This is the second of three skill-based two-credit courses where students continue the applied study of Hip Hop dance technique based on skill level, supplemented by instruction in Hip Hop dance history, current choreographers and companies, terminology and the principles of time, space, and energy. The course provides students with the opportunity to explore multiple aspects of Hip Hop dance. Learning activities include physical practice, observation, discussion, reading and/or writing to cultivate kinesthetic, aesthetic, and intellectual understanding of Hip Hop dance.
Classroom physical practice will focus on anatomically correct body alignment, awareness of the body in space, musicality, strength, stamina, and flexibility. Care of the body and conditioning for dance is also emphasized.
Goals, Topics, and Objectives
- Further develop complex skills and combinations of hip hop dance movement at the intermediate level.
- Demonstrate and practice proper conditioning of the dancers’ body in preparation of more advanced level work
- Provide students with a greater knowledge-based immersion in Hip Hop Dance history, vocabulary, events, and performance.
- Prepare students for audition and entrance into four-year dance programs.
- Provide transferable technique course credit.
- Anatomical Alignment
Explain musculoskeletal structure and its relationship to movement and energy in the body. Execute movement with connectivity and coordination of the parts to the whole.
- Dancer Conditioning
Demonstrate personal progression along with a continued increase in individual capacity of physical strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility.
- Hip Hop Dance Technique
Demonstrate personal progression of the integration of alignment, conditioning, musicality, and use of energy to execute more developed capacity of intermediate Hip Hop movement combinations and phrases.
- Musicality / Rhythmic Sensitivity
Sustain accurate rhythm, dynamics, accents, and musicality with movement vocabulary, combinations, and phrases and being able to do so while adjusting to a variety of music.
- Hip Hop Dance Vocabulary
Identify and apply Hip Hop Dance terminology.
- Improvisation and Choreography
Demonstrate the relationship of improvised movement to composition of movement phrases and choreography. Begin to compose movement phrases through improvisation and movement manipulation as a soloist, with a partner or in a small group.
- Hip Hop Dance History / Current Events / Performance
Analyze historical and current events and performance in Hip Hop Dance through interpretative reading, writing, observation, and/or discussion.
Assessment and Requirements
Assessment of academic achievement may include but not be limited to written, oral, or movement exams to identify modern dance and skeletal and muscular terminology. Movement exams include the demonstration of intermediate skill levels in technique, performance, and musicality. Interpretative reading and writing assignments and interactive discussion will be used to assess academic achievement.