The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome back to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. I'm your host, Maia. And today I am joined by a very special guest for a topic that I could not be more excited about. Most of you know, I'm not a hip hop teacher. It's not my area of expertise. So I'm so grateful to be joined today by a hip hop expert, Neo Lynch. Let's start by name dropping a little bit because this is going to blow your mind. Neo has worked with renowned artists and producers within the music and entertainment industry, including Beyoncé, Ciara, Jay-Z, Gucci Mane, Swizz Beatz, Nelly, the Ying Yang Twins, Bow Wow, The Dream, Sean Garrett, and Carrie Hilson. She's also worked with leading industry choreographers, including Jamaica Craft, Fatma Robinson, Frank Gatson, Laurieann Gibson, Richie Squirrel, Marty Kudlecka, Sean Banker, Jekyll Knight, Galen Hooks, James Alsap, Jamal Story, Bubba Carr, Ebony Williams, Amy Allen, and Hinton Battle.

So right there, you're getting so much professional experience and expertise on today's hip hop episode. But as a choreographer herself, Neo Lynch has earned regional and national acclaim securing choreography excellence awards in hip hop as well as jazz, lyrical, and contemporary dance. Now, as if that weren't enough, Neo has been involved with the Dance Studies Association, the National Dance Education Organization, and the Youth Protection in Dance. And she's established the Black Dance Teachers Association, where she leads as the founder and director, and is the founding chapter sponsor for the Abby Warren Memorial Chapter of the National Honor Society for Dance Arts, ensuring recognition for dancers who excel academically and artistically. Neo is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in choreography.

At Jackson School of Dance, Neo has been a member of the National Dance Association, the National Dance Association for Dance Arts, and the University of Jacksonville. And her academic research explores the intersectionality of hermeneutics, whiteness studies, and colorblind and color consciousness ideologies as they pertain to dance education and the dissemination of dance history and culture. I'm so excited to see where this conversation leads us today. So without further ado, thank you so much for being here, Neo. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm super excited. So for listeners to give them a little background. I'm excited to be hearing you give a little bit of a talk and a class at the Dance Educators Training Institute. Shout out to Clancy Works Dance Company. That was awesome.

It was. So I would love for you to maybe give like a real brief SparkNotes version of some of the info that you gave me during that. Going into Southern hip-hop, which is one of your areas of expertise, you talked about the differences in the movement based on geography. Can you go into what we should be aware of? Or I say we, I guess I'm looking at people that are teaching hip-hop or even just like starting to try and build their awareness of hip-hop. What are some of the key aesthetic differences across different geographic regions right here within the U.S. and how should we be aware of that, be thinking about that as teachers? So when looking at Southern hip-hop, I came across this idea of this difference between Southern hip-hop versus maybe Northern or West Coast based off of the music and off of the musical industries.

So when I was a dancer in Atlanta, we were very different than the dancers in New York and the dancers in LA. Each region had its own style. And Atlanta dancers were known for being like down and dirty and raw. And that was Southern hip-hop at the time also. East Coast hip-hop, first of all, where it all started, it was very masculine. Even the movement from the Southern hip-hop to the East Coast hip-hop, it was very masculine. As that transitioned into hip-hop choreography and for dancers behind artists, like hip-hop artists up North, the movement was very masculine and there were strong stances and strong movements, physically appearing stronger aesthetics. When it came to West Coast, that's where popping and locking really got started. It wasn't in New York.

Popping and locking is so proud to say, well, not that it's so proud to say as if it's a person, but the originators of it were from New York. So it was very masculine. And when it came to West Coast, it was very from the West Coast, and that was their distinct style. The hip-hop music out there was a little bit more laid back. When it did become or catch its height, like with Ice Cube and NWA and whatnot, it was considered like gangster rap and aggressive and for the streets and the dancing that's most recognized with it is, you know, crip walking and street dances that were about territories. And even as that transitioned, so from waving and, and their battling styles,

then when you get to, as hip-hop, you know, kind of grew and then moved to the South and you have Big Boy and OutKast as far as Atlanta and the Southern styles of partying from New Orleans and Miami, you got 2 Live Crew and Uncle Luke and all this shaking and celebrations and you have indigenous influences. Their movement was a little bit more grounded and less, although, you know, it was a little bit more of a, you know, a little bit more of a, you know, popping and locking and breaking and all of that was still a part of it. The social dance aspect of it was more grounded in Africanist movement, which will kind of make sense because, you know, that's where you had all the plantations and it's where we're celebrations and black people were, you know, where we had the highest populations, right?

So I came to this thing of Southern hip-hop, right? But just following the music. So there's the East Coast, there's the West Coast, and then there's Southern hip-hop. And in the early 2000s, that really started taking on its own voice and really became popular and was taken over in hip-hop. And so the dancing that came with that was black social dance. It was grounded, although it had the influences of tutting and popping and locking and breaking, it was still this, the celebration and the party dances. So my professional experience and my training and growth in hip-hop came from Atlanta and it came from that party vibe and that party scene. And it was about the grooves and it was about what was being done in the streets and what was being done in the parties.

And what can everybody follow along and do very much like the call and response tendencies up within the music. So that's where I came with the, like, let's make sure that it's called something different and that's okay for it to be different than just this big hip-hop umbrella. I think that with the popularity of hip-hop within music and, but especially within dance, everybody now wants to be a hip-hop choreographer or teacher, or I can do this, I can do that within hip-hop. And a lot of times they're just steps and there's this over qualification and this simplicity to it that I think dilutes the culture of hip-hop dance and the history of it. And so having an awareness of where it's coming from, depending on what region you're in and what influences are coming into that, I think is important.

I am all over the place.

No, I like I said, I want you to kind of take control of the situation to talk about your experience because it's not my area of expertise. I can really a little bit being a modern teacher. I'm like a little bit. Because modern has like a very strict, codified technique that came about, you know, about a hundred years ago. And I see a lot of people that use terms like 'modern' and 'contemporary' kind of interchangeably. And I don't know that they're really teaching like 'modern' techniques. So I imagine hip-hop probably has a similar thing going, but then you have like a way even bigger culture and history that's behind that. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It's very much like that now where, you know, there is a difference between 'modern' technique and, you know, 'contemporary' technique and modern is very codified. You know, you have your various techniques of modern, whether it's Cunningham or Graham or Horton, but whoever that came from, there's still techniques that you can follow and that are identifiable. And I feel like within hip-hop, not so much. There are, when it comes to maybe breaking and locking and popping, you know, you have your identifiable influences and originators that you're mainstream big names from. 50 years ago, 40 years ago, that are still alive and well, Poppin' Pete, Buddha Stretch, Crazy Legs, all these people from like New York and California. But that's not what hip-hop dance is now.

Like everybody's doing their own version of hip-hop and it's to pop music or to this or to that. It's not even to hip-hop music anymore. There is no codified way now. And I think anybody's allowed to call their style of dance hip-hop. And I just think it's commercial dance. And I think we should move and be more welcoming of calling things commercial dance, like within the contemporary slash modern world. Well, if it's not modern, well, go ahead and call it contemporary because it can be contemporary. This is your new style, your new thing, something that, you know, that people can create and change on their own, but don't try to call it modern if it's not that, you know, like we don't call contemporary ballet when it's not, it's very clear.

And I feel like with hip-hop, it's not. I personally think with Southern hip-hop, it's clearer because the movement is bigger and louder. From what I'm paying attention to and noticing, the movement is big and loud and it's full out. It's over the top. It goes from high to low. Like everything is swinging full out at one time. It's not small, precise movements. It's not tutting. That's not, that's not the Southern vibe. It's a vibe. It's a groove and it's big and full out and you're having fun and it's a party. And I think that's Southern hip-hop. It's getting low and getting grounded and shaking. And like, like I said, gyrating. It's, I had to have a talk with kids at an intensive I did last week.

Cause they're like, we want to learn how to twerk. And what's your favorite thing about hip-hop? Twerking. All right, well, let's go to what is twerking? Where does it come from? Where are the roots of this? Why do we call it twerking? It wasn't always called twerking. What you call twerking is really West African dance. And there's nothing inappropriate about it because it's all about a celebration. The purpose of doing these dances is to celebrate the community or whatever it is that you're doing. And I think going on in the community, whether it's a wedding, a birth, greeting guests, it's a celebration. So it's not something inappropriate, but because adults and Americans want to put this twist on it, especially once it's put on young white bodies, then it's inappropriate.

So trying to change the narrative on that for young dancers and hip-hop thinking, let's do this because it's inappropriate. It's like, it's not inappropriate. We do this in the South all the time. Yeah. You know, I love how you talk about that. I told you before that, um, I had an interview with Laura Ward Moran and I was like, 'Oh, I want to teach a student so much history and culture and do all of these things.' But she has a separate class for, for her students. She's got students that are doing like a high school program. She gets to do the history. She gets to do the culture. She gets to do the technique class. I'm a casual dance teacher. I get the students, you know, one hour a week.

That's kind of what I'm talking towards with the podcast. So I guess you've already given us some examples of how you're teaching them movement. And then you're just talking about the history of it as you're doing that. But what is the balance? Cause it sounds like it's really important as a hip-hop teacher to make sure the students are understanding where that's coming from and a little bit of the cultural basis, but how do you not like steal from their technique time by doing that? Yeah, that's hard. But I mean, as you know, as the casual teacher, right. The one hour a week, like for a lot of the classes that I have for my recreational classes, I have those kids one hour a week, one day a week.

And it's like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And it's a fine line between how do I keep them engaged with providing them things that are important for them to know. So if they get an actual education and make it fun, it's rough. And so you, you kind of have to pick and choose when you can slide information in. I try to do it during attendance, you know, create a cipher, a circle and give everybody a moment of, Hey, what, you know, one, one week, it might be when I call your name for roll, tell me something, you know, about hip-hop or tell me what you enjoy about hip-hop class, why you want to take hip-hop. And so that can start a conversation.

Then we're taking 10 minutes of class for everybody to know each other, for everybody to have their own voice. I can feel out what they know, what they don't know, or they can learn something new by what others say. So with that, or even with whatever music that I decide to play, you know, I can stop real quick and be like, all right, who's named that artist? And they'd be like, what? I don't know. And then I can just drop in there. Well, this is so-and-so from so-and-so. And this song is about dah, dah, dah, dah, or playing stuff. And then kids would be like, Oh, my mom knows, my mom likes Tupac. Well, great. What do you know about Tupac?

And then we can make it, you know, a quick little moment or even doing like when I'm teaching combos, because kids love a combo, especially for hip-hop. They don't want to learn foundations. They don't want to do the basics. Like, what do you mean? Teach me how to step touch. No, no, no. I want to learn a combination right now. And it's like, no, no, you don't go to ballet class and be like, let's skip the bar. Let's just, go in the middle of the floor. That's what they say to me too. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. It's like, no, no. Yeah. Why do we have to do tendus? We should just learn Swan Lake. Right. Sure. Let's, let's try that. Let's see how that goes.

As a matter of fact, let's, let's partner with it too. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Um, no, but I think slide it in there like a little bit at a time. And then especially videos. YouTube is my friend and there's so many five-minute videos, two-minute videos about the history of breaking or the history of, of hip hop where it can be an all encompassed, um, quick little history that I do, um, every year, like maybe we'll do like one video a month. I'm like, all right, let's learn the foundations or the elements of breaking. All right. Let's now make that our lesson plan for the class. And let's learn these things. And now how can we put them together? Let's watch this video, this like breaking competition and let's call out the different elements that we see.

And okay, let's try some of them, but just trying to slide them in a little bit at a time throughout your, your regular lesson plan. Yeah. Have you ever tried to do like, do you do handouts at all? Not typically, but what's funny is that actually when I was talking to Laura, my previous interview, she said the same thing. She's like, don't, don't take the class time because you got to get the technique in there, but just send them home with something. So I got to get on that now. One of the questions that I had, I'm not entirely sure how to word this, but I love that over the course of our conversation, I can tell like, you're really not a snob. Like, I feel like you want everyone to come to the table.

Learn hip hop and contribute what they can. But there's obviously got to be like some kind of baseline knowledge as far as the technique goes, the different styles and aesthetics that you talked about and cultural and geographic influences. Would you say this is the baseline? This is where you have to be coming from in order to be an effective hip hop teacher, as opposed to like, you didn't just watch music videos and then you're like, Oh no, I can teach hip hop because I know some moves. Right. If you're passionate about it and a forever student, then that can help make you a good teacher because you got to understand that times are going to change. And that as the style evolves and the genre evolves, we also evolve as humans.

I've been teaching for like 22 years and didn't even start getting into making sure to teach the history and do my own research about the culture until the past couple of years. And there were things that I was doing before in my younger years as a teacher and educator where I'd be like, 'Oh, you know, look at this music video or like, look at these, you know, visual references,' but not digging deep enough into the whys. And for me, like when I started, of course I was young and dumb and I just loved it. And like, I just want to teach and share and I need a job. And then once I went off and danced professionally and that was in the culture and really learning and growing from it, then I just wanted to share even more, but I still wasn't everything that I was experiencing and living, being in it, like not understanding, like, 'Oh, learning footwork from people in St.

Louis matters because this is what they experienced in this region.' And people I meet from New Orleans, like their days in this kind of way. And it's important for them because of their culture and this and that, like not understanding any of that. Just like, yay. What? You're a dancer. I'm a dancer. Let's be friends. Let's dance. Let's learn from each other. This is great. And I think that's just a part of being young. And so for people who, who are interested in being teachers and choreographers, but especially teachers, I think they need to understand that it is their responsibility to do their research and to do their homework and to be welcoming and to be a part of the community.

And by that, I mean like just the dance community, because there's so many teachers depending on what kind of, you know, what sector you work in. I'm in the, in the independent sector or the private sector. Right? So a lot of times, because I work with competitive dance studios, other teachers aren't friendly. They don't, they look at you as competition. So it's not, Hey, you're a teacher. I'm a teacher. Yay. Let's be friends. It's no, I can't talk to you. And it's weird and crazy. We're like, Oh, well I'm the hip hop teacher over here. So I can't be friends with the hip hop teacher over there because it's who's better. Like there can only be one. And that's, that's wild to me.

So I think as long as you're open and willing to learn and to be a student, and just to learn from other people and do your research and share what you know, and, and let it be okay to be wrong, you know, but put the information out there, but especially for European American teachers, right? White people, especially white women, because the majority of dance teachers are white women. So the majority of dance teachers, sylogistically then, of hip hop teachers are white women need to have an understanding that they're a guest within maybe the hip hop community, or I guess within the marginalized communities that hip hop comes from and be open to learning about different cultures. Like don't step into hip hop and be like, well, we can't talk about, or we can't acknowledge that this comes from marginalized black and Brown people.

And it's influenced by that. Like, don't pretend like it's not there, you know? So as I was saying at the DETI, like, don't come into it through a colorblind lens, be open, open your eyes. And be like, Hey, let's learn together. All of us, you know, because that's, that's a part of hip hop. It's community and it's everybody's welcome. I just think a good teacher, regardless of what genre it is, understands that the growing and the learning never ends and needs to be open to that. Yeah. Thank you. I'm so glad you touched upon the idea of not being a colorblind teacher. I wanted you to talk about that after hearing you mentioned that at daddy, I'm not hip hop specifically, but I just think not just assuming that everyone in the room has the same experience because you might look busy.

Right. I do try and be mindful of that. And I'm, I'm always happy to hear about other teachers encouraging that kind of work. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. That assumption that not everybody has the same experience just because we might look the same because you're absolutely right. Although we might look alike and we might be in these institutions of private dance education, like kids are going through some stuff. You know? And so it's heavy, dance. Thank God can be, you know, if it's the right place can be a safe place and can be therapeutic and having those kinds of conversations of, 'Hey, this marginalized group', or, you know, 'this might look a little different' and it's okay to talk about that.

This might be different than your experience, and it's okay to talk about it, but having that, just creating that safe space period to have open conversations about feelings, lived experiences, what we see. Things that we hear our perceptions of, you know, relationships or, or, or whatever, I think it's going to make better human beings and can make a better dancer, you know? Yeah, for sure. Do you have time for one more question? I sure do. Okay. Yay. So try and lift the mood a little bit. I got so heavy for hip hop teachers that are just hungry to learn and want to keep growing. What are some resources that you can point us to that would help with that continuing? Um, an excellent resource and I will scream it from the mountaintops is the evolution of hip hop on Netflix.

I think that documentary does, or docuseries does, a beautiful job of taking the viewer through the origins and creation of hip hop, music, culture, art, all the things in New York. And then it, it literally takes you on a map throughout the country. So it shows you like, then how it's spread to here and to there and to there. And really dives into the roots and the originators of each region. And then you see how it's all connected or how those regions grew. It just does a really amazing job of that. And I think it's; it reinforces hip-hop specialists or people who are passionate about it, whether they're teaching or not, the importance of digging into the artists and the music and the meanings. And so it connects all of that.

And for me, it made me want to be like, okay, I really need to dig deeper in the classroom. Evolution of Hip Hop was wonderful. There's a couple documentaries on Netflix. There is one on women in hip hop, not just one, there's multiple ones on women in hip hop. There's so many documentaries now on hip hop period that I think teachers or aspiring teachers should really get into, into understanding the culture and understanding the dance. There are also a lot of dance documentaries that are about global dance traditions and styles. And some of them will look at hip hop in various parts of the globe. I think that's a really great documentary. That's very interesting. But YouTube is your best friend. Netflix, Google Scholar is a thing.

I'd love to read about hip hop situationships or histories. There's a wonderful article, The Dance Cause It's Fun, Black Girls Hip Hop Dance Literacy and the Politics of Respectability written by Latasha Hutcherson Price. It's plentiful. It's like a hundred something pages filled with research and it's great. It's dope. Look up African dance, like traditional dance within different African countries. Doing that can be an excellent resource to explaining certain dance styles. I think teachers need to think beyond hip hop and need to look at social issues and social justice and things that were going on throughout history. What was going on before hip hop started really digging into and looking into African-American history and civil rights, like, look at that. Cause that's a huge reason why hip hop became a thing and just social justice.

Look into social justice issues and, you know, major cases and major stories and different events that happened from the LA riots and yeah, just so many things. Cause those were in the nineties. That was during our lifetime. The music that came out of that, the stuff that went down with Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew, and how do you remember when people were trying to ban rap music and they were like stomping on it in the streets and like, you know, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, trying to set CDs on fire and. Yeah, I think I mostly just heard about it after the facts. I was still really young at the time, but yeah. Sorry. Oh, I just assume everybody's my age.

I'm like, oh, you're an adult. Yeah. We're the same age. Yeah. But yeah. And how like Uncle Luke had to, um, and Two Live Crew, their music was banned in certain states and they couldn't perform, and, and they went to court and it was a whole like second amendment, you know, freedom of speech issue over rap music. It was crazy. So a lot of that stuff influenced the music, which then influenced the dance and influenced the parties. And there's just so many things socially. Just get into African-American history and culture, you know? Yeah. And I know that you're involved in a lot of different dance education organizations. You have your own education organization. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and how people can maybe follow you through those different pathways?

Yes, yes, well, I don't know if I'll call us an education organization yet. I don't know what I'm doing with it, but I'm the founder and director. No, it sounded great. I was like, maybe it should be an education organization. Um, I'm the founder and director of the Black Dance Teachers Association. And right now, we're just a community of Black and BIPOC dance teachers where I just wanted to create a safe space for us to come together and discuss issues that we face every day as, as Black dance teachers, a little bit different than, than other teachers, whether it's for males or females. It's, we have a very different experience than Black male teachers do. And we got to smile. I have to be happy. We can't be the angry Black woman, you know, in spaces.

So like we have to handle conflict differently. We have to handle unruly kids differently, the disrespect that, I mean, it's, it's weird how we have to move differently without falling into, you know, certain tropes, you know? Yeah. But yeah, so I'm the founder and director of that. And we do a monthly meeting and we're just a private online meeting and safe space for us to talk and discuss and to network and to share and to, to communicate and help each other grow and share resources. And I'm hoping to grow that and turn that into a nonprofit. Well, not hoping to, I will turn that into a nonprofit to be announced. Yeah. Keep us posted on that. We'll do, we'll do.

Also, I'm a member of NDAO, National Dance Educators Organization, member of Dance Studies Association, any kind of dance organization relating to dance studies. Like I'm trying to be a part of it. I'm trying to learn and grow. So that's really exciting. Oh, I just got this year. I'm recognized as for outstanding leadership in the independent sector with National Dance Educators Organization. So I'm excited about that. Trying to figure out if I'm going to take advantage of this free conference entrance to the national conference this year. Yeah. We get to come and speak on a panel. That's kind of cool. I don't know if I got time for that, but I would love to, but yeah, people can reach me through my Instagram, which is at neo lynch or at black dance teachers association.

That's what I got. Because I'm still working on the website. She's, she's a piece of work, but neo lynch.com is coming soon. Same with blackdance teachers association.com, that's up, but it needs to be touched up. So don't judge me. It's just me. Oh, that's exciting. Hi there. It's Baya hopping back on real quick before we wrap up, just to say thank you again to Neo for doing this episode and sharing so much insight and so many great resources where we can continue to follow her work and her journey and learn from her. Experience and expertise. I also wanted to say, thank you. Of course, did she bring magic for the theme music that you hear at the beginning of the show?

And if you have any follow-up questions or conversation that you want to continue, join us in the Casual Dance Teachers network on Facebook. So we can all get together there. And with that, I did close the interview by asking Neo for a favorite quote to share. And even though I put her on the spot with that question, she was ready. So let's hear it putting you on the spot. So I didn't ask you this. Do you have a favorite dance quote or catchphrase to share with us? Yeah, you've got to lose to win. You've got to lose to win.