Pop dance is a type of dance style that originates from the early Boogaloo cultural movement in Oakland, California. Rather than being an up-tempo street dance, it is more like a time-lapsed spasm or stop-motion convulsion that highlights intricate movements in even the smallest muscles and joints.
During the late 1970s, poppers were influenced by the funk music genre and began dancing to hip hop and disco music, such as Funkadelic, New York Dolls, and the Yellow Magic Orchestra. During the 1980s, many poppers also used electro, industrial dance and other “new wave” styles to choreograph their popping routines.
Modern pop dance incorporates a variety of techniques and styles including boogaloo, robot, waving, and tutting. However, popping is not required for all these styles.
The most common styles in contemporary popping are boogaloo, animation, ticking, strutting, roboting and strobing. Each of these styles has a specific set of steps or positions that are followed in order to make the style appear dynamic and fast.
Strutting is a style of popping that uses straight arms and right angles to simulate limited joint movements. It can be a difficult style to master and requires precise timing and distance between each movement.
Struttin is a form of pop that involves popping at smaller intervals, generally twice as fast as normal. It was invented by a former member of the Electric Boogaloo called Toyman Skeet in the mid-1970s.
A style of popping that imitates a puppet or marionette tied to strings, commonly performed alone or with a partner acting as the puppet master. This style is also often called “Scarecrow”.
