Dance
How to learn street dance: 15 videos that can teach and inspire you
The top-16 of Red Bull Dance Your Style 2023 India Finals discuss the tutorials and documentaries which taught them the most about street dance.
The third edition of Red Bull Dance Your Style in India concluded in Delhi on 1st July.
The Red Bull Dance Your Style 2023 India Finals saw the top-16 dancers from the country compete to the ultimate dance title, which was claimed by Haldwani-based hip-hop dancer Nepo for the second time in three years.
While these dancers are at the top of the game, they remember the days when they were just starting out and hope to help the younger members of the dance community grow their skills.
Each of the top-16 dancers happily discussed the videos that influenced them the most in their career. For some dancers it was a performance video in which they saw a move and decided to practice it, for others it was a battle video which motivated them, or a tutorial video from which they learnt the foundations of their dance form, or even a documentary that taught them about the history and culture of their style. Each dancer has learnt a great deal from watching videos.
So here they list the videos that taught them the most in the hope that young dancers could also watch them and learn the same.
Nepo
“I learnt a lot from watching videos of Les Twins. Everyone knows they are great at movement, but their expressions and the way they express emotion is how they connect with the audience. So I learnt that expression from watching video of Les Twins.”
Invoker
“In my initial days in dance, I used to watch a lot of videos of Phillip ‘PacMan’ Chbeeb. I watched videos of other dancers too, but I learnt the most from PacMan’s videos. This was a time when we didn’t have big events happening in India. I used to go to cyber cafes to watch videos of PacMan, and then practice what I’d seen when I got back home.”
Majin Boo
“I loved power dance styles even before I got into krumping. I would include power moves in whichever dance form I was practicing. I saw a video of the battle between Grichka and Ruin from 2012. That video got me hooked to krump. It was a gamechanger for me. From that video, I learnt all about style, power and attitude that are involved in krump.
Musa
“I started my dance journey as a choreographer, and still do choreography. Very early on, I got inspired by the choreography videos of Melvin Timtim. I would copy his dance moves and his choreography. I also attended his classes in Delhi at Big Dance Center. Watching his videos, I learnt about clean dance moves and how facial expressions are really important in dance.”
Mekhola
“My whole crew got together to watch this documentary called The Freshest Kids: The History of the B-Boy. This was a big deal for our crew because we learnt a lot from the docu about how dance crews work, how the community works, and what hip-hop is all about. There are other documentaries that have also had a big influence on us. There is the docu called Rize, which is about krump; Turn It Loose, which is about Red Bull BC One; Inside The Circle, which is about breaking. I learnt a lot from these documentaries; more than the moves, I leant about music, what influcned dance, and the history.”
Kakarot
“When I started to learn dance, I tried to learn advanced technical moves right from the beginning. I loved to watch videos by Phillip Chbeeb about threads. Eventually I found my way to learn the foundations. I also watched a lot of videos by B-Boy Dyzee on threads.
Smooth Boog
“I learnt dance by watching tutorials of Kite and Skeeter Rabbit. I still watch them and practice to this day. My favourites are tutorials on ground moves and rolls by Kite.”
JRM
“I learnt a lot from tutorial videos that were part of Red Bull Dance Connect. I learnt boogaloo from tutorials by JayGee and Icee. Even Boogaloo Sam had done tutorials, which is great because he is the creator of the dance form. From Icee, I learnt about foundation, rolls variations, grooves, etc. From a tutorial by Nelson, I learnt walk-out variations.”
Groovy
“I learnt the most from a documentary called The Lockers. It’s about the history of locking and it follows the story of a Japanese crew called B-Bop Crew. It also features Gogo Brothers. I always suggest this documentary to young lockers to learn about the dance style.”
ZuBoo
“There’s a documentary called New School Dictionary. It starts as a book on a coffee table opening up and teaching you all about hip-hop. The documentary features a lot of the greats, including Henry Links and the Elite Force Crew. The documentary is presented as a book with the names of all the moves and how to do them. I had been gifted a DVD of the documentary by B-Boy Storm when he visited Bengaluru for some Indo-German events in the city. Now you ca find the documentary on YouTube. When I watched the docu, it was my early days in hip-hop; I learnt about the culture and its evolution in New York.”
Pradeep
“I was always very interested in learning how music played an important part in dance. So I watched videos on the origins of hip-hop music, how it was born out of jazz, of how dance existed without music in the form of tap dancing. I learnt a lot about rhythm from the movie on MC Hammer’s life. I learnt how he made music and then created dance moves for that music. I even watched videos on how boxers train with music, and sometimes with sounds of nature. As dancers, we tend to watch the same kind of dance videos and tutorials. That’s why I tried to find different kinds of videos that could give me =more of an understanding about the correlation between music and movement. I don’t want to just learn dance moves, I want to learn why a dancer moves.”
Nivesh
“Like every other hip-hop dancer, I learnt from watching performance videos of Elite Force Crew. The crew members like Buddha Stretch, Henry Link and EJOE were the OGs of hip-hop dance. When you watch Elite Dance Crew, you realize that you can learn the moves and the style, but there is a lot more than just that.”
Tee J
“More than a dance video, I would give importance to music. Because music is a force that will always be with you and inspire you.
Bleed
“There are two videos that taught me a lot about krump. I still watch them before a battle or if I feel I need a pick-me-up in my day. The first is the battle between Ruin and Grichka, which took place at European Buck Session in 2012. The other video is a documentary called Raised by Krump. It is about people who work 9-to-5 jobs and have a lot of stress in life, but all that stress disappears when they practice krump. Form these videos I learnt what krump is all about; the raw expression, the removal of negative energies, the pureness of the dance form.”
Killa Choc
“When I just started dancing – as a breaker – I used to visit cyber cafes to watch the video clips from Battle of the Year. Those videos really inspired me, and I would immediately go to a nearby garden to practice breaking. Some of the most inspiring videos are the showcases by Extreme Crew from Korea at Battle of the Year. I also liked watching videos of B-Boy Blond because he would do 10 variations of air flares in less than 10 seconds.
Oggy
“I learnt a lot from Javed Jaffrey’s dance in the video of the song ‘Bol Baby Bol Rock n Roll’. Also the music videos of ‘Ishq Tera Tadpave’ by Sukhbir and ‘Dance With You’ by Jay Sean. These videos were my first exposure to the culture. I particularly liked Javed Jaffrey’s videos because they taught me about front rolls, glides, back flips, stretches, spinning on knees, and much more.