Assignment Instructions
1. Find one example of hip hop dance on social media which interests you and qualifies as African American social dancing as defined by Camille Brown. You must select content from a social media platform (i.e. Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
Include a written paragraph with your post, explaining why you chose the content (what interests you, sparks curiosity, moves, inspires you) and citing the video “A History of African American Social Dance”j to explain how the social media content you posted qualifies as African American social dance, as defined by Camille Brown.
Citation format does not have to be in APA or MLA format – simply use proper quotation marks, and include author and title. Include a link in your citation to the URL for Camille Brown’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpCBMwAweDI
Example: This is an example of how detailed I expect you to go with your research on this first Tumblr post. You should trace the social media content online, learn about various sources of the content (who’s involved, where does the content take place, and any other details about contexts (social, historical, cultural, biographical, etc.) that help us learn more about why the content is important and relevant to our class. As you will see in my example, you may also choose content that does not fully fit the definition of African American social dancing, but which is still related to the materials we are engaging in class. Here, I show the connection to hip hop through the Funk dance movements of the dancers, but I still question whether the choreography qualifies as African American social dancing. It is also fine to leave your questions “open-ended”–so that you invite other Tumblr users/classmates to respond to your post and engage your questions.
Example：
I originally found this content posted to one of the people I follow on Instagram. I was able to trace the content to choreographer MOGA, by going to YouTube and searching “doing it to death asian dancers”. (Doing It To Death is the title of the funk song that the dancers are dancing to in the video). I found more info on MOGA by Googling her Instagram name “moga almeri.” MOGA is a Japanese choreographer who works at BEAT SURF Tendo, a dance studio in Tendo, Yamagata. Here’s a link to a short post about the viral video: https://tokion.jp/en/2022/03/22/dancer-moga-soul-and-waacking-from-yamagata/
Camille Brown explains in her video A History of African American Social Dance, that a social dance “isn’t choreographed by any one person.” What I find interesting about this video of Asian Funk dancers in Japan is that although the dancers are performing African American funk dance steps and movements, the dance is clearly preset and, as my research shows, was created by an individual choreographer, MOGA. Does the fact that this dance is choreographed and not improvised mean that it does not qualify as social dancing? I’m not sure and would love to hear your responses.