Forget hip-hop music’s old association with expensive dental accessories, dropping it like it’s hot, sipping on gin and juice or Courvoisier or delivering devastatingly eloquent disses. The ‘Battle of the Giants†dance competition at Sun City last week revealed a whole new side to hip-hop, replete with sequins, lavender hoodies and krumping primary schoolers.
‘So much for hip-hop being dead,†my mother whispered to me after my hip-hop formation team returned to our seats, having won second place. I’m not sure that the lyricist, Nas, who titled his album Hip-hop is Dead, would see the competition as in any way related to his art form.
Rather, the competition shed light on the world of internationally competitive hip-hop dance. Videos of last year’s world championships portrayed this to be a universe where Slovakia be holding it down, Hungary be repping it hard and the United States gets barely a mention. A world more along the lines of the cheerleading movie Bring it On than Get Rich or Die Trying, featuring rap artist Fifty Cent.
You would be right to wonder how I ended up on this scene: my suave kid sister winces every time I sneak ‘zâ€s into wozurds in hip-hop style because I know next to nothing about hip-hop culture despite my fervour for aboveground commercial hip-hop.
She likes to sneer that I ‘didn’t even know that Xzibit sings X!†(I have to admit that I did spend a few fruitless minutes googling ‘exhibitâ€.)
My journey to the brightly lit stage of the Sun City superbowl began in a crowded gym studio dance class, where we entertained bored gym staff and neckless weightlifters, who gawked at us through the glass walls of our enclosure. In January, our buff instructor invited us to join the formation team he coached at Phenix Dance Studio in Norwood.
It took several weeks of learning the four-minute routine before I understood why we were a formation hip-hop team. ‘Formation one!†a coach or captain would shout and all 16 of us would form a clump at the back of the imagined stage. ‘Formation two!†would see us scatter into a ‘W†shape. ‘Formation three!†and we emerged from a chaotic melee into two relatively parallel lines.
Dancing 10 formations to a mixed track of about 11 songs transformed us into out-of-breath puddles of sweat with muscle strains, grazes and bruises. And so it went. On weekends we practised in the park, putting smiles on the faces of amiable drunks who swayed gently to our music. Screaming children paused briefly to watch us squirm.
We even wound up on the crisply shorn grass of the Wanderers stadium, where we popped and locked at the celebration of the State of Israel, politics notwithstanding. And yes, we do (and did) barmitzvahs.
But nothing prepared me for Sun City.
Each solo division began with the contestants performing their one-minute routines simultaneously on the dance floor. In overwhelming displays of energy, over a dozen people krumped, punched the air, flailed their arms, slid across the floor and jumped in front of bored-looking, clipboard-wielding judges.
If you listened closely, you could hear the soft whistle of soaring share prices as the demand for Bioplus, fat burners and ephedrine products rocketed.
Dancers in other divisions paraded exotic costumes, clearly dictated by a strict dress code — there can never be too many feathers or sequins, it can never be too bright or revealing and symmetry is for losers.
During the freestyle finals at the gala event, I witnessed these painted creatures in action.
The heavily made-up dancers had evidently run away from the circus. Moving to an imagined tempo twice as fast as the already frantic techno music, they catapulted through the air, bending their rubber torsos into painful-looking positions.
‘You notice there are no black people doing this,†a friend whispered to me as we watched, slack-jawed, 10 dancers at once on the floor in their glittering, tumbling madness.
The winners received fancy watches and cellphone contracts but the display of energy cried out for a lifetime supply of Prozac.
While the ‘Battle of the Giants†may not prove the death or resurrection of hip-hop, as Mary Shelley will attest, even an attempt at resurrection can be highly entertaining.
New school for old school
Hoodies — hooded sweater
Krumping — a highly energetic dance style that emerged from South Central Los Angeles in the United States and was popularised by David LaChapelle’s movie Rize.
Repping it hard — representing well
Xzibit — born Alvin Joiner IV, Xzibit is an American rapper who also hosts MTV’s Pimp My Ride television show. The song X appears on his third album released in 2000, Restless