Theater and Dance 250: Hip Hop Culture

Hip Hop Culture is taught from a dance perspective, and includes the context of West Coast street styles and their concomitant sub-cultures, including Popping, Animation, Krump, C-walk, and others.  The course covers some basics of U.S. History/African American U.S. History, focusing on sharecropping and the Great Migration, as well as on conditions which contributed to the formation of “ghettos” in The South Bronx of New York City, and the Watts and Compton neighborhoods of Los Angeles.  The course traces Hip Hop culture to African-diasporic traditions, practices, and forms which persisted throughout that history.  Students will engage with the contemporary expression of those traditions and practices in the contrasting landscapes of Hip Hop culture and Hip Hop cultural production.