Hip-hop dance workshop pops and beguiles Movement artist Brian Green delivers diversity through snappy steps

Author: Chi Zhang

Most students slept in late after hours of ceaseless torso twisting at the Winter Carnival Ball. Others woke up to find themselves face to face with a different form of rigorous club dancing - the juxtaposition must have been quite striking.

The Hip-hop & House workshop, hosted by the RIDDIM World Dance Troupe and co-sponsored by the Inter-Commons Countil and the Dance Department, attracted an array of students. Some were clad in tights, others in baggies, but very few knew exactly what was in store for them. As workshop participants Kate Leyland '07 and Christina Winkler '07 said, "We heard there was a hip-hop workshop, and we came." Nevertheless, "hip-hop" is exactly the misnomer that instructor Brian "Footwork" Green set out to dismiss, together with the other popular, commercialized images associated with the dance form.

The affable New York-based artist is experienced in both the commercial dance business and the street style. As he demonstrated the two styles, knowing grins spread across the studio. The difference was easy to spot: the street style is less ostentatious, less outpouring, but a lot more vigorous and fulfilling.

As the story goes, visceral awareness does not only belong to such sacrosanct arts as yoga and contact improvisation - this funky dance form has its share of anatomical prerequisites. The students learned this the hard way as they struggled to rotate the trapezium muscle and to locate their "inner stomach."

This was, however, only the beginning of the challenge. Students gasped as Green performed a snippet of "popping" - the robot-like movements that did not seem quite humanly doable, and in no way resembled a "hip-hop" dance. The first step to producing the popping effect was to tense and relax the arm muscles, which proved to be a physical conundrum to most. Green stressed to the bewildered students that diligent practice is the key, as the students jerked and twitched in the attempt to "pop it."

The exhilarating music and Green's personality kept the spirits high enough for a series of other difficult but entertaining moves to make their way into the students' dance vocabulary. The Fresno, twistoflex, neckoflex, old man and the original moonwalk were all buzzwords that together created a dynamic mesh wire of force and lightness. The original moonwalk, for example, literally mimicked the weightlessness experienced while walking on the moon, unlike the later version we are all more familiar with, which was modified by Michael Jackson.

The time devoted to teaching House, though shorter than planned, was sufficient to paint a basic outline of this footwork-based dance, which was otherwise relatively alien to most present. It was a test of agility for experienced and novice dancers alike. Eyes were pinned to the floor as Green's beige-colored street shoes swished adroitly in a blurry of frenzy. It was strenuous trying to keep up with the movement of the feet, but taking a liking to the dance was effortless. Leyland, among others, identified House to be "very difficult but really cool."

Exchange student Momoko Kitamichi first brought the House tradition to the MIDDance fall concert, which received highly positive comments. With Green's workshop, this charismatic dance could be expected to grow in popularity among the Middlebury dance community.

The best learning point came at the end of the class, when the Q&A session turned into a casual expression of Green's outlook on life and the world. With his mastery of more than ten dance styles ranging from ballet, jazz and tap to West African, salsa and Irish, Green is himself an exemplification of diversity and multiculturalism. At one point, he showed one House step and its variations in six other dances, convincing the students of the connection among different genres of dance.

When asked about how he balances so many forms of dance, Green responded, "I dance each dance as if I were living a part of my life. Dance and life are intertwined."

York Seaton '07, a RIDDIM member who initiated the workshop, said, "I wanted people to see it, do it, appreciate it and be interested to pursue it on their own."

As Seaton hoped, students at the workshop expressed joy at discovering new forms of dancing. Diana Chiu '09, a member of MIDDance, acknowledged the collaborative effort it took to "bring such dances and personality to an isolated campus."

"Just last night we were still out there party dancing," Chiu said. "Now we have learned to move in a different way."