From Charleston
to Hip Hop
Theatre Peckham is ensuring that the roots of urban
dance forms are fully explored in the training provided to its students. Jreena Green, Theatre Peckham’s Head of Dance,
tells us how
Theatre Peckham is based in Southwark, one of the most
deprived boroughs of London.
It was set up in 1985 by Teresa Early as a performing arts development project
for the culturally impoverished and ethnically diverse local area. It now has over 450 children and young
people enrolled annually in a highly developed education programme providing
dance, music and theatre training. Several
times a year we also stage a number of musical theatre productions featuring
young people from the local community. After
I was appointed head of dance in 2007 I put together a teaching module entitled
‘From Charleston to Hip Hop’. The aim of the module is demonstrate the
continuity between techniques found in African American dance styles from the 1920s
like the Charleston,
the Black Bottom, and the Lindy Hop, and contemporary urban street dance styles
like locking popping and Krumping. A large number of these techniques are
nearly identical. It’s important to
counter the idea that popular urban dance is ‘a-historical’ or not part of a
technical tradition. It is, and it is produced through a historical
and technical evolution, just like any other dance style. Therefore, in addition to practical training
in early twentieth century African American dance forms, our young students
learn about the choreographers and
dancers who developed and
popularised these dance styles such Katherine Dunham, Earl ‘Snake hips’
Tucker, The Nicholas Brothers and Josephine Baker. These are all seminal and massively
influential performers but their importance is often underestimated in
‘mainstream’ dance teaching. We are keen to compensate for that and emphasise these
practitioner’s historical significance.
In my department we have some great teachers. There is David
Christopher (original cast member of the London production of The Lion King and Five Guys Named Mo) who teaches Ballet; and Martin Robinson
(original cast member of the London production of The Lion King, former member of Phoenix Dance and RJC, founder of
Martial Dance company) who teachers Street Fusion and martial arts. Our
students have also done workshops with visiting tutors like the late Terry
Monoghan (an expert in the History of the Lindy Hop and co-founder of the
Jiving Lindy Hoppers), Warren Haynes (also a co-founder of The Jiving Lindy
Hoppers one of the most respected teacher/practitioners in the country) and
Sugar Sullivan, one the original Swing dancers of the 1940’s who worked with
the famous Frankie Manning. Together we
try to ensure that our students have a firm grounding in classical techniques
from both European and African American traditions and also show them how these
techniques are being continually re-interpreted and re-presented in
contemporary and urban street dance forms.
Recently our students won The Southwark Dance Challenge with
Timeless Steps, a dance piece that
fuses Lindy Hop and Tap techniques with breakin’ and popping moves. At the end of this event, I was approached by
several young black adult males who performed Hip Hop and Street dance routines
as part of the Southwark Dance Challenge competition. These dancers were fascinated to see the
variety of styles of which they were previously unaware, and excited to see how
they could integrate those influences into their own dance practice. Young black dancers can benefit enormously
from knowing they have a dance heritage that stretches back for centuries, and
to learn the dance techniques that are part of these traditions. Dance forms originally from Africa,
have evolved to embrace elements from many cultures. These, have in turn, gone
on to influence in the creation of theatre, street and social dance worldwide.
Current popular dance styles are indebted to these sources for a huge part of
their cultural inheritance. This is a profound achievement still sadly largely
unrecognised by western conservatoires, dance schools and universities, and
therefore not widely included in their systems of accreditation. The fact that currently
there is virtually no established means for this knowledge to be passed on, has
lead me to undertake the important task of creating a course which provides a
potential remedy for this state of affairs.
The role of Theatre Peckham in these developments has been
to support my work and act as an ‘incubator’ for young dancers - a place where
students can hone their skills and learn from seasoned professionals, and where
the traditions of black dance styles can be passed down to the young people to
whom this inheritance belongs. I am proud that I have been able to introduce
dance styles from the 1920s and 30s, including the Charleston and the Black Bottom, to my
students and that they have had such success in performing them. Especially when there seems to be a common
assumption that young black dancers will only be interested in street dance and
maybe (at a push!) African dance.
For more information
on Theatre Peckham visit theatrepeckham.co.uk
