it's my first post, and it's gonna be long...

hey hey everyone!

It's an honor to be a part of SGD, big ups to all those who've been contributing, like Candy, Caleb, Marc, Princejack, and Chunky.

Hello to all the readers out there!

since it's my first post, i'll post something that i had previously posted on my blog. so here it goes, the title of my post is "Something to think about":

Well I was having a chat with Terrence from NRA a couple of nights ago and we were talking about dance and stuff... and I said alot of thing that, surprisingly, amazed myself. More like, intrigued myself. So I decided that I'ma blog about it.

First of all, in this post, I mean absolutely NO OFFENCE and absolutely NO DISRESPECT, to anyone, to any dance style, to any artform. Also, I mean absolutely NO RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.

That said, I'll start my post about what I realised about dance... and you can go think about it too.

I was just chatting with him about my trip to Japan and my experiences and we suddenly spoke about the different "styles" of dance you see nowadays and how people express themselves and stuff. We were talking solely about Hip Hop so I'm sticking to that.

Nowadays, the Hip Hop dance style can be categorised into so many different various forms / manifestations. First off, we have the "street style" Hip Hop, which (I apologize if I'm wrong) is kinda more "ghetto"... then there's the more "gangsta" type, the "raw" forms of hip hop, the very "expressive" type. And on the other hand, you've got Lyrical Hip Hop, Jazz Hip Hop / LA Hip Hop, the more "refined" type.

One can say, "Street Style Hip Hop" and "Commercial". Call it what you like. But the different dance styles were born from the very same genre of music.

Lately I've really gotten into Newstyle (more like Electric Style, because I'm a mad fan of Electric Trouble...) which was pioneered by crews like the Mop Tops (who are now Elite Force Crew - correct me if i'm wrong, but I think I'm correct!). This street / raw style hailed from NY. It's got different elements of other dance styles in it, which makes it so unique. I'm not saying "this is the best and one and only dance" but this is the dance style that I dig.

Then there's LA style, which, as the name implies, hails from LA. I don't know where Lyrical Hip Hop came from, but I'm guessing it's due to a fusion of Lyrical Jazz of some sort. In Osaka, I learnt that LA Hip Hop is called Jazz Hip Hop. It's got Jazz techniques and elements in it.

Now as I was chatting to Terrence, I was "laying out" these two dances in my mind. And I suddenly realised, most of the top Newstyle dancers (pioneers / innovators / famous heads) are blacks, while most of the top LA style dancers (pioneers / innovators / choreographers) are whites. Like I said, I mean absolutely no racial discrimination here.

This led me to think about the background (lifestyle / living conditions) of the dance / dancers (from whatever I know thru watching movies / shows / documentaries / reading articles), and I came to this conclusion: Although both styles dance with the same music, the black dance to express their hearts, their thoughts, with their bodies as their voices, while the whites dance to express the song, it's meaning, with their bodies as an instrument, as if they're part of the song.

Terrence mentioned that one is simply more expressive than the other in it's own unique way. The blacks are more "raw", while the whites are more "refined". Probably, to a certain extent.

[Blacks: Heart & Soul / Whites: Mind & Body]

After looking at it like that, I realised it's kinda like the "Yin and Yang of Dance"... they are entirely different, yet, they are part of the same circle. I've yet to see someone able to mix the two styles into one, but for now, this is what I thought about, and this is what I wanted to share.

Lastly, before I end my post, I would like to stress again, that I mean ABSOLUTELY NO RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND NO OFFENCE / DISRESPECT TO ANYONE AND ANY ARTFORM, AT ALL.

I know also that Brooklyn Terry (EFC) stated that there isnt a "Newstyle", that it is just essentially Hip Hop... no disrespect to the man. I stated it as "Newstyle" in my post because I wanted to accentuate the difference between different Hip Hop "substyles / feels".

the silence is over.