Pop dance is a style of dance that incorporates some elements of funk and street dance styles, such as locking, tutting, waving, and popping. It’s been around for a long time and is a popular form of dancing, especially amongst teenagers. Many famous artists have used this genre of music including Elvis Presley, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, Bananarama and Michael Jackson.
Popping is a dance style that uses abrupt tensing and relaxing of the muscles (called hitting) to the beats of the music. The dancer is known as a “Popper”. This style of dancing can be done to a variety of different music but is typically danced to funk or disco music.
The dancer uses different techniques such as ‘vibrating’ which halts the movement of a set of muscles and creates a vibrating motion in the body that impresses the audience. Another technique called ‘tutting’ or ‘King Tut’ focuses on using the legs and arms to make geometric shapes and right angles. This makes the dancer look more robotic and less human, which can be impressive to an audience.
OG Poppers can argue over the origins of Popping and robot dancing but most agree that it was first developed in Fresno and Oakland in the late 1960’s and 70’s by Boogaloo Sam and his group the Electric Boogaloos. The style was a huge influence on the street dance scene and has since been adapted by hip hop and electronica dancers to make their own unique moves.
