The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies

Engaging with a broad range of research and performance genres, The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies offers the most comprehensive research on Hip Hop dance to date. Filling a lacuna in both Hip Hop and dance studies, the Handbook places practitioners' voices at the forefront and in dialogue with theoretical insights, rooted in critical race theory, anticolonialism, intersectional feminism, and more. Volume editors Mary Fogarty and Imani Kai Johnson have included influential dancers and scholars from around the world: from B-Boys Ken Swift, YNOT, and Storm, to practitioners of locking, waacking and House dance styles such as E. Moncell Durden, Terry Bright Kweku Ofosu, Fly Lady Di, and Leah McFly, and innovative academic work on Hip Hop dance by the most prominent researchers in the field. Throughout the Handbook contributors address individual and social histories of dance, Afrodiasporic and global lineages, the contribution of B-Girls from Honey Rockwell to Rokafella, the "studio-fication" of Hip Hop styles, and moves into theatre, TV, and the digital/social media space.

Mary Fogarty is a lifelong B-Girl and Associate Professor in the Department of Dance at York University, Toronto, Canada. She is the co-editor of Movies, Moves and Music: The Sonic World of Dance Films (with Mark Evans) and has contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music, and Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music Style and Identity, among other publications.
Imani Kai Johnson is an interdisciplinary-trained Professor of Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. She is also founder and chair of the Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference series and author of Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (OUP, 2022). She currently resides in Long Beach, CA.

- About the Contributors
- Introduction
- Mary Fogarty and Imani Kai Johnson
- Part I. Hip Hop Dance Legacies and Traditions
- 1. Foundation: Context and Components of Breaking Fundamentals
- Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert and Yarrow "Osofly" Lutz
- 2. The Camera in the Cypher: High Times and Hypervisibility in Early Hip Hop Dance
- Vanessa Lakewood
- 3. The Technical Developments in Breaking from Conditioning to Mindset
- Niels "Storm" Robitzky
- 4. Connecting Hip Hop History and Heritage
- E. Moncell Durden
- 5. Kung Fu Fandom: NYC B-Boys and the Grindhouse Distribution of Kung Fu Films
- Eric Pellerin
- 6. What Makes a Man Break?
- Mary Fogarty
- Part II. Hip Hop Dance Methodologies
- 7. Learn Your History: Using Academic Oral Histories of NYC B-Girls in the 1990s to Broaden Hip Hop Scholarship
- MiRi Park
- 8. Hard Love Part. 1: Corporealities of Women Ethnographers of Hip Hop Dances
- Imani Kai Johnson
- 9. Framing Hip Hop Dance as an Object of Sociological and Cultural Research
- Andy Bennett
- 10. Through Sound and Space: Notes on Education from the Edge of the Cypher
- Emery Petchauer
- 11. The Vault: Collecting and Archiving Street Dance Footage
- Marc "Scramblelock" Sakalauskas
- 12. Hard Love Part 2: Critical Hiphopography in Streetdance Communities
- Imani Kai Johnson
- Part III. Overstanding Identities in Hip Hop Streetdance Practices
- 13. Breaking in My House: Popular Dance, Identity Politics, and Postracial Empathies
- Thomas F. DeFrantz
- 14. Globalization and the Hip Hop Dance Cipher
- Halifu Osumare and Terry Bright Kweku Ofosu
- 15. Asian American Liminality: Racial Triangulation in Hip Hop Dance
- grace shinhae jun
- 16. Breakin' Down the Bloc: Hip Hop Dance in Armenia
- Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian
- 17. Twerking and P-Popping in the Context of New Orleans' Local Hip-Hop Scene
- Matt Miller
- 18. Is She B-boying or B-girling? Understanding how B-girls Negotiate Gender and Belonging
- Helen Simard
- Part IV. Breaking with Convention
- 19. Streetdance and Black Aesthetics
- Naomi Bragin
- 20. Living in the Tension: The Aesthetics and Logics of Popping
- Rosemarie A. Roberts
- 21. Staging Hip Hop Dance: Fly Girls in the House
- Leah "McFly" McKesey, Diana "Fly Lady Di" Reyes and Mary "MJ" Fogarty
- 22. Battles and Ballets: Hip Hop Dance in France
- Roberta Shapiro (Translation by David Lavin, Roberta Shapiro and Imani Kai Johnson)
- 23. Negotiating the Metaspace: Hip Hop Dance Artists in the Space of UK Dance/Theatre
- Paul Sadot
- 24. Make the Letters Dance: A Hip Hop Approach to Creative Practice
- Anthony "YNOT" DeNaro and Mary Fogarty
- Part V. Hip Hop Health: Injury, Healing and Rehabilitation
- 25. Hip Hop Dance and Injury Prevention
- Tony Ingram
- 26. They Come for the Hip Hop, But Stay for the Healing
- Stephen "Buddha" Leafloor
- 27. Can Expert Dancers Be A Springboard Model to Examine Neurorehabilitation Via Dance?
- Rebecca Barnstaple, Débora B. Rabinovich, and Joseph FX DeSouza
- Afterword: Dance, Hip Hop Studies and the Academy
- Joseph Schloss
- Acknowledgments
- Index