Hip-hop to the beat

Hip-hop dance workshops offer a chance for students to engage with their music, on their terms, writes PETER MCGUIRE

EARLIER THIS year, hip-hop dance troupe Diversity beat hotly tipped Susan Boyle into second place on TV programme Britain's Got Talent.

For some viewers, Diversity’s stunning choreography was their first encounter with hip-hop. For those familiar with the names Timbaland, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, however, hip-hop is already a major force in popular music.

Transition Year students have been exploring this contemporary dance form for almost a decade. Last year, 3,658 students from 53 different schools or agencies took part in dance workshops, including DancePop, a performance outreach programme from the Dance Theatre of Ireland (DTI) that combines hip-hop with other forms of contemporary dance.

The workshops are one or one-and-a-half hours in duration and suitable for both complete beginners and more experienced dancers.

In Ireland, dance is often experienced through the medium of an embarrassing uncle doing the twist at a wedding, so it’s not surprising that students often have reservations. Loreta Yurick, co-founder and artistic director of DTI, explains: “It’s a big step to take the initiative and walk into a dance class. A lot of people can be intimidated, so we try to make it as easy and comfortable for them as possible. We know that anybody can dance but, like any motor skill, it needs practice and a desire to learn.”

The dance workshops are hugely beneficial for the development of “bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence”, which involves learning through physical movement. They’re also useful for developing creative capacity, as participants learn how to improvise, create and choreograph their own dance moves.

As well as being good physical exercise and a creative outlet, numerous medical studies have highlighted a link between memory and dance. Yurick believes that students under pressure from exams can find breathing space through dance: “The combination of physical activity and creative expression offered by dance leaves people refreshed, and with much clearer thinking. We’ve even noticed that some students can study better after taking part in one of our classes, and that they tend to retain more information.”

Dance has formed part of the Physical Education syllabus in second-level schools for many years now, but it’s in Transition Year where students can really whirl into this most ancient of art forms.

Anna McMahon is a teacher at St Mary’s Secondary School in Naas, Co Kildare, where the Physical Education department offers dance alongside pilates, swimming, wall-climbing, squash, step aerobics, and more. “TY is a good time to broaden our PE programme, and this is where dance comes in,” she says. “The programme is fun, invigorating, and supportive. The students develop body awareness, musicality, flexibility and spatial awareness, and, most importantly, the confidence to believe that they can do it.”

FOR 17-YEAR-OLD Zara Lonergan, a student at St Mary’s, her TY DancePop experience offered a small flavour of dance – and she loved it. “There was a group of around 30 students for each session, and they took on board that most students were beginners. They really encouraged us to elaborate and to take on other people’s ideas.”

Zara’s classmate Laura Cummins elaborates: “At one point, we were paired into teams and given the task of preparing a dance in one minute and performing it in front of the rest of the class. Then, if we thought the moves were good, we incorporated it into one big dance.” Both girls pursued dance classes after the DancePop workshop.

“Dance gets us into a space,” says Yurick. “Dance is ritual, recreation and spectacle, and a dance class provides us with a communal experience. You sense the motion of how someone else moves. You feel the energy as you would at a rock concert.”

For more information, visit dancetheatreireland.com or phone 01-2803455