ISU opens door to 'clean' hip hop in ice dancing
Young figure skaters allowed to go gansta
Tupac and Dean? Hip-Hop Approved for Ice Dance
Hip Hop -- wrong way for ice dancing
which provides some perspective on the context into which this genre was so shockingly thrust.
After making their pronouncement, the ISU provided its skaters with a handbook on hip-hop rhythm, including a list of helpful examples of "new style hip-hop": four selections from the American and British versions of So You Think You Can Dance. The routines are well-performed, and most are based in the lyrical hip-hop style -- SYTYCD US's usual approach to hip-hop. But in its perusal of the popular dance program's offerings, the ISU opted not to include something more intensely beat-based (as demonstrated often on the Canadian series), or more in the vein of this well-known piece:
Junior performers ranging in age from 13 to 21, blades and ice, and an audience and judging panel including many parties not traditionally predominant in hip-hop's fanbase -- these present some very real limitations on the diversity of work today's teams can present.
And yet the genre's addition to the line-up this year does mark a fairly radical shift in its way for the ISU. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto's 2007-08 exhibition to Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" and "My Love" is, to date, one of the few readily locatable examples of hip-hop (in its broadest sense) in ice dance:
After unveiling the program at the 2007 Marshall's Showcase, the team shared their desire for hip-hop's recognition and acceptance in the sport. What's not touched upon, however, are the technical elements that may additionally have limited its presence -- and by which even Tanith and Ben were not unaffected.
Surprisingly, the best overview of historical and modern hip-hop comes from Wikipedia, which also offers video links to illustrate each general style. While hip-hop is really a blanket name for an extensive variety of subgenres, one of its primary components is an element of improvisation -- though this is not true for the studio-based hip-hop also popular today, and it's this latter with which ice dance must by necessity be compared. Within the realm of choreographed commercial hip-hop, however, certain rules still apply. From our Wiki entry:
New style hip-hop is choreographed hip-hop social dancing. From a technical aspect, it is characterized as hard-hitting involving flexibility and isolations -- moving a specific body part independently from others. The feet are grounded, the chest is down, and the body is kept loose so that dancers can easily alternate between hitting the beat or moving through the beat.
It is not overstating things to suggest that an effort to reproduce this on ice would be, to say the least, challenging and, in the case of a competitive program, outright detrimental. An exhibition does permit for a stationary moment; see, for example, 1:08-1:14 in Belbin and Agosto's performance. But that same sequence, as carried out on blades on a frictionless surface, can't be quite as effectively grounded as one conducted in sneakers on floor or paved surface. Certainly in competition this requirement is even more questionable; competitive programs are about edgework and maximizing movement across the ice, a bit antithetical to real rooted hip-hop action. In either approach, these simple issues of gravity and grounding may also impact that balance of crisp movement and flow throughout the body.
Ice dancers can't exactly rely upon full-body movement or footwork to showcase their groove. What they can offer instead are upper body isolations. We see this throughout Belbin and Agosto's program; it's a mainstay of recent hip-hop influenced Stars on Ice group choreography which even, occasionally, allows a surprise demonstration of breaking.
Perhaps unsurprising given the inherent challenges, a relative few teams are tackling hip-hop, and to this point in the very young season, most are yet to compete. Of those who have, even fewer have been recorded. To that end, Lorraine McNamara and Quinn Carpenter of the U.S. were one of only two duos at last week's JGP Courchevel to present hip-hop, and theirs was the more successful effort. Pairing Róisín Murphy's "Ramalama (Bang Bang)" with Flipron's "Zombie Blues":
It's certainly a novel approach to the program (if not wholly original), but also not quite hip-hop as, say, Tanith and Ben seemed to intend. On the other hand, at today's JGP Lake Placid short dance, Canadian duo Andréanne Poulin and Marc-André Servant gamely worked the upper body motion in their program to Usher's "Mars vs. Venus" and David Guetta & Usher's "Without You":
Of course, neither program goes especially hard-hitting, and it remains to be seen if something just a little heavier from another junior couple may still await us.
And failing that event, perhaps some inventive team in the future might consider giving this man a call.
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