted either only to locking, or to some other aspect of the dance. But the umbrella is much broader; popping and locking weren’t originally a part of hip hop at all.”
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It’s a topic the 35-year-old is quite passionate about, and he rushes to clarify the break down of it. “I see a lot of styles getting divided. I would say, hip hop is only breaking. Breaking is the first generation hip hop, then when breaking actually slowed down a bit, hip hop freestyle came into place. Pop and rap albums featured dancers performing these styles, and the videos made the dance popular. From here, it went to the clubs, where new movements started coming up: grooves and rhythms and a lot of other things that really aren’t being taught that well today,” he says, bringing the conversation back to the Chennai scene.
Which is where the Original Street Dance syllabus comes in, which he refers to as a “system of training.” “Once they complete the syllabus and clear all the levels over 3.5 years, we can give them a scholarship to get trained abroad, and the option of joining us to teach dance once they return,” he says. Their starting salary would be somewhere around ₹25,000, he adds.
Education in something like this is always an ongoing process, he points out. True to it’s form, the dance is growing and evolving even today. One of the newer trends is litefeet, which originated in the streets of New York in the early 2000s. George and his dancing crew All For One has internalised this as well, taking it to stage on a number of occasions.