Hip Hop Classes

It is more likely in Hip Hop classes, than most other dance lessons, that you won’t get an introduction from the teacher. Some will introduce themselves to you, but it is our experience that most don’t. So, just get dancing!

The music system will start pumping out a heavy bass line and facing the mirror, an instructor will start doing moves for you to copy.

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Your warm up in Hip Hop classes could vary a lot. There are some teachers out there who do a very thorough ‘Jazz-style’ warm up and insist all their dancers are fully stretched and warmed up before building a routine.

This can help you feel as though the class is very professional, ‘a real class’.

With other Hip Hop teachers, the warm up is basic as they are eager for the class to learn the routine right away.

This approach can make you feel as though the routine is the important thing and is a more ‘street’ approach. You might have to go to a couple of different Hip Hop classes to figure out which one suits you.

The same goes for cool down – some are thorough, others don’t offer one at all. See the section on After Care for more details.

Pre-Warm Up

However, we’ve commonly seen Hip Hop classes actually start before the warm up.

You may find that, when you very first go into the studio, the teacher will face the mirror and demonstrate simple moves one at a time, for the class to loosely follow.

This ‘pre-warm up’ can happen for the first five or ten minutes of the class. It’s not the warm up and it’s not the lesson. But it can serve a number of important functions.

It’s primary function is to slightly delay the start of the class so that any latecomers aren’t too disruptive to the other pupils – which means that when the warm up starts properly after a few minutes, everyone is settled in the class and involved.

And after a few minutes of this ‘taster’ session, the warm-up or class will get underway in earnest. These taster sessions don’t always happen, but we’ve seen it regularly enough to mention it here.

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Don’t be surprised if the pre-warm up (if there is one) and the warm up itself are done by simply copying the teacher’s movements and you aren’t given much (or any) verbal instruction.

This varies wildly between Hip Hop classes and teachers, but sometimes you just won’t get much spoken direction. This is why it is vital to grab a good spot in the studio early on – so you can see everything the teacher is doing.

Routine

Each block of eight will be broken down, practiced to instruction from the teacher and then rehearsed to music.

Hip Hop moves aren’t necessarily complicated for the beginner, but you could find that on every single beat of the first eight beat routine you put together, you’ll have a leg or foot move, an arm move AND a head or back move as well.

That’s a lot of moves to keep up with. Now, obviously a good teacher will break all this down for you as far as it will go and will build your routine slowly.

But there’s a huge amount to remember just to get the moves right and then you have to add attitude and 'cool' to it. Sometimes, it’s worth just trying to switch your brain off and let the beat and your body find where you should be.

Music

Music is obviously a huge part of Hip Hop classes and you better like it loud! We’ve never, ever been to a quiet Hip Hop lesson. And as nearly all of the music used to accompany these classes is brand new or very recent, it gives the whole class a feeling of being in a club.

This is great – it helps relax pupils and encourages more freedom of movement than a standard class set up.

And a heavy bass beat supports the moves so well that it really helps you dance. You should try to feel the moves when you hear the beat.

So, you will have learnt the first eight beat part of the routine and now it is going to be set to music.

It is at this point that it can all come together magically and you’ll be amazed at how professional your dancing looks. Or it could be a disaster. And it won’t depend on the quality of dancing, either.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.  - Martha Graham

b>A really good teacher will have carefully planned what kind of routine to build to what music track.

However, we’ve experienced this enough times to warn you – sometimes, the timing of the routine that you’ve built and the timing of the music doesn’t match.

You may find that you’ve practiced your first block of eight beats of dancing at a certain pace, only to find that when the music comes on for you to dance to, it is faster and you’ve suddenly got to speed up your moves. It just happens that way sometimes.

Hopefully your teacher will correct this and speed up the practice or find a slower beat to dance it to. But if you find it too fast, try slightly fewer moves done well, rather than squeeze all the moves in messily.

And never, ever spin faster than you can control it. See the Moves & Steps section for more detail.

Fortunately this mismatched music thing only happens occasionally. And often, a good teacher will play a blast of the music they want to set the routine to first, at the beginning of the class, so that you can get the rhythm in your head.

Sometimes, your whole 32 beat routine will be done to the same music track throughout the whole lesson.

This is very useful for continuity – you get used to the music and where you should be on each beat.

Other times, you will find that, in order to spice up the class a bit and challenge you more, the teacher will set the first block of eight beats to one track, then the second to another and so on until you put the whole routine together to a final track.

This is great as you get used to adapting your dance to different tracks and it varies the class a bit.

There is a great sense of ‘performance’ in Hip Hop classes

You are doing this dance to be looked at straight away. It’s come from the streets where rehearsing the moves and performing them were the same thing. Classes still retain that immediacy.

So you should always be thinking about how your moves look and giving them your own attitude, your own edge.

Personal interpretation of these moves is more encouraged than in many other dances. So perhaps you don’t have to concentrate quite so hard on executing each individual move perfectly – although if your aim is to be a backing dancer for one of the big R ‘n’ B performers, you are going to have to do everything very precisely.

But that’s a way off for now, while you are still a beginner.

As there is such a strong element of performance to Hip Hop classes, you can quite often find yourself in one that congratulates itself with frequent rounds of applause.

How fantastic it is to be in your first Hip Hop dance class, perform a short routine and get a round of applause!

People who can laugh at themselves! - Lil' J on what makes her laugh

These hip hop classes are great – very encouraging and very motivational.However, as there is such performance element to Hip Hop, classes are often split into two or more groups once the routine is fully built. Individual groups then perform the final routine while the rest of the class watches.

This is always scary for newbies and (as you may have read elsewhere on this site) is something that turns a lot of people off learning to dance.

But hopefully, in Hip Hop, it’ll just bring out the performer in you.

As a point of good dance class etiquette, if you are split into groups to perform the routine, when you are not dancing, politely watch and applaud those whose turn it is to dance.

You may often find that this is the time when the groups of those not currently dancing simply practice their own moves (which is OK) or just start talking amongst themselves and paying no attention to the pupils who are dancing (which is not).

Respect a dancer (even a very new one) when they are performing and give them the support, attention and encouragement they deserve. And if you lead by example, hopefully you will get the same respect in return.

One word of advance warning. Once (and once was enough) we experienced a Hip Hop class where the first half of the lesson was spent teaching the whole class basic Hip Hop moves (which is fine). But then the class was divided up into groups of just two people who had to work together to devise their own routine which was then performed for the whole class at the end of the session.

Very very scary and not recommended for newbies. Not one of the newbies who attended that class ever went back to it.

It might be worth asking the studio or teacher what kind of format the class is in to make sure you don’t get stuck in a class like that. Basically, you just don’t learn anything, and your dancing won’t progress much. Best avoided until you are more experienced.

Hip Hop classes are very hard work. You must make sure you drink lots of water during one of these classes. If the teacher isn’t building water breaks and an occasional breather into the class, just take one when you need it.

So, just keep at it. There's such a mix of different Hip Hop classes you're bound find something that suits you and encourages your dancing.

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