Street dance

A street dance is a dance style—regardless of country of origin—that evolved outside dance studios in any available open space such as streets, dance parties, block parties, parks, school yards, raves, and nightclubs. The term is used to describe vernacular dances in urban context. Vernacular dances are often improvisational and social in nature, encouraging interaction and contact with spectators and other dancers. These dances are a part of the vernacular culture of the geographical area that they come from. Examples of street dance include b-boying (or breakdancing), which originated in New York City, and Melbourne Shuffle which originated in Melbourne, Australia.

Traditional jazz dance, having existed since the late nineteenth century, is perhaps one of the oldest street dances of urban America. Street dance is often considered urban folk dance. Since many concepts of urbanization have existed for a long time back in history, the point of which folk dance is to be considered a more historical street dance is often broad and unknown. Street dance and folk dance are distinguished by when the terms were introduced for, the term 'street dance' as a compound noun has been believed to have existed since the beginning of the early 20th century, whereby Afro-American vernacular dance was becoming the most popular in the western world. Clogging is thought to be considered a very early form of street dance, since it evolved in the streets, factories and dance parties during the 18th century (or before) amongst dancers that were considered a part of the UK, Western Europe and Appalachian urban countercultures at the time.

The hip-hop dance style b-boying and the funk-styles popping and locking are some of the most popular street dance styles in African-American culture. Those forms of hip-hop dance are the most prominently practiced street dances. These street dance styles are so common that commercialized versions have been professionally developed and choreographed for dance routines in pop, hip-hop, electronic, and R&B music videos. B-boying helped bring about street dance crew culture, whereby the dance crews would learn various street dance styles for impression and competition. These street crews usually perform in outdoor jams, leading to further styles of hip-hop dance. New Jack Swing (a.k.a. Swingbeat) was created in the 90's dance scene, which is also a respected style of streetdance. New Jack Swing is also a music genre, co-created by pioneers such as Teddy Riley.

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