Does Street Dance need a formal teaching curriculum?
I believe Street Dance needs the underpinning of a syllabus. To understand why a formalised structure is relevant, we must first look at and understand why and what it has prevented it from happening before now. Hip Hop and Street Dance’s roots originate in social dance and culture. Much like some other dance forms, it grew from a self expression of every day life and although it has now become a publicly recognised dance form, it had not been acknowledged by the dance industry until recently. Unfortunately, like many other non-western dance forms, Street Dance has been affected by an industry hierarchy dominated by an elitist attitude towards the art of dance, one that really only reveres dance forms with European ballet technique at their root. This stance, compounded with the social politics affecting African culture and people from the Diaspora over the last 50 years, left the birthing stages of Hip Hop and Street Dance overlooked. Previously written off as an America dance craze o
