Givin’ Props: Hip Hop, MTV, & Concert Dance

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Givin’ Props was a panel discussion hosted at the Dance Critics Association annual conference that took place on Sunday, July 21, 2001, at the School of American Ballet, Lincoln Center, New York City.

Givin’ Props was designed to examine how the worlds of hip-hop, MTV music video, and concert dance have come together in America. The panel was chaired by Robin Hoffman, designer and Web mistress for Dance Insider, an online publisher of next day dance reviews; and Web designer for MTV Interactive's E-Commerce Department.

Panelists:
Rennie Harris, artistic director, Rennie Harris Puremovement;
Baraka Sele, curator and producer, New Jersey Performing Arts Center's World Festival;
Sally R. Sommer, dance historian, critic, and faculty member at Florida State University;
Elizabeth Streb, artistic director, Streb Ringside.

Respondent:
Julie Davis, Lifestyle Ventures.

ROBIN HOFFMAN: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Givin’ Props.

Our respondent is Julie Davis, editorial director of Lifestyle Ventures, publisher of seven special-interest magazines that include Dance Spirit, Dance Teacher, In Motion, and Pointe. She will start us out with some remarks and the results of an online survey conducted on the Dance Spirit website.

JULIE DAVIS: Thank you. Let me say that our magazines are probably the bad boys for this DCA group since we are known for not publishing dance reviews or criticism. And there's a reason for that. We are definitely influenced by the MTV generation. MTV launched 20 years ago. At the time it was cutting edge—it probably isn't any more. But our readers are definitely MTV generation readers. They want their information short and sweet. They want the big picture. They want to know where to go so that they can draw their own conclusions. And it's information that we feel we have to provide and an approach that we take because many of our readers are not going to become dance professionals—not even in related fields—and we want to make sure that they're going to be filling the seats at performances in the future.

On our Dance Spirit website we did a questionnaire and I'm pleased to say we had over 100 people respond. Now on an average quiz that one of our magazines might do we get tens of thousands of responses. But that's when it's a multiple answer question, and all readers have to do is check off a couple of boxes. Here we had a hundred people—some of them choreographers, some of them beginning students—write very thoughtful paragraphs on our questions. The questions were: Do you feel MTV has influenced your style? Do you think that music videos continue to push the art form? And do you believe that any of the things you see on MTV are impacting performance, concerts, choreographers—the main world of dance, as we would call it here?

We found our readers take classes in every possible kind of dance. It starts with ballet and jazz and tap and modern, and it moves into Latin and swing and salsa and hip-hop. And I'll share with you just a few quotes about why they love hip-hop and how it affects their dancing:

"I'm a ballet dancer. When I'm not in a studio or on stage I dance a lot of pop. And when I dance ballet I have some pop mixed in with it... I know that when I go into a hip-hop dance class it is much more packed than the ballet dance I just got out of... Hip hop has definitely affected the way I dance, because I am now starting to use my body in ways that I never used to before... I am in a modern company, and I studied a modern style which is very strong and sharp. Hip-hop today has that same sharpness and strength. Basically, it just keeps broadening my view on different styles of dance and the possibilities."

The second question was whether or not music videos are cutting edge or just a dull blade these days. And I think we had responses that ran the gamut from kids who say, “Marketing is all MTV is about—it has nothing to do with talent, it has nothing to do with dance," to one who wrote "MTV is more funk, and in the videos they are always taking dance to a new level."

What does influence today's dancers, we're finding, is not something that I would categorize as hip-hop or even as “urban” (which is the global term we use for the column in Dance Spirit). It's so much more than that. It's not bebopping, it's not break dancing, it's not hip-hop—it's not just street. It's a whole conglomeration of styles that have been born out of all the influences that dance draws from.

And I think that that's what you are going to hear about today. Certainly with Rennie [Harris] and Elizabeth [Streb] we have some phenomenal examples of how dance has moved—how dance comes from the music, comes from the body, and has its own vocabulary that we know is very different from a ballet vocabulary and even a modern and a jazz and a tap vocabulary (as hard as some of those are to pin down). So I hope you'll keep an open mind as we share ideas. And then, of course, we'll have time at the end for questions. Thank you.