How Break Dancing is being used as a political vehicle. Dancing is one of the oldest ways to express emotions. It is unknown where and when first dance was actually danced. Maybe this happened in some cave after the successful hunt on mammoth, nobody knows. Dance can be relaxing, or seductive, or angry, or sad. Like a code written on the body, dance is an essay, epic, novel, or poem about culture articulated through the vehicle of the body.
Pointing out gender, ethnicity, and class as an inherent category for the analysis of dance illuminates greater understanding of the relationship between dance and culture. (B-Boy or B-Girl? A Gender Analysis of Breakdancing) Break Dancing is very popular for more than two decades and its popularity among the youth only growth with time. The media coined the term Break dance in the early 80s. It was a try to name somehow the dances done by the b-boy. Originally b-boy meant, break boy and breaking was described as an original hip hop dance. But nowadays break dancing is not just a dance it is used as a political vehicle.
How so? Lets take for example the event Breaking for Peace an anti-war movement. We decided on doing something in the name of peace,” Almaguer explained. “‘Lets be for something,’ we said. ‘Lets break for peace. (Hip Hop, Not War) Breaking for peace took place before Operation Iraqi Freedom one student decided that they would dance in the name of the peace. This measure didnt help to stop the war in Iraq but altogether it was a very positive experience, which emphasized negative attitude of youth to War in Iraq and unwillingness to take it indifferently.
The Essay on Dance 4 Peace
My expectations when I first heard about the Dance 4 Peace seminar were jumbled. I figured that the possible scenarios would either be with us sitting on chairs while listening to a four-hour lecture or we would literally dance throughout the entirety of another symposium that we were supposed to adhere to for our CWTS 2. What surprised me when I attended the seminar was that everything was ...
Plans for similar events like “Breaking for Peace” will include a bigger venue and a better sound system, but their most important goal is to continue educating the youth about the positivity that can be found in hip hop. (Hip Hop, Not War) Break dancing is used as a tool to battle gender prejudices. Many girls use break dancing as a tool to battle status quo. Hip hop is inherently gendered and intrinsically racialized which makes the politics of breaking complicated. B-boy culture was conceived on mens terms, and as a result women are still underrepresented. (B-Boy or B-Girl? A Gender Analysis of Break dancing) As example I want to use a letter from Amber (Recife, Brazil) to the chief of BreakGirls.com.
Amber writes Here in Recife as well as the rest of Brazil, as I’m sure your aware of, Hip Hop is a very serious thing and is considered a social/political/cultural movement that can be used a tool to transform society. Its a way to bring information to the huge perifery that exists and a way for them to protest, espress and talk about their realities. Youth living in the favelas (shantytowns, ghettos) of the big cities really relate to Hip Hop culture and it’s a huge mobilizer. She underlined that in northeastern, Brazilian society women still suffer from the cliche of the “hot Brazilian samba dancer. Media likes to portray women as these sexually liberated free-spirits but in truth women are paid less, are less educated, are under the pressure to be beautiful and available to men, often taken care of their homes and working often as single. We work on all sorts of things through break dancing, from basic values like respect and humility, to how to work in groups and trust eachother.
writes Amber. As most of the girls are afro-descendant, we enter into the question of ethnic identity which mostly manifest itself through HAIR issues. The Black Power movement here was quite weak, and in the favela communities, big fros are seen as dirty and criminal. So we’re workin on doing away with the term “bad hair’ and encouraging the girls to accept themselves for who they are and be the best they can be. As you can see from this letter the breakdancing can be used as a real weapon to battle with racial and gender prejudices and as political vehicle.
The Essay on Hip Hops Betrayal of Black Women
In Hip-Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women published in Z Communications online magazine July 1, 2006, Jennifer Mclune responds to Kevin Powell’s Notes of a Hip Hop Head by vividly expressing to feminist and African American women that “Hip Hop owes its success to the ideology of woman hating. It creates, perpetuates, and reaps the rewards of objectification.” In Powell’s quote he begins to defend male ...
Bibliography:
Amber, BreakGirl, August 15, 2005. Erika Hand, B-Boy or B-Girl? A Gender Analysis of Breakdancing, 2002.
Paul Chavez, Hip Hop, Not War, The Golden Gate [X]press Online, Wednesday, April 2, 2002. .
