Dance
8 types of freestyle dance
Freestyle dancing is all about self-expression and improvisation. The link between all these different styles is that it allows and even pushes dancers to dance as originally as they can.
Part of this story
When Nigerian dancer Blayke took the title at the 2021 Red Bull Dance Your Style Nigeria, spectators said his moves defied logic. In his words, he was driven by innate passion and improvisation. He was experimenting with his body and how it moves rather than focusing on trends.
Blayke at Red Bull Dance Your Style in Lagos, Nigeria 2021
© Izzy Photography / Red Bull Content Pool
"I think I was one of the first dancers in Nigeria who broke out of the norm – who broke out of doing just a 'hype dance'. I didn't want to be viral. I wanted to feel something… I wasn't really dancing like anyone else. I was dancing like me."
Blayke personifies what freestyle dancing is all about — dance based on improvisation. This genre started in the 1960s when dancers on the streets and in public areas started putting together strings of movements based on the song. Now, there is a different type of freestyle for almost every genre of music, like those on display at the Red Bull Dance Your Style USA.
Below, we'll share eight popular types of freestyle dance, including everything you need to know.
01
Breaking
B-boy Victor in the Semi-Final the Red Bull BC One World Final 2022
© Little Shao / Red Bull Content Pool
Breaking is a high-energy form of freestyle dance born in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, incorporating various moves from different movements, including martial arts and gymnastics. This dance style is one of the pillars of hip-hop. Breaking is a dance involving stylized footwork, athletic movements such as back spins or head spins, and improvisational movements with variations of moves or steps, including freezes, power moves, down rock, and top rock. Here are a few documentaries that explore the power of breaking hip-hop culture.
26 min
Breaks, beats and B-Boys
The story of breakdancing's premier contest series, Red Bull BC One, spans generations of hip-hop culture.
02
Popping
Popping C at Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final at Paris
© Little Shao / Red Bull Content Pool
Popping — founded on the West Coast during the 1960s — is an umbrella term for several unique dance movements that feature a technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in the dancer's body, referred to as a pop or a hit. There are waves, tuts, takes, dimes, and several more moves, all done continuously to the rhythm of a song in combination with various movements and poses, as you can see in this Red Bull Popping Battle. Popping is one of the earliest freestyle dance forms rooted in funk and street dance style that is often performed in battles.
03
Clowning/Krumping
Darren "Outrage" King at Red Bull Dance Your Style 2019 in Los Angeles
© Carlo Cruz / Red Bull Content Pool
To tell the history of Krumping, you first need to know about the predecessor — Clowning. In 1992, West Coast icon Thomas "Tommy the Clown" Johnson invented Clowning in Compton, Calif., when he started to perform clowning for children at birthday parties or the general public at other functions as a form of entertainment. The dance style movement took off with many kids and teenagers creating their dance groups as young adults after seeing Tommy the Clown and his dancers, the Hip Hop Clowns, perform.
Krumping is an evolution of clowning, focusing on highly energetic battles and dramatic movements that are intense, fast-paced, and sharp. Krumping was founded by Ceasare "Tight Eyes" Willis and Jo'Artis "Big Mijo" Ratti in South Central, Los Angeles, Calif., during the early 2000s. Ratti and Willis were originally clown dancers for Tommy the Clown but broke off because their dance style was considered too "rugged" and "raw" for clowning. KRUMP, also spelled K.R.U.M.P., is a backronym for Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise.
Related
In an interview last year, dancer Darren “Outrage” King described what Krumping means to kids like him. “Krump gives voice to many people who feel like they don’t have a voice.”
04
Waacking
Ibuki & Yumeki Waacking Workshop at the Red Bull BC One Camp France in 2018
© Little Shao / Red Bull Content Pool
Waacking emerged as a social dance, set to disco, in the underground gay clubs of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Some of its originators referred to it as "punking" or "whacking," and eventually "waacking." The dance pulls from various moves that involve mainly your arms, hands, and shoulders, trying to bring to life the music being played. It's a dance based on pleasure and pain; every person's style is different. Waacking was initially popularized when dancers performed moves on the television show "Soul Train." But more recently, the dance has seen worldwide popularity because of Instagram and TikTok.
3 min
Introducing Yumeki
Meet Japanese Waacking dancer, Yumeki, who's a wildcard at Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final 2021.
05
Afro Dance
Blayke during the filming of Uncredited in Lagos, Nigeria
© Tyrone Bradley / Red Bull Content Pool
As Afrobeats — also known as Afropop or Afrofusion — became popular worldwide, one could argue that one of the main factors to the genre's popularity is Afro dance. The dance style was founded during the late '90s and early-mid-2000s and pulled from early African dance forms such as Kwaito and Gqom. Over the past decade, many Afrobeats artists have placed their bets on a viral hit by creating Afro dance videos anyone can follow. There is no "right" way to do the dances, but several movements and motions are meant for the individual dancers to remix on their own; everybody has their interpretation. From the pantsula and bhenga dances to Azonto and Kukere, freestyle Afro dance plays a significant role in bridging the gap between Africa and the Black diaspora worldwide.
46 min
(Un)credited
Dive deep into the origins of Afro Dance in Nigeria and how it has shaped a global mainstream culture.
06
Street Jazz
Street jazz is a high-energy fusion of jazz dance and elements of hip-hop dance. This freestyle dance style is based on improvisation, with aspects of rigid robotic movements, the marked spins often found in breaking, and the fluid movements of hip hop. Street jazz appeared in dance scenes in the 1970s. Some of the most popular Street Jazz performers are The Fly Girls from "In Living Color," a sketch comedy TV show during the early 1990s.
07
Locking
Locking Sion at Red Bull Dance Your Style 2021 in Lagos, Nigeria
© Izzy Photography / Red Bull Content Pool
Locking was originally a traditional funk dance that is today more associated with hip-hop. It's a style based on locking movements when a dancer freezes during fast movements and "locks" in a particular position holding that position for a short while and then continuing at the same speed as before.
Movements are generally large, exaggerated, and performance-oriented, with dancers often interacting with the audience. Locking can also be physically demanding, requiring many acrobatics and physical movements, such as landing on one's knees or a split. Don Campbell founded Locking during the late 1960s in Los Angeles. The dance style was initially called Campbellocking, later shortened to Locking.
08
Turfing
8 min
Yung Phil presents Turfin
Follow Yung Phil from Oakland to New Orleans for the USA Red Bull Dance Your Style National Finals.
Turf dancing aka “turfing,” a high-energy hip-hop dance style with roots in 1960s Boogaloo freestyle dancing, emerged from West Oakland, California in the 1990s. Its name comes from the acronym “T.U.R.F.” — “taking up room on the floor.”
Turfing began receiving national attention in the early- to mid-2000s. In particular, dancer Jeriel Bey’s dance group, The Architeckz, turf danced in nationally prominent Bay Area rappers’ music videos. For example, the group featured prominently in E-40’s 2006 music video “Tell Me When to Go,” for which Bey served as choreographer.
Some turf dancers, or “turfers,” bend and jerk their limbs in sharp, almost contortionist-like ways. Others move fluidly across dancefloors with their bodies low to the ground, and others use lots of spins in their dances. The most skilled turfers borrow from gymnastics and incorporate in-air somersaults.
In a recent interview, dancer and Oakland native Yung Phil discussed the impact of turfing within and beyond the city. “A lot of people think about Oakland as being negative, but I’m here to show them that we can do something that’s positive,” he said “[The] dance style that I have, it really came from the culture. It really came from the soil.”
Conclusion
Freestyle dancing is all about self-expression and improvisation. The link between all these different styles is that it allows and even pushes dancers to dance as originally as they can. So whether you are a fan of Afro dance or have dreams of Locking at Red Bull Dance Your Style, make sure you do you; there is no wrong way to freestyle.
Part of this story