Move To Your Own Jac

Hip Hop Hipity Hop
I attended the Hip Hop Dance Workshop with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company at the Rec not knowing what to expect. I walked into a group of maybe 40 people or so and sat down on the hard wooden floor. Soon enough, the instructor appeared at the front of the studio and began to talk. Her appearance wouldn’t strike me as that of a dancer from her dread locks to her cutoff t-shirt and casual sweatpants over her well-rounded body. She said that dance was like a way to express emotions and words through the movement of the body. It seemed that Hip-hop to her, was a passion. So it began. We first started off by stretching to the beat of the music, first the legs and the arms. I was thinking to myself that maybe I could do this, but slowly this thought began to change. The seconds seemed to pass like minutes and the minutes seemed to pass like hours. Being a soccer player for most of my life, I was out of the place and outside my comfort zone. Most of the people in the room had previous dance experience. Next, she began to teach us the first set of steps. It was a mixture of 3 steps forward and landing hard on your hands and pulling your body around them. The confined space of Studio B at this point is overwhelmingly crowed with people. I felt cramped and a little claustrophobic. I’m afraid I am going to kick a person in the head while attempting these moves. She said that these were the basic movements of hip-hop. To me it seemed like this was foreign and not something I would ever use to define hip-hop, but what do I know. We took a short break from the steps and were off to find our own JAC. When she threw this word out there, I just said WHAT?!?!? to myself. What does that even mean? Well apparently Jac is kind of like your own swagger to the music. It’s a way to be in sink with the beat. Ok, so basically I felt like a bobble head with this activity. As time went on, moves were slowly added, like the coffee grinder. At this point that just sounded like it would hurt. So now the dance consisted of a 3 step, a fall that killed my hands, a few jumps, and can’t forget the coffee grinder. You might ask what a coffee grinder is, this move included shifting your body weight by swinging your right leg around the front of your body by the use of your arms to hold you up. I found this so difficult and it seemed impossible. As the steps kept multiplying, I was starting to become overwhelmed by the motions and all the dance techniques that were added. After an hour, I don’t consider myself a quitter, but I couldn’t really take much more of this. My body hurt and my back was tight; this one hour took forever. So ultimately, I grabbed my things and walked out. This experience is definitely something that I’ve never done before and will never forget. Many of my friends from high school were involved with dance, so this experience kind of gave a sneak peak into maybe some of the things they had to learn throughout their years of dance. I would have to say, I probably would never attend one of these workshops again because I don’t really possess the desire to dance. I am passionate about other things, but I doubt that dance will really ever have an impact on my life. To wrap things up, Am I glad I went? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Not really. However, it was great to see the people in there that were really embracing the workshop and how much they were enjoying it.