Drawing on national traditions to create a strong hip hop scene
It’s 40 degrees. The sun is slanting westward in a Riesling-clear sky. Rush hour traffic piles up on MLK and hovers impatiently at the corner of Lindsay.
On the concrete patio of the Camp House, dancer KG glides, drops into a low turn, moonwalks backward. His hands pulse—a fine, popping movement, almost a tremor—illustrating the cold, the oscillation of engines. He crosses his arms—a staccato jab—and then his hands circle each other, wizard-like, and he’s conjuring up a spell in the empty space between his palms.
He glides back to the metal chair and sinks into it, all part of the dance. Dancing, his face had been serene, almost severe, completely absorbed in the movement. Now he smiles broadly.
He’s good.
That’s hip hop. It can be music (but you don’t have to have music). It can be dance (but the dance can be as simple as dropping into a chair). Anywhere you go in Chattanooga, keep your eyes open.
“The cold is the tension,” he tells me about this on-the-spot improv. “When I listen to the motors grinding, that’s where the smoothness comes from. I kind of go back and forth like, to give you an example of an artist I love to dance to, Busta Rhymes. When you hear his flow, you hear a fast pace.
“I like to go off his words more than the beat. That’s where the tension comes into it. But when I flow, that’s when I start listening to the beat. Then I can do tension off the beat and flow with his words.”
Words and beat. Cold air, pulsing engines. Tension and flow. There’s a cerebral yet instinctive art in this dance, a constant rebalancing of forces, out of which just about anything can arise.
A Burgeoning Scene
Two years ago when I asked to write about hip hop for The Pulse, my editor replied: “We already have a music writer.”
No, I explained—hip hop dance.
He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t right. When you talk about hip hop, dancer Kunstruct told me recently, you’re talking about a lifestyle. There’s hip hop as an all-encompassing way of being, and then within its bailiwick are a dozen aspects of art, culture, and social outreach.
“Rapping, or MCing, is something you do; hip hop is something you live,” Kunstruct says. “Peace, love, unity, and having fun—those are the four principles of hip hop. There’s also the language, the fashion, the community outreach.”
A Chattanooga native since he was three years old, Kunstruct has traveled and danced extensively across the southeast.
“Street dance culture all over the world is huge,” he says. “Right next to us in Atlanta, Nashville, Knoxville, North Carolina, a city may have 40 or 50 crews. I’m looking to grow that culture in Chattanooga.”
To that end, Kunstruct and his colleagues are teaching dance at several locations in the city, focused primarily on East Lake.
“We are trying to expose Chattanooga to street dance culture,” he says. “We are teaching … those who want to learn. We’re showing them where the whole street dance situation came from and encouraging appreciation of that. We want to bring people together in the spirit of happiness and peace and dance.”
Dance Primer
Though infinitely accommodating of innovation, street hip hop has a few foundational styles. Locking, or punctuating faster movements by periodically freezing in place, is an exaggerated style often used for comic effect, though any emotional range may be expressed.
Picture funk music, a dancer alternating between smooth slides and hard freezes, a sudden athletic movement like a drop into a jazz split and then a return to tight, controlled movement…imagine the dancer interacting with the audience, maybe grinning or scoffing at a competitor dancer…that’s locking.
Popping also relies on precise control of the body; in this case, the dancer flexes and relaxes muscles quickly to create a jerking or “popping” style. Often, popping can create eerie, robotic effects. Picture strobing, where the dancer’s quick stops look like he’s being shown under a strobe light, or tutting, with geometric articulations of the body.
B-boying, b-girling, or breaking (aficionados never say “break dancing”), is by far the most athletic street dance style in the hip hop family. Picture handstands, flips, and spins on all parts of the body that aren’t usually weight-bearing surfaces. That’s b-boying.
Most dancers pull from all styles, adding moves like a turf turn (drop, turn in a squat, stand up quick) or a scooby doo (just picture Scooby walking). They also draw on dance hall styles, from salsa to the Lindy hop. Martial arts moves, mime, even classical studio ballet? Bring it on! Hip hop can integrate just about anything into its tightly-controlled form and ironic perspective.
Irony—that’s another thing to watch with hip hop. When dancers are joking around, look for the serious hidden message; when they appear to be fierce, check for that moment when they slyly make fun of themselves.
When I ask dancer Kenneth Glatt, aka KG, to dance to the sound track all around us at the Camp House (rush hour traffic, concrete reverb, metal chairs scraping) he reveals a hard-edged, industrial vibe—but his hands also make movements as delicate as a kung fu master’s.
Dance Heritage
Though Chattanooga does not have the bustling scene of Atlanta or Knoxville, some of its dancers participate in traditions leading by direct line, teacher to student, from some of the earliest nationally-known crews.
Kunstruct tells me he’s part of two out-of-town crews. One is the ATL Funklordz, whose extended family of the Mighty Zulu Kings. (Start Googling these groups and you may not emerge from a YouTube dance trance until dawn). He’s also part of the worldwide crew Battleholex.
Talking crew and lineage ensures expresses legitimacy, and also tells people something about the dancer’s style and values. For example, Kunstruct’s description of hip hop’s mantra of “peace, unity, love, and having fun” echoes Afrika Bambaataa’s ethos.
Finding the Culture
Though the younger dancers I speak to describe hip hop as street culture, they also speak of coming to the moves in the privacy of their own homes. KG, whose name is Kenneth Glatt, began listening to Michael Jackson, watching videos, and practicing moves, he tells me. He then moved on to gyms, and later performed at Chattanooga’s Got Talent at UTC.
Justino Hale, who performs as B-Wave, began by watching and imitating dancers on YouTube before he graduated from Red Bank High a few years back. However, he quickly began reaching out to find other dancers in real life.
“I wanted to get some activity into my life,” he says. “I found dancing. Dancing is like expressing my feelings to people.”
He then found Kunstruct.
“He taught me everything about musicality,” B-Wave says. “He’s basically my mentor.”
B-Wave often competes out of town, and locally when there’s a chance. He became a member of Kunstruct’s other home crew, the ATL Battleholex.
“I met him, did a little upgrading of my dance style, and learned different styles of dancing,” he says. “He asked if I wanted to be in a crew, since I started dancing in 2016. They put me on a six-month probationary period. After six months, they battled me in after 12 rounds. It was the longest I ever went!”
Battling in means going head-to-head; you perform, another dancer tries to best you; you respond. If you sign up for a studio hip hop class, the nearest you’ll probably get is a freestyle circle, where everyone gets a turn. Now imagine that every other turn is yours.
B-Wave is working hard; as he tells me, he’s learned ten styles so far and is eager to master more. He’s learning bone-breaking now. But the end result transcends self-mastery; it’s self-expression.
“What I try to let people see is how fun it is,” he says. “How you can express yourself while knowing who you are.”
Where to Find
Dancers practice as crews, and then compete at local events or, more commonly, out of town. By travelling to Nashville, Atlanta, North Carolina, and beyond, dancers can compete almost every weekend of the year if they have the drive, “representing the 423” as Kunstruct says.
However, it’s Kunstruct’s mission to bring more public-facing hip hop, more instruction, and more friendly competition to Chattanooga. He teaches at the East Lake Neighborhood Association Building and the YMCA at Hamilton Place, and welcomes students from preteens and up, even, he adds, younger kids who are serious about learning.
He and his colleagues have brought competitions to town before now, and are looking to organize some larger competitions this summer, hopefully drawing big-name dancers to the 423.
To learn more about Kunstruct’s group Natural Habitz, visit facebook.com/natural.habitz
To see KG in action, look out for him to perform on Saturday, February 2 at Venue 909, or find him on social media as 24keng
Assistant Editor Jenn Webster is a writer, dancer and choreographer. She specializes in marketing and technical writing and is excited to learn and share more about Chattanooga and the innovative works we're creating together.
Photo courtesy Hamilton Jackson