Dance Fusion: Hip Hop + Hoop Dance
Fusion Dance - Fusing Hip Hip with Hoop Dance
In the beginning, and even sometimes now, I wonder if I am doing it "right."
I worry so much. I already have quite the immense amount of anxiety.
But, just because I am worried and afraid, it does not mean I should shy away from being my authentic self.
Worries I have had while developing Hip Hop Hooping:
“Should I be using other fundamentals and/or grooves or tricks?
"Am I focusing on the wrong body parts?"
"Should I pop n lock more or less!?”
But, I really wanted to express my self 100% authentically as well as bring something new into the dance and hoop world. It's not meant to hurt any person. It's meant to honor multiple cultures, bring new life to the dance realm, and totally communicate what my mind, body, and soul creatively desire.
Fusion dance in unavoidable.
Globalization has also accelerated the creation of hybrid dance forms that fuse elements from various cultures.
What is globalization of dance?
Examples of globalization are when dance companies go on tour, students go abroad or travel, and when dance videos are shared and seen all over the worldwide internet.
Being exposed and inspired by many dance forms is unavoidable in this day and age.
There is no point to try and contain each human in an uncreative box.
Most of us do not come from one culture nowadays, anyway. What are all of us mutts to do if we follow some bizarre social rule that is we must only represent what is within our personal culture?
My immediate cultural / ethnic backgrounds?
African American, Italian, Polish. ...listen, I am not going to polka and hoop.
About the name Hip Hop + Hooping..
If you take Fundamentals from 2 movement arts [Hip Hop] and [Hoop Dance] you get a 'name baby', and mine is Hip Hop Hooping.
I am so proud of my baby.
My baby develops and grows every year.
I get it, some of you don't "like" that its called Hip Hop Hooping. Honestly, I want to call it Total Body Hoop Dance. I'd get shit for that, too.
I also want something catchy, and original. And this is the only name that has been on my mind for 5 years now.
Stop telling me what it is NOT and start telling me what you think it IS.
Support movement arts or later hater.
Clicking Unfollow is much easier than button smashing away creating useless words of hurt.
Hello My Friend, Fusion Dance
Fusion dance permits people to connect through common interests and cultural differences. There is no absolute, and everyone can add to the dance. The more people who contribute and, the more cultural backgrounds there are only make the dancing wonderfully diverse, unlimited and extraordinary. There are responsibilities for all dancers in a fusion dance context to contribute to the dance form, even if by simply dancing to keep them alive; however there are extraordinary possibilities and responsibilities that lie within professionalized or experiences couples and soloists. These creative openings and expectations set on skilled dancers and performers are what keep fusion dance evolving. Fusion dance initiates a state of being and requires the dancers or performers to give into the unknown, to liberate themselves.
Fusion Dance is Addicting
Fusion dance is a mixture of different dance forms, types, and/or styles often involving several cultural sources always permitting the possibilities of innovative creativity. Liminal time and space are accessed during the fusion process along with an intimate integration of music and dance. Fusion dance breaks boundaries in many ways; there are specific techniques that should be studied, but even the term “technique” is much more fluid when looking at fusion forms. Fusion dances can be addicting physically and mentally. I know dancers from both communities that commit to (or can't resist) hours of dancing nightly and multiple nights of dancing every week.
What is Fusion Dance
Fusion dance is a highly complex form of play and must be understood by looking at what influences it in general, what influences my chosen fusion dance of hip hop and hoop dance, ad where the influences come from.There must first be a profound understanding of technique that fusion dancers are drawing from. There can be more than one technical approach, but something new can not be created without the mastery of at least two dances technical foundations. Therefore, Hip Hop Hooping can not exist unless I understand and honor the foundations of its derivatives.
Infusion the body is in a constant state of creation and invention where technical knowledge and cultural experiences collide and are reconciled within the current conditions of who is dancing, what song is playing, what the surrounding environment is, current emotional states, when this dance is happening and how this moment came about. Consequently, it is impossible to have all of these elements happen exactly the same more than once. If nothing else, the timing of the dance will always be different, forcing the dancers to rely only on her or his immediate surroundings rather than replicating a past dance or predicting a future one. Nothing is set in stone, and everything is in a constant state of change. Fusion is what keeps dance in the future alive and exciting. It is within play that fusion dance lives.
What's cool in my opinion, is that hip hop and hoop dance are long standing fused dances created from a culture - these dances are being integrated from different countries and cultures and different time periods nowadays, which allows these previously dances to expand even further and gives them limitless opportunity for new fusion dances to be created such as hip hop hooping.
Fusion dance is a mixture of different dance forms, types, and/or styles often involving several cultural sources always permitting the possibilities of innovative creativity. Liminal time and space are accessed during the fusion process along with an intimate integration of music and dance. Fusion dance breaks boundaries in many ways; there are specific techniques that should be studied, but even the term “technique” is much more fluid when looking at fusion forms. Fusion dances can be addicting physically and mentally. I know dancers from both communities that commit to (or can't resist) hours of dancing nightly and multiple nights of dancing every week.
Hip hop’s origins spawned from individual imaginations; a dancer could create and perform anything they envisioned. The result could immediately catch on and form a name for itself, or it could be just one person trying something out that was never to be seen again. Robert Farris Thompson, an art historian who uses dance to explain African arts in general, describes a dancer who had a dream where he was spinning on his chin, but then when he actually tried to perform the dream action, he nearly broke his jaw [4]. This is an example of the limitless possibilities break dancers have had in the past, which have continued through today. Hip hop now contains so many related derivatives that even as this is being written, more movements, and thereby, newly named dance types within hip hop are being created.
Hip hop’s origins spawned from individual imaginations; a dancer could create and perform anything they envisioned. The result could immediately catch on and form a name for itself, or it could be just one person trying something out that was never to be seen again. Robert Farris Thompson, an art historian who uses dance to explain African arts in general, describes a dancer who had a dream where he was spinning on his chin, but then when he actually tried to perform the dream action, he nearly broke his jaw [4]. This is an example of the limitless possibilities break dancers have had in the past, which have continued through today. Hip hop now contains so many related derivatives that even as this is being written, more movements, and thereby, newly named dance types within hip hop are being created.
The Flow State
Researchers posit that is it is required to first have an ability to feel the rhythm in the body before focusing on precise dance steps to achieve the Flow State. In my experiences in classes communities that surround hip hop and salsa dance are much more about focusing on the expression of emotions and feelings. This is why a lot of skilled instructors will say "you have to feel it" in order to be able to truly learn it.
In order to understand the fusion process completely, an orientation to the transcendent state that is known as the Flow State must be explained.
There's a dedicated web page offering research and explanation on the Flow State and it's benefits.
We are also going to deeply touch on it here, with greater perspective and new ideas.
Often a fusion dancer, or in this case myself, begin to feel the rhythm in our body. When I begin to feel the rhythm I feel transported to another realm which can last for a few brief moments or many hours. Some researchers argue that feeling the rhythm to achieve this Flow State trend sentence must be prioritized over the understanding of the actual dance styles as it is the higher aim of the fusion process.
In my opinion it is chicken or egg and I am truly not sure which comes first for me but I will begin to explore that as I train and dance and play with hip hop and hoop dance.
The arts are communication tools that operate between the everyday world and the limitless range of possibilities into which the body, mind and soul are capable of tapping. The arts provide a transitional period and it is through the combination of dances, for example, that a performer can deeply express as well as create something new. And apparently, it all starts with a focus on feeling.
Csikszentmihalyi uses the term “flow” to describe liminal states and says that when many skills are needed to perform an activity, then the person's attention is narrowly focused to carry out what is relevant in that moment. He states:
As a result, one of the most universal and distinctive features of optimal experience takes place: people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing. [2]
This “flow” is the act that happens in the arts, but especially in dance as a kinesthetic body art. Concentration becomes crystal clear; there are no wandering thoughts, no past or future. There are only the liminal moments allowing dancers to experience the sensation of being fully, almost impossibly, in the present. Expressing the liminal moments can even transport the self and ones sense of being to another realm. This only happens with complete concentration. Even though it can also be a sensation of “getting
lost,” it can only be achieved with full consciousness as explained within conditions of “flow.”
The liminal state is essential to achieving this transcendence or “flow” in any dance form. Ethnomusicologist, Christina Zanfagna focuses on the art of krumping under the hip hop complex, Offering up a musical, meaningful, and ecstatic framework through which to experience life, hip-hop allows listeners to 'dwell poetically' in multiple liminalities and uncertainties. Krump dancers lose themselves in the sensuousness of temporal and physical play—the play of beats, the play of movement, and the play of real and unreal. (Zanfangna in Malnig 350)
Liminality is where play happens and because of this, it is crucial to the process of fusion. It is the period in which creation and invention happen.
It was this exact kind of dance experience that leads to a state of liminality. Victor Turner outlines three phases of liminality: separation, margin which means threshold; and re-aggregation [3]. Separation, the first phase is the disconnection or detachment from either a socially constructed context or a cultural state of mind [3]. For my case study of fusion dance, this would be when each dancer decides to leave behind preconceived notions of a move and how it is supposed to be carried out. The second stage is the in-between place in which the dance is in an ambiguous transition between what was and what will be [3]. The final stage is integration, in this case, when the dancer re-enters the cultural or social conditions [3]. This can happen after one dance move, a complete dance, or even longer if the dance experience of liminality was lasting. Many dancing experiences have some liminal components that can take the performer through all three phases, but few have all of them. It is the unknown within these embodied experiences that make the art of dancing so captivating.
Connecting to the music and allowed for us to create a fusion of ideas and skills during that one song. We were both kept on the edge of possibility during this dance, which shows that within fusion, rules can be broken, and the next moment is unpredictable.
[1] https://www.proquest.com/openview/df0cda68ee0c7945209fd30ff72674a4/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
[2] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Print.
[3] Turner, Victor W. "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage." Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society. By Richard L. Warms, James Garber, and R. Jon McGee. New York: Oxford U, 2004. N. pag. Print.
[4] Turner, Victor W. "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage." Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society. By Richard L. Warms, James Garber, and R. Jon McGee. New York: Oxford U, 2004. N. pag. Print.
