With dance becoming a mandatory part of physical education in junior high schools, street dance has become much more widely recognized.
Along with that, I feel like more children are taking up dance as an extracurricular activity.
Even within street dance, there are many different styles and a variety of genres.
This time, I’ll be writing about Old School and New School, which are the broad categories of these genres!
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Old school, new school, and middle school
Street dance isHip hopIt’s a dance that originated from the culture.
There are broadly two types of street dance: Old School and New School.
old-school
Old-school is generally considered to be things from before the 1990s.
Derived from hip-hop culture, on the East Coast of AmericabreakdancingOn the West Coast of the United StatesPop dance、Lock dance、Soul dance、Waacking dancebecame popular.
These five genres are included in old school.
This is a genre where the techniques are already largely set.
In particular, it is a genre that remains extremely popular even today.
Judging from the footage, it’s from quite a long time ago, but you can see that old-school dance hasn’t changed much in style even now.
Old-school basically has set forms and techniques.
Therefore, there is no difference in the dance between now and the past.
middle school
There is also something called “middle school,” which became popular between the late 1980s and early 1990s, positioned between old school and new school.
This is a uniquely Japanese way of saying it; overseas, it’s divided into two categories: old school and new school.
When explaining old school and new school, this is essential, so I’ll introduce it.
The genre that corresponds to middle school is,New jack swingthere is / there are
In JapanEXILEI have this image of them dancing to it.
There are many iconic steps, like Roger Rabbit and Running Man.
This step is still widely used in today’s hip-hop.
New School
New school refers to dance genres that emerged as offshoots from the 1990s onward.
This is said to be a new interpretation of old school.
At the new school,hip-hop dance、House danceis included.
There was hip-hop dance in the old school era as well, but it was absorbed into new school, and within new school hip-hop dance has been subdivided. Is it correct to understand it that way?
Hip-hop dance keeps evolving precisely because it has no fixed rules, and as a result, there are many different styles.
Subdivision of hip-hop
There’s a big reason for this in the genre of hip-hop.
Many steps were created by artists who sang and danced to New Jack Swing, and it became a dance style in its own right.
And the dance performed to that music also came to be called hip-hop.
So-called modern hip-hop dance was born here.
The style known as New Jack Swing was absorbed into hip-hop dance.
Hip-hop originally didn’t have specific moves; it combines free, improvised movements.
There aren’t any particular rules.
Exactly, freestyle.
So hip-hop dance depends on the vibe of the music.
Types of hip-hop dance
Next, I will briefly explain the hip-hop genre.
In middle school, hip-hop is characterized by taking heavy, larger steps.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaFAvPpAwE_/?hl=ja&taken-by=fly_dance_studio
In contrast, the new school is characterized by sharply executing intricate choreography to faster-tempo songs.
Just as there are trends in music, there are trends in dance as well.
That's what gives rise to it.
Speaking of recent trends,LA styleThere’s a dance genre you see in music videos.
This isstyle HIPHOPand/or; such as; or (used to list examples)R&BIt is also known as.
Their characteristic style is dancing by closely picking up on the lyrics.
These days, hip-hop with heavy stepsMiddleLA-style hip hopNew SchoolIt is also distinguished by different names.
In conclusion
I’ve briefly outlined the periods of dance history.
Old-school is hype-worthy because the style hasn’t changed from back in the day to now.
The genre of hip-hop is something that can’t be summed up in a single word.
So when you take dance lessons, be careful—even in hip-hop, there can be things that are different from what you expected!