Skills n Drills is aimed at dance teachers, professionals and students aged 16 years and above. So why the name Skills n Drills and why is this not a youth programme, you may ask? With the growing success of dance many teachers, professionals, and students are continually in the front line either teaching classes or being on stage. Success and a heavy workload is of course what every artist wants - a full diary. However, the backlash is you are often not able to maintain your own personal development and growth within your particular chosen craft.

If you are a teacher or performer you are more often than not stood in front of a class or stage leading - but how often do you get to go to the other side and be led? I believe this is a big issue within the practice of hip hop and dance in general. There has been a big shift in professional opportunities, over the last 10 years, for hip hop artists with the emergence of major festivals such as Breakin’ Convention and ever increasing numbers of dance companies and dance films. Being that hip hop is 40 years old that’s not a bad achievement for a dance and culture that had all but disappeared in the late eighties!

It’s obvious that hip hop as a culture is adaptable, a survivor, and that its innovation has pushed it into the mainstream. But how does the community react to, engage, measure the quality, practice and integrity of the various hip hop/street dances?

Hip hop dances have history, vocabulary, architects and framework and within in any dance form to be the best in your chosen craft, it is the in depth practice of a dance, that gives you the confidence, understanding and ability to be on a path of really mastering your form.

Skills n Drills works with a consciousness that it is the all round study of a dance that produces excellence. At Skills n Drills the schedule commits to a warm up, two 2 hour dance classes, and a one hour lecture. The dance classes are 2 hours long as the intent of the course is not to learn a piece of choreography then leave, but to teach dance, break down techniques, rhythms, and improvisation. With the popularisation of the art form, one of the biggest issues street dance has had to face is the readiness to make choreography, to make shapes, at the expense of the spirit of the dances - where’s the soul?

Street dances were first and foremost party dances. Way before the spinning on your head or isometric inspired isolations of Egyptian style poses like King Tut there were dances like the funky broadway, camel walk and the breakdown. Let’s remember that hip hop dance in its purest form came from the parties, from the clubs. Before it was ever known as hip hop it was about communities getting together and getting their groove on. The sixties and seventies was a time of a great shift within the black experience both musically and socially. The early sixties saw segregation end in the States, as well as the untimely death of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. In a time of joy and protest artists such as James Brown and Rufus Thomas got people up to dance and laid down the sonic roots of what was to become funk music. Funk music lead young dancers as they discovered their freedom of expression through movement, movement which was to eventually develop into locking, popping and breaking, styles which form the foundation of hip hop dance.

Put in a classroom setting you naturally lose some nuances of the dance, often teaches go straight to the choreography bit of a class which is where the party dances and grooves can be lost along the way. The more pressure there is for street dance groups to create tightly knit choreographic pieces the more diluted they can become, taking them further away from the original intent of the dances. In terms of technique, and loss of party dances, the torso can become more rigid as the fluidity and undulations of the party dances are not made important and become second to shape shifting and sharp rigid shapes. I am not saying that precise choreography is not valid, but it seems that if social dance is not taught within the class situation, hip hop dance is in fear of being taken so far away from its original roots that, what was once practice of soulful expression would soon be turned into a form of cheer leading which exists more from synchronised movement than it does from a true connection and physical interpretation of the music.

The first class taken by participants of Skills n Drills is a two hour social dance class, taking it back to the Soul Train era. Not only does this allow the attendees to get their groove on, it also allows them to socialise as a group and get comfortable with the music. Musicality is a major issue in street dance, that is becoming lost against the two dimensional backdrop of TV and YouTube. Street dance is about dance and music and, once you’ve committed yourself to both, beauty and a soulful experience - it is not gymnastics. Skills n Drills classes have no fourth wall between student and teacher, it’s a sharing, a philosophy that is spread through out the course. Each teacher through their particular dance form bring foundation, history and knowledge of vocabulary. They are all connected to pioneering dancers and architects of their dances. This I believe to be one of the most important factors at Skills n Drills that the teachers come with a connection to a legacy and understanding of that which they teach which you may not get from a hip hop routine.

At Skills and Drills it is legacy which we promote first and foremost, and this is what accounts for the success of the course and the reason why we are in our fifth year. Often in the application process, applicants state ‘I want to find out more about real hip hop dance’. All the workshop leaders are placed in a position of trust by the programme participants, guiding them through well established formats handed down to them from the very pioneers of their particular dances. As the participants connect, take a break from being the leader, they replenish and invigorate themselves and their passion for hip hop/street dance, which in turn is passed onto their students and audience.

Hip hop dance is evolving; Skills and Drills is part of that evolution. It asks the community to take responsibility for itself, develop itself, understand legacy to create future. It’s about bringing your notebook, asking questions, making new friends, lots of dancing, lots of sweat and lots of fun. Professional development doesn’t have to be a lengthy day of serious lectures and in depth debate. At Skills n Drills we do all that too, but we also bring the funk!