Street dance

A street dance is a dance style—regardless of country of origin—that evolved outside dance studios in any available open space such as streets, dance parties, block parties, parks, school yards, raves, and nightclubs. The term is used to describe vernacular dances in urban context. Vernacular dances are often improvisational and social in nature, encouraging interaction and contact with spectators and other dancers. These dances are a part of the vernacular culture of the geographical area that they come from. Examples of street dance include b-boying (or breakdancing), which originated in New York City, and Melbourne Shuffle which originated in Melbourne, Australia.

History

Traditional jazz dance, having existed since the late nineteenth century, is perhaps one of the oldest street dances of urban America. Street dance is often considered urban folk dance. Since many concepts of urbanization have existed for a long time back in history, the point of which folk dance is to be considered a more historical street dance is often broad and unknown. Street dance and folk dance are distinguished by when the terms were introduced for, the term 'street dance' as a compound noun has been believed to have existed since the beginning of the early 20th century, whereby Afro-American vernacular dance was becoming the most popular in the western world. Clogging is thought to be considered a very early form of street dance, since it evolved in the streets, factories and dance parties during the 18th century (or before) amongst dancers that were considered a part of the UK, Western Europe and Appalachian urban countercultures at the time.

Street Dance

Street dance, formally known as vernacular dance, refers to dance styles that evolved outside of dance studios in any available open space.

Street dance, Street Dance or StreetDance may also refer to:

Break Machine

Break Machine was the name of a 1980s American rap act, fronted by Keith Rodgers and produced by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo; the team behind the Village People.

Career

Rodgers was a musician and presenter of a rap radio show on the New York station WHBI 105.9. In 1981, he recorded a single, "Searching Rap" under the name 'Bon Rock'. This brought him to the attention of Morali and Belolo, the French producers, who were looking for new styles after the decline of disco. In 1983, together with Fred Zarr, they released "Street Dance", which was an international hit and one of the earliest mainstream breakthroughs for hip hop.

"Street Dance" peaked at #3 on the UK Singles Chart in March 1984, and was the 39th best-selling single of that year. It hit #1 in Sweden and Norway. In Germany, it was the 78th best-selling single of 1984. It charted #11 in Italy. "Street Dance"'s strongest chart performance was in Norway, where it was #1 for five weeks. In France, the song reached #1 for two weeks, selling over a million copies and becoming the 86th best-selling single of all time according to a list released in 2004 by the Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique