House It Up
Does anyone else occasionally wake up from a nap and feel a little upset and angry for no particular reason? It’s the strangest thing. I came home from work today and was hit by a veritably tsunami of lethargy, and had no choice but to meander around my apartment in various stages of consciousness for the next few hours. When I finally came to, I was feeling particularly grumpy and annoyed at nothing in particular.
Somehow though, I managed to inspire myself to put on some house music and start dancing. I love house music, and I’m trying to learn to house (dance style), but it’s rather difficult to not look like an idiot unless you’re pretty good already. Luckily, my roommate was out, so looking like an idiot was not an issue. I don’t have dance classes for the next three weeks, so I figured that it’s probably a good thing to dance on my own to keep in shape and keep my skills nice and skillful. For the next two hours, I switched up the music a bit (old school funk, nothing like it) and managed to practice popping, locking, and some breaking, and felt infinitely better than how I felt before I started dancing.
The joy of motion, the ecstasy of rhythm, there’s nothing like it.
So next time you’re feeling down, throw on some awesome music and just let yourself go.
A quick shower afterwards, and I feel content and happy.
House dance? There have been quite a few dances done to house music historically. By “popping, locking, and breaking” what you ARE doing is break dancing. That’s the straight boys version of house music dance that started in New York’s The Loft…a club where str8s and Gays mixed on the dancefloor.
Originally, breaking, popping and locking was done to Latin Freestyle, a form of disco music (but then, house music itself is a form of disco). Later on, break dancing was infused with rap influence because both originated in The Bronx in New York City. Both influenced each other. Break dancing, however, gravitated back to its disco roots when break dancers began to frequent the Gay house clubs in Greenwich Village and downtown Manhattan, as opposed to the Latin Freestyle clubs in the Bronx. The Loft was one of those clubs.
For a while, a mixed form of dance called “Lofting” was practiced by break dancers which combined elements of Gay voguing with break dancing. This came about as a result of pitched battles between voguers and break dancers and the desire not to be out maneuvered by the Gay kids on the dancefloor. Lofting survived until the early 90s in NYC, but was hardly known outside of New York.
Much of the terminology used in break dancing (what you call “house dance”) was lifted straight out of the Gay voguing ballroom scene. Expressions like “you got served”, itself a word for word translation of a Spanish phrase, chop, you got chopped (from the Gay ballroom’s scoring system), fierce, let (someone) have it, bring it, sit someone down, all of these were coopted by the break dancing crews. The funny thing is that in the Gay ballroom scene, they do have specific meanings, and it’s clear to see the connection. In a break dancing battle, it’s often not as clear to see the visual connection of an expression since the expression is being used outside of its original context.
Just a lil history lesson…
Much love…keep on dancing!
@dj zhen-dohrs: Edited the post to make it more clear that I wasn’t popping, locking, or breaking to house music
The progression of my dance styles (with associated music) over the night was something like: housing for a while, put on some funk, popped a bit, locked a bit, put on some breaks, breaked (broke?) for a bit.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who knows the history though. It kills me a bit every time some says “Oh, you pop ‘n lock?”
Keep it funky,
~ Mason
Mason,
I want to truly thank you for your email. It’s not everyone who will analyze a new theory thrown at them and do the research to test the validity of that theory. I can see the individual that you are and why you ought to be headed for big things.
Now, I invite you to visit our blog, provided, of course, that you are legally allowed to do so. You will find within the posts, the collective house music wisdom of 7 people, some of whom have been involved with the house music scene since before it even had a name. This is a diverse group that hails mainly from New York, but also includes Londoners and one German. They are house music purists. Actually, puritanical would be more like it. These guys refuse to even accept that techno can properly be classified as “house music”. Well, grudgingly they accept it. But you would be hard pressed to find techno on our blog.
At some point, I will definitely ask Rain, our resident historian (who is not much older than you), to post a special historical account of how house music evolved out of disco within the Gay community and how it was taken up and adopted by others outside of that community and went on to influence many things from hip-hop/r&b, to fashion, language, dance, culture, and politics. I’m sure that not only you, but the many readers from all over the world that log onto our site would love to read that.
And expect that Rain, being who he is, will shoot down the many myths and misconceptions about the “groove that Jack created and the house that he built.”
Zhen-Dohrs
the comments were infinitely more amusing to me than the post, but I know what you mean a out how good it feels to blast some music and let loose.
lol. i have to agree with Alex there. not that i didn’t enjoy the post but the comments were interesting as well.