Hip Hop a choice for Junior Short Dance next season

[deedee1]

Are we going to see an exciting dance like this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YCuZottNEc

This is one kind of piece of music only Daisuke can make it alive, or the one program only he skate to, many say.
And I kind of agree; no one but Dai can skate like this.
What surprised me a lot and appreciated back then, was it was actually a competitive program. I still appreciate for Nikolai's idea and Dai's efforts to create such an exciting program. But to tell the truth, this is not my cup of tea as a skating program...I have other favorite programs done by Nikolai for him.

I hope junior ice dancers can dance well enough, while skating on the ice; I mean without stopping at one point on the ice and start dancing.

[drivingmissdaisy]

Most hip-hop songs have radio friendly edits, so I don't think that'll be too challenging. Timberlake considers himself hip hop.

At the very least, it should be better than the Yankee Polka.

Even with radio-friendly edits, there are often sexually explicit underlying themes to this genre of music, which I think are inappropriate for junior skaters. I do admit, it could be entertaining, but it seems like a thinly-veiled attempt at making ice dancing more relevant to casual fans because, as someone else said, hip-hop movement wouldn't translate well to ice.

[Olympia]

Are we going to see an exciting dance like this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YCuZottNEc

This is one kind of piece of music only Daisuke can make it alive, or the one program only he skate to, many say.
And I kind of agree; no one but Dai can skate like this.

That is so cool! I hadn't watched it for some years. That footwork is unreal.

[Serious Business]

Thank you for that link, deedee1! It's a great reminder that you absolutely can do hip hop on ice. No less a skating artistic master than Daisuke Takahashi demonstrates, in back to back footwork sequences, how hip hop can translate directly to the ice. And yes, he is skating to hip hop. A lot of posters don't seem to realize how diverse and pervasive hip hop is. Hip hop, even in its earlier, less influential days, was never limited to just sex and the rawer aspects of life. Though of course that was a large part of it, as with everything from tango to bluegrass to the blues, really any music that arose from the masses. From the 90s onward, the hip hop rhythm, which is what's germane when it comes to ice dance music selection, began to pervade almost every form of music. You'll find the hip hop beat in everything from a Bruce Springsteen song (Streets of Philadelphia) to Bollywood numbers to remixes of classical music, such as the one Daisuke used. Hip hop melded with other genres and birthed new ones such as trip hop and reggaeton.

Here's another competitive program that uses a hip hop song perhaps even more effectively than Daisuke did: Stephanie Rosenthal's Rockit SP. She actually incorporated more hip hop moves in her number. Everybody loved that number, even Dick Button. Adrian Schultheiss's very memorable Olympic season FS used a number of hip-hop/hip-hop derived songs, although, alas, I could only find non-Olympics performances of it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzDWsec4N2U He uses Massive Attack's Teardrop and Cypress Hill's Insane in the Membrane, along with some hip-hop-ish moves. Hip hop already is a part of competitive figure skating, and provided the beats for some of the most memorable programs the sport has seen.

[Olympia]

I always associated hip hop with rap, so I didn't like it much. Then the TV show So You Think You Can Dance started featuring hip hop among its other dance styles. What a surprise to see what a good dancer, either studio-trained or street-trained, could do with hip hop. I have a completely different feeling about it now. I can see that it has so much potential, both on the floor and in the ice rink.

[CoyoteChris]

That's it. I am too old. I am checking into the assisted living center and watching Laurence Welk reruns....giving up going to ice skating events.....since I dont like the hip hop/rap music, I can see that it is really going to affect my enjoyment of the Sport. A certain US Pair who I admire and will remain nameless this season did a skate to a great piece of music that was bastardized by being played on a steel guitar....I almost leaned over the boards and lost my lunch on the ice. If this is a play to obtain fans from the younger set, they risk loosing us old foggies...anyone have a spare "Depends?" I would like to stay up past 9pm and watch my DVD of D&W's
"Die Fledermaus" again....

[dorispulaski]

Chris, Don't look now: I hear they have Isabelle Brasseur advertising Depends in Canada. NK

[pista04]

The definition of hip-hop is so hard to pin down, but there are many types that could fit extremely well with ice dance and not necessarily be inappropriate. We studied hip hop and it's role in society and social movements here at the University I attend in Michigan and some of it could speak volumes and be adapted into wonders.

A quick scan of modern hip hop and you can see some beautiful potential in songs such asM.I.A.'s Bucky Done Gun....I mean, according to wikipedia even Nicki Minaj's Super Bass is "hip hop". Hip Hop doesn't need to be only the original beginnings, like Salt n Pepa. New generation, new style of hip hop.

[Tonichelle]

Chris - hip hop is not a dance for rap. it can go with R&B and Pop as well... which is what we already hear in ice rinks...

I think Stephanie and Dai are exceptions to the rule, not a good depiction of what we will get with this idea for the SD... If I'm proven wrong then it will be a positive

[skatinginbc]

I think Ilia Kulik's "Rock-It" is pretty cool (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quRa2YB6Z8). Some of his moves are quite interesting, and artistic too.

[Tinymavy15]

I like the ISU CD for Yankee Polka!!!!!

here's TanBen's Sexy Back... it wasn't sexy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87QB_hFYstA

Tanith was

[bigsisjiejie]

That's it. I am too old. I am checking into the assisted living center and watching Laurence Welk reruns....giving up going to ice skating events.....since I dont like the hip hop/rap music, I can see that it is really going to affect my enjoyment of the Sport. A certain US Pair who I admire and will remain nameless this season did a skate to a great piece of music that was bastardized by being played on a steel guitar....I almost leaned over the boards and lost my lunch on the ice. If this is a play to obtain fans from the younger set, they risk loosing us old foggies...anyone have a spare "Depends?" I would like to stay up past 9pm and watch my DVD of D&W's
"Die Fledermaus" again....

Book me a room next to yours at the Home. Can I come over and watch your D&W DVD with you? I'll share my box of Depends...

[Serious Business]

There's no reason why one has to only like symphonic music or hip hop. There are many kinds of music we find completely innocuous now that were shocking, controversial and condemned at their emergence. Polyphony was controversial in Europe when it first emerged! Romanticism, too. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring provoked booing and rioting at its premier, and a few decades later it's deemed safe enough for use in a Disney cartoon (Fantasia). Tango was (wrongly) derided as a brothel dance. Jazz criticized for being unmusical. Rock for being noise. And so on.

Look, I'm not saying one must accept every music genre, or that all of them survive the test of time. But by now, hip hop is an indelible part of how most humans conceive of music. Its rhythm, its ambulatory syncopation, its bass stab; the idea that the non-chromatic tonality of the spoken word can be leveraged, played with, then recombined with chromatic music; the idea that syllables can be stretched, altered, paced into flow and rhythmic texture; the record player as an awesome percussive instrument; sampling and looping previously recorded music to make entirely new ones, and many more revolutionary musical ideas have been turned by hip hop musicians into something that's catchy, popular, accessible and expressive. Hip hop has changed music theory as practiced by the popular consciousness. It is the most important evolution in music since rock and roll. You may not like most of what you've heard from it, but I guarantee you, some piece of music you like somewhere has been deeply influenced by it. And given how pervasive hip hop is, how it's been absorbed, adapted and reconfigured by almost every culture and every niche, there's bound to be some form of it you'd like if you gave it a chance.

For figure skating, a uniquely musical sport, to ignore hip hop would be a waste. I'm glad the ISU is making some effort to incorporate it. Just referencing the music alone is going to lead to interesting new ways to move on the ice. For instance, I think that turntablism (i.e. record-scratching) is the one musical instrument that provides the closest analog to skating footwork. I can easily imagine Kurt Browning's footwork from his pro years playing with that, if he hasn't tried it already. I would love to see ice dancers explore the use of edges to this percussion.

[Tonichelle]

For instance, I think that turntablism (i.e. record-scratching) is the one musical instrument that provides the closest analog to skating footwork. I can easily imagine Kurt Browning's footwork from his pro years playing with that, if he hasn't tried it already. I would love to see ice dancers explore the use of edges to this percussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCapfwISfAU ??

Or maybe Kulik's Rock It Man? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quRa...feature=colike

SOI's Chair Men http://youtu.be/1nRKDHs3VTU (more techno maybe?)

[CoyoteChris]

Chris, Don't look now: I hear they have Isabelle Brasseur advertising Depends in Canada. NK

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