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My interpretation is me dancing in a chair, not moving my legs. This connects to my research topic because I am putting myself in the shoes of a person who is physically unable to move a part of their body. As you can see, I use a lot of facial expression in my video. I use my arms, shoulders, and chest to emphasize all of the dance moves I incorporate into my video.  I learned that when one body part is not being used, you can put a lot more expression into other parts of your body or facial expressions to create something different.

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This is my Dance As Research on the topic of Hip Hop Dance and Disability. My interpretation is me dancing in a chair, not moving my legs while watching the Hip Hop Old School Dictionary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqB6zWQaWV0&list=PL7sbTg36K-Uo_2uiK9-oYi_17jbwJGdF9&index=2&t=23s  

This connects to my research topic because I am putting myself in the shoes of a person who is physically unable to move a part of their body. I can never fully understand how someone with a physical disability may feel when dancing watching a video of an able bodied person so I am hoping this is not offensive, just a way for me to learn. As you can see, I use a lot of facial expression in my video. That came naturally. I use my arms, shoulders, and chest to emphasize all of the dance moves I incorporate into my video.  I learned that when one body part is not being used, you can put a lot more expression into other parts of your body or facial expressions to create something new and different.

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Hip Hop Dance and Disability

The HITEMFOLKS video showcases that “disability” doesn’t matter. What matters in the video, is that everyone is outside on the street having fun. The hip hop dancers share a collective dance move, the whoa. This is the move where one fist is up in the air moving in a circular motion while the body is still, sometimes with one leg up. In the video, it is clear that there is a general celebration of each individual dancers moves and creative expression. The group’s collectiveness and high energy towards each other brings no discussion of separating their differences of disabled and able embodiment. 

This is an example of how all bodies are celebrated in their own dance expression and capable of dancing together.

The video supports important social context through participatory culture. By supporting each other in the dance group of all ethnicities, shapes, sizes, and abilities, the video is making a difference showcasing that everybody can dance.

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ILL-ABILITIES Crew

The Ill-abilities crew is "an all-star team of differently-abled dancers whose goal was to compete in the breakdance competition circuit, showing the world that anything is possible. Their mission is to help redefine society’s view of disability by empowering individuals to live life with limitless possibilities through positive interaction within communities worldwide." I choose this source because the message is empowering for all different types of abilities, promoting limitless possibility. 

Context:

The crew is showcasing their differences and embracing those differences through hip hop dance in the video. 

Each member of the crew has a different disability, visible and non visible. In the text of the youtube video each crew member has a crew name stated, where they are from, and what their disability is. Each has a link to where you can find them on facebook or their own website.

The important social context of this crew and video is through their mission to redefine society’s view of disability. Ableism is a term for discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. A lot of our society has had or has a ableist view. Hip hop dance is a style of dance that is embracing freedom of expression through movement which is exactly what this crew is also doing in the video. 

The crew’s background is not important in this video, just an empty mall or building of some sort. The dancers are showcasing that they are breaking that ableist viewpoint barrier and conquering the limitations of what the disabled body can do in comparison to what the “able” bodied break dancers can do.

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Patty is a Co-Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of Sins Invalid (www.sinsinvalid.org), a disability justice-based performance project centralizing disabled artists of color and queer and gender non-conforming artists with disabilities.

“OUR MISSION

Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body, developing provocative work where paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all bodies and communities.

We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans, gender variant and intersex people, and others whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)' notions of "normal" or "functional."

OUR VISION

Sins Invalid recognizes that we will be liberated as whole beings—as disabled, as queer, as brown, as black, as gender non-conforming, as trans, as women, as men, as non-binary gendered— we are far greater whole than partitioned. We recognize that our allies emerge from many communities and that demographic identity alone does not determine one's commitment to liberation.

Sins Invalid is committed to social and economic justice for all people with disabilities – in lockdowns, in shelters, on the streets, visibly disabled, invisibly disabled, sensory minority, environmentally injured, psychiatric survivors – moving beyond individual legal rights to collective human rights.

Our stories, imbedded in analysis, offer paths from identity politics to unity amongst all oppressed people, laying a foundation for a collective claim of liberation and beauty.”

That information is from the website.

Why I wanted to add this photo from the Access Centered Movement Instagram page (linked in the photo below) is to showcase that there are organizations supporting the arts of people with disabilities that have the same value of promoting that a limitation can be a source of creativity and can create an entire community to support and work through the injustice people with disabilities face through art, not just through hip hop dance. Also performances of poetry, video, spoken word,  music, drama, and dance. 

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What is your definition of normal? 

People cannot define what is normal because we are all different. Why is normal even a word? Normal is boring, yet we conform to societal norms to fit in, to be treated equal. We were all born different. Hip hop dance promotes difference through freedom of expression through dance. This post is celebrating the idea that who you are is okay, and to embrace it. 

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Access-Centered Movement (ACM)

“As a teacher with disabilities, there are times when I may not be able to offer teachings that meet students’ needs because of my own limitations. When I am transparent about these things, when I explain that a Disability Justice framework means that there are times when things are not efficient, when students see my own vulnerabilities; it only gives more validation to their lived experience that having a bodymind is incredibly hard, that we are all doing the best that we can, and that whatever we are bringing to class is perfect and whole.” I pulled this quote from the Access Centered Movement wordpress article by Jess because the Disability Justice Framework is an important term to learn about that relates to hip hop dance and disability. 

ACM supports minority groups and creates a safe space and access for BIPOC and queer people with disabilities to dance and move their bodies as they freely want to express themselves. 

More dance classes need to be fully accessible for all participants and this movement holds space for those who are left out. 

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Hip Hop Dance and Disability

I decided to research Hip Hop Dance and Disability for a number of reasons. 

I was inspired to learn more about how hip hop dance is a personal form of expression as well as an inclusive form of dance style and how people of different body abilities use dance to empower their individuality and their own special body. 

“Limitation can be a source of creativity.” This was a statement made in class by Professor Bragin. I want to embrace this idea through the posts I blog about. This relates to Hip Hop Dance because through history enslaved African Americans used dance as a way to heal, communicate, and create a community without the use of words or language barriers, instead through dance, clapping, rhythm, and movement. When humans have limitations whether it is to access, social injustice, being born with different bodies, we can all celebrate and express our differences through the power of dance and movement. A song or a rhythm is all we need to come together and dance or dance alone and record it and post it on media for the world to see. 

I believe that movement is medicine. I think that through all forms of movement and dance, there is a strong possibility for personal healing to come forth for each individual. Dance can be a form of self care, a de-stresser. I definitely use dance to relieve stress, to get out of my head and into my body. Our bodies are essentially our homes, one thing no one can take away from us

Lastly, I am going to school to become properly educated to be a certified developmental special education teacher, specifically for early childhood development. I think it is important to teach all youth to use their bodies and express themselves through dance and movement which started through hip hop dance. I have worked for five years officially with children with disabilities. I have been exposed to kids with physical and mental differences since I was 8 years old. I learned at a very young age that everyone is capable of succeeding in their own way and I have always embraced this belief. I want to showcase through this blog that very idea, everyone can dance! I did ballet for 11 years, a structured and strict style of dance which gave me experience and exposure with one dance style at a young age. I now love to shake my body and dance however I please, more of the ecstatic style of dance inspired by hip hop dance and other traditional dances from all over the world that I have learned about in my previous Intro to Dance class and through social media. I especially resonate with the beat of a drum and cowbells.  

I want to always be able to embrace and make it apparent to kids in and out of the classroom that dance and movement is important especially with my work as a future educator. 

I work as a respite care provider with a 7 year old with a physical disability. He loves to sing and dance to music, he lights up. So, we have dance parties all the time. This experience helped me realize how important it is to show all kids about dancing and movement. In the classroom setting at circle time I have seen how excited and determined most kids get about Yoga time or sing and dancing at circle time. 

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  This dance video made me get up immediately and try the happy feet move. Wow, it is kind of a hard move for me to do! The song also makes me feel good and want to vibe with the people in the video and just dance around. 

How to enjoy yourself during the self-quarantine time? Check out these hip-hop videos!

This is an informative video showing the histories/developmental process of hiphop and the definitions of social dance behind the ‘simple’ steps and body movements. Check it out if you want to know more about the origins of the hiphop social dance!

This is a short but really relaxing video that attracted my attention in the first second. The beats and steps are interesting and it’s totally not limited by the space and numbers of dancers. We can all do this dance in our houses during this special quarantine time. Also, this video resonates with Camille Brown that all of the body movements are random and liberal that express the dancers’ attitudes toward self-expression and life-enjoying spirit. Then, it also illustrates that modern hip-hop dances can be formed by diverse people with different skin colors, ethnicities, and identities. In this video, we can see both males and females with various skin colors are gathering together which proves that hip-hop social dance is seemingly not only a typical dance for traditional African-American but also an open dance genre for the wider public due to cultural development. Furthermore, I noticed that these dancers are all wearing similar clothes(t-shirt and jeans) that forming a sense of community. An additional point I want to address is that everyone is dancing differently to some extent, perhaps some people are not familiar with the steps, or maybe they just want to do some individualized movements. It’s fun to explore the connections between the sense of community and self-expression.

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Hi Jonathan,

I liked how you researched about how different cultures interpret hiphop. Ever since I took Intro to Dance, I have realized how interested I am in how different dances come from different cultures. In that class I learned about Chinese Square Dance and a group performed it and taught the rest of the class some of the moves. I enjoyed watching the first video and thought it was so interesting that the lyrics were about changing clothes everyday. I still wonder why it is popular in the hip hop culture to typically wear baggy clothes. I want to learn more about that. I thought it was cool that the people in the video changed from what I thought was traditional clothes to a more popular style of clothing. Is it because dancers want to be able to move or is there more historical context behind it?

Hip Hop and Asian Culture: Tradition vs. Expectations: 

I choose these two hip-hop dance videos, because I have always been interested in seeing how different cultures interpret hip hop. Now of course I will have the opportunity to explore many different cultures, but this time I was trying to find one specifically focusing on the way Japanese people have made hip hop their own. For me, as an Asian American, I feel like I have almost white-washed my own culture, I am the whitest person youll ever meet for better or for worse, so I wanted to connect to my culture, and I have been doing that whether that be thru food, music and language. The first video is one made in Taiwan, even though I was looking for Japanese (I am mixed, chinese and Japanese)  I was watching it and thought that the setting was SO cool and it kind of resonated with my idea of tradition vs. reality. I noticed the traditional Chinese paintings, the yellow hue to the lighting, the floors and the building, it all represented a traditional chinese/taiwanese building, while the dance and the music were very “untraditional” meaning that hip-hop is not too well known in the culture. I just thought the vast contrast of the traditional setting it took place in versus the fast paced, repetitive beat that is more untraditional was interesting. 

The hip hop I saw in the video related to Camille Brown’s video a lot because it demonstrates how it is a way for people in a culture to express themselves and how there really is not a set way or “right or wrong” way to go about hip hop. I think being able to see the contrast between traditional asian settings versus non traditional asian music, dance moves and attire was what helped me connect Camille Brown’s video to what I was watching. 

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Everyone Can Dance

1)

I have been surrounded by people disabilities since I was about 8 years old. My mom is a special education educator and would bring me to her classroom to play with her students sometimes. Back then, people at my school would still use the word retard which always bothered me because I thought of people with disabilities at a young age as just the same as everyone else. I did not judge people by their capability or how they looked. 5 years ago I decided to apply to be a para educator. I have been working with students with disabilities both physical and mental in the Edmonds School District of ages 3-7 and 18-21 ever since. I have a background of dance of 13 years specifically in ballet, some jazz and some hip hop. I stopped dancing professionally when I went to high school, right before I was ready to go on pointe shoes. I loved being more expressive with my dance moves whereas ballet is very structured and perfected. I attended events called Jimz where everyone would dance how they wanted in dark rooms with rap and hip hop music. I then started to attend raves at the young age of 14 (and still today). At raves, I saw people in wheelchairs which inspired a thought that, oh yeah everyone CAN dance and should be included no matter the circumstance. In the preschool classrooms I have worked in the last 3 years. Physical therapists have come into the classroom to teach yoga and a circle time the teachers encourage standing up to dance to songs. This continued to inspire the idea that everyone can and should dance. This year I learned about ecstatic dance. This changed my world. I no longer hid in dark rooms to dance or felt the need to be part of the drug and alcohol culture to really get into my body and move. I took an intro to dance class Winter quarter and would dance the entire time I waited for the bus, something I always envied. When I saw people just let it all out and dance on the street. I became that person. I am still, of course, working on being comfortable to move my body whenever I feel like it in however way I want without feeling sexualized for it or labeled. I believe movement is medicine and can benefit all people. I have started to have dance parties with the 6 year old that I am a respite care provider for, who cannot walk without a walker and his disability also affects his fine motor skills. I encourage him that he can do anything he puts his mind to and that dancing/moving feels good and is a way to express yourself. 

I feel connected to the video that I choose (thank you Professor B for showing me this video)  because one of the dancers has a physical disability that we can see and you can visibly see that this is a diverse group. 

2)

I love how each dancer has their own style but also the dancers vibe with each other and you can tell they are having so much fun. This expands on the Camille Brown video because my first video is a representation of social dance. It emphasizes the fact that anyone can dance as well you can see how the group is vibing together showing how dancing can be social. The song that is played is “Lay Up” by Future and everyone has baggy clothes on which provides the opportunity to move more freely. In the video I chose, the person front and center will do their own dance which represents polyrhythm and then together on a certain beat of the song the entire group will do the same dance move, to me, makes the group look like a community of dancers. I think the video I chose does challenge the Camille Brown video because even though the artist who the group chose to use to dance to is African American, and a majority of the dancers are African American, there is a white person dancing with them as well. I am still learning about the idea of what kind of dancing is racial appropriation especially as a white person myself. I never want to offend culture or other people's history through my language or through my dance. I will admit that I don’t understand how dance can be racial appropriation when it is a way of expressing oneself which also makes me feel uncomfortable to say and makes me feel like I am ignorant.