This course is structured to provide you with a history of hip-hop and a practice-based knowledge of its dances, specifically old school hip-hop, middle school hip-hop, new school hip-hop and commercial hip-hop. Basic movement activities include locomotor and non-locomotor movements, isolation, use of space, use of dynamics and a variation of dance patterns.
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Went in as someone without any background in dance at all and about 70% of the class had some type of background or engagement with dance before. You will be assessed through a solo dance, theory test (MCQ + short answer questions), reflection essays, and group dance whereby the solo dance will be taught to you with some freestyling that you have to create on your own. For group choreo, you would need to come up entirely with a choreo for 2.5-3mins as a group. Now I would say to take the module as someone without dance background only if you are planning to S/U it because it is unlikely for you to fail. However it is extremely difficult for you to ace the module because the practicals favour those who have prior experience due to their ability to pick up and execute the moves easily. Furthermore, the workload is heavy for the group dance because you have to do everything from scratch, often relying on the more experienced dancers to come up with the choreography. Apart from practicing the choreo alone, you would need to meet your group a few times outside of class to practice the entire dance together and ensure cohesion. This is not ideal if you have busy members or if you yourself are busy. It is also challenging if your group does not live on campus so you would need to find external venues to practice, taking up a substantial amount of your free time (usually weekends, or evenings) to go for practice. I honestly won’t recommend this module for beginners unless you set in mind that you wish to S/U this module but still put in effort for the group dance as it would disadvantage your group members if you didn’t pull your weight. Thus, I would ask you to carefully consider your decisions.
January 17, 2023
