Modern dance pleases all or most of today’s youth and attracts even the older generation with its multitude of styles. Therefore, we have tried to group modern dance and give you a brief list. But a study of one formation history revealed the origin of several other branches in the directions. One stand out Jumpstyle. Therefore it was decided to group modern dances into main conventional groups: pop dance, very extensive and energetic street dance and sensual group of modern choreography.
Modern dance
Modern dance is a foreign stage choreography that came from the United States and Germany. Its inception, it is a kind of protest of dancers, the way to liberation from the classical ballet and the emergence of a new dance. So the modern was getting rid of pointe and getting new forms. Time passed, new author’s techniques appeared, which caused the emergence of another trend – Contemporary.
Today choreographic modern is a dance of the free body. It includes spectacular throws on the floor, beautiful jumps, complex acrobatic figures, broken and at the same time graceful body lines.
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Contemporary
Contemporary dance has caused not only the emergence of various techniques of modern, but also improvisation techniques, martial arts and even yoga. Contemporary dance is a very sensual dance. Its main feature is the alternation of active movements with a sudden stop, relaxation, sometimes falling of the dancer on the floor. All this is not a chaotic set of movements, but the story that conveys the feelings and actions of the dancer to the audience.
Jazz dance
Jazz dance broadly encompasses various movements from other styles of dance related to or derived from such a trend as “swing”. Here are some of its directions: fun and forbidden in socialism boogie-woogie, its earlier progenitor lindy hop, crazy rock and roll and others. Energetic, sometimes with humorous notes, jazz dance until the 1950s is entirely attributed to African music and dance culture. And in the 1950s, modern jazz dance (jazz-modern) emerged, with its roots coming from Caribbean dance.
Street Dancing
Locking
Locking was originally called Campbellocking, thanks to its founder. The characteristic locking movements and momentary freezes for a short time in various poses gave the name to the style “lock”. Locking is characterized by crisp and very rhythmic hand movements and smoother hips and legs, always tied to the music.
Another peculiarity of locking is its focus on the audience. That is, the dance is more of a performance: the dancer is always friendly and smiling to the audience. Their costumes are exclusively bright sportswear with “stripes” and sometimes suspenders.
Since its birth, locking has been performed to funky music. Modern dancers also prefer to dance to funk.
Popping
Popping is not new in the list of modern dances. Its genesis was in the 1970s in California, thanks to locking. In Russia, the style was also present for quite a long time and was widespread. Moreover, there were even large-scale competitions, but in Russia, called it “top break”, mixing the top break with popping. Now you already know what we are talking about, and represent the movement, which is characterized by popping. Visually, it looks like a chaotic and continuous contraction of the muscles, creating the effect of shuddering body parts, combined with various poses and other movements that form smooth and sharp movements of the body.
Dancehall
Jamaican type of modern dance. In the 1980s it originated as “raggamuffin,” a musical style that emerged from “Riddim” (reggae rhythm) but with a more rhythmic feel.
Dancehall brings together dancers of this style into camps. Camp is a large-scale event, including competitions, workshops, parties, shows, battles and many other entertainment inherent in this movement. The largest such camp is the Big Up Kemp. The first camp was held in Russia and France in 2011 and is now one of the most significant dance events in the world.
Twerking
Twerking aka booty dance – a modern and popular to date direction of dance, the origins of which were tribal dances of women from the African continent. The whole essence of twerking lies in the intense movements of the hips, buttocks, hands and abdomen. Surprisingly, this dance is performed even by men. Twerk became a kind of offshoot of the modern dancehall today. Also contains sexual overtones.
Performed with hip-hop, reggae music, R’n’B and samba. The peculiarity of professional performance is the ability to move one buttock independently of the other and perform various complex drawings with the buttocks.
It is not proven, but it is believed that regular classes of twerking, both professionally and at home, are preventive of gynecological congestion. It is not possible to dance the twerk for people who are not liberated, although doing the twerk contributes to getting rid of this complex.
Electro Dance (Tecktonik)
Electro-dance (tecktonik) – the name came to us from far away France, more precisely from the famous club “Metropolis”, where the annual Tecktonik Killer party is held. In general, it is something between hip-hop trends and dancing in a techno style. The dance itself is performed to the sounds of heavy “electro”.
Break Dance
Break dance is the founder of hip-hop as a subculture. It is divided into two types: top (plastic) and bottom break (heavy stunt movements, requiring skills in acrobatics and good stamina). Born breakdance in New York City in the 60’s. However, the year of its inception is considered 1973, the year of formation of breakdancing as a separate independent dance.
Strip-plastic
Strip-plastic is a complex of seductive movements that create a kind of performance with erotic, sensual overtones, understandable to anyone and everyone who watches this work of art. Strip-plastic is a kind of language for expressing one’s inner feelings and beauty.
Finger Tutting
And finally left the youngest and most intensively developing style of dance Finger Tutting. It is based on complex figures, performed with the fingers of the hands, stylizing the ancient Egyptian art, and related to the “King Tut”
The style began to emerge in 2010 after the release of Step Up 3D, where Jay Gutierrez performed his “finger number” in the credits at the end of the film.