Award winning hip hop dance artist Kashmir Leese thinks streetdance classes are teaching the wrong thing, doesn’t like Diversity, and wishes more people knew their krumping from their wacking.
Kashmir Leese took a starring roll in ‘Watch This Space‘ at 2008′s International Dance Festival Birmingham. As a member of 2FaCeD Dance Company, he was the body-popping dancer who drew some of the loudest cheers when he stepped up for his solos.
Since the last festival Kashmir has carried on refining his moves, picked up awards and strengthened his reputation.
The 20-year-old professional dancer knows he still has a lot to learn about hip hop culture (he keeps a growing list of influential people in hip hop at home), but he is adamant that, if streetdance is going to become more accessible and be taught in schools, it’s got to be done by the right people in the right way.
“When you say streetdance people think it’s routines. But streetdance is a collective term from streetdance styles. A lot of people don’t know what voguing and wacking is because they’ve never seen it and in the UK we don’t know where it originated from. One studio I went to had a hip hop class and a streetdance class – but they were teaching some sort of streetjazz, and people will think that is streetdance. I don’t mind, because people are dancing. But it is frustrating when people get it wrong because it went through a lot to get to where it is now.”
Born and bred in Birmingham, Leese remembers seeing his friend’s Bollywood films and being sucked in by the impressive movements in the martial arts scenes. He enjoyed drama at school and went to study performing arts, theatre and dance at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College. A year later he self-taught himself hip hop using YouTube videos, practising the styles at Broken Silence in Newtown. He joined 2FaCeD Dance Company in 2007, touring with them around the UK and collaborating with contemporary choreographer Hofesh Schechter for International Dance Festival Birmingham ’08.
Leese has gone on to form the hip hop collective, Smash Bro’z, who won awards at the UK Hip Hop Dance Championships and qualified to go to the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in Las Vegas in July - but they couldn’t raise enough money to go.
“We went to London and I entered the freestyle battle. I was beaten by another friend and got second place. We ranked third in the adult group finals and qualified for Las Vegas, but we didn’t raise enough money in the end. There was a lot of support, but no people with money helping us. The only money we had was from busking on the streets everyday.”
Leese now teaches hip hop and funk styles at Birmingham’s DanceXchange, as well as running classes for the hip hop societies at Loughborough and Aston Universities. He sees the hip hop culture in the West Midlands as spread out across Bboys, graffiti artists, and MCs – but feels these groups remain fairly separate instead of joined as a collective, and more could be done to encourage the development of hip hop and its expression in dance in the region:
“There’s a few groups in Birmingham, but they are generic and don’t know their history and they’re not hungry. In London, everyone’s competing against each other and hungry to get better. Here, everyone just thinks they are the best, so they’re not going to improve.”
When Leese teaches young children he always starts by educating them about the history and fundamentals of hip hop and streetdance, as he feels they have both developed the wrong image. Hip hop, he says, is wrongly portrayed as having an association with gangs, shootings and swearing. Streetdance is often thought of as punchy dance routines, more akin to cheerleading, due to many dance schools misleadingly calling their lessons ‘streetdance’ despite not teaching any of the streetdance styles, of which there are many:
“Streetdance involves six or seven styles – popping, locking, house, breaking, krumping, voguing and wacking.”
Many of these styles started off as social dances – for example krumping, one of the newest streetdance styles, started off as clowning and developed into a raw expression of emotions – a certain way of popping your chest. Each style has a specific origin and history with a pioneering dancer or creator, says Leese such as Don Campbell for locking. Voguing came from the gay community; not from Madonna, but from posing. Then the straight-guys’ pastiche of voguing developed into a new style – ‘punking’. What’s more, each style has a specific music it is danced to – for example, popping was done to funk music and electro beats. Leese believes children learning the dance styles should be educated with some of the culture and history of hip hop and streetdance, to make sure it stays true to its name.
“To be a streetdancer you need to know your streetdance styles. You can’t say you’re a maths teacher without first learning maths.
“Already people are getting it wrong but are still teaching it. So the question would be – who has the right to teach it?”
What’s more, he says that dance groups like Diversity, who came to prominence via Britain’s Got Talent, worsen the situation because they don’t include the range of styles in their dances, despite having talent.
“For me, Britain’s Got Talent is an issue. When Diversity won it, one of my friends said ‘The whole streetdance vision has just been ruined’ because Diversity are good, but they don’t do streetdance – popping, locking. To me it looks like cheerleading. To do streetdance you need to do the streetdance styles. Flawless, they did it, they did popping, locking. I don’t know why they didn’t win. Diversity have got talent and the entertainment factor but technically Flawless were better. ”
“A collaboration of styles is what hip hop culture is about. From contemporary to breaking. Some people say they do merge styles but they don’t do it the the right way. They do contemporary for four eights and locking for two eights. They need to merge it so it doesn’t lose its originality and its culture, but looks good and you can see what it is.”
So what does the future hold for Kashmir Leese?
He’s working with West Midlands Youth Dance Strategy Manager Toby Norman-Wright on a solo performance called L’Après-midi d’un Faune, to be shown next year. He’s also working on a group piece with the Smash Bro’z. He expresses a desire to focus on his own creative work and take a step back from teaching. He also hopes that Smash Bro’z – dejected after being unable to go to Las Vegas – will re-group and continue to create new dances as well as performing at San Fransisco hip hop festival.
See the International Dance Festival Blog for more comments on this article.
To gain the full benefit of this blog it must be read in its entirety or the full picture will not be seen. My comments are not meant in a derogatory way although they may appear a little sharp they are merely meant as guidance if Kashmir Leese is open to such.
Great that Kashmir Leese has won an illustrious place in the world hip hop dance championship in Las vegas in July. It has to be celebrated they achieved victory in England (or was it third place, I’m not quite sure) lest we forget which is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination.
Kashmir Leese has shown true strength of character in obtaining valuable aire time to try and raise sponsorship for their trip to Las vegas, appearing on BBC news, CBBC newsround, express star, placing 2nd in Italia and booked for a dance appearance at the Bass festival in June. With his ongoing classes he truly is hard working and his efforts can but be admired.
On the subject of Kashmir Leese’s supposed comments or not regarding Diversity, I ask only one question, ‘Why didn’t he enter Britains Got Talent?’
Should he not be celebrating the achievements of a group representing in some way his form of dance articulation?
Kashmir Leese states he wants to bring all the elements of hip hop together when historically these elements were never together to begin with.
The whole concept of hip hop is a fragmentation of one mans statement/dress sense/way of talking/dancing etc and has become what it is today, with individuals attempting to place everything neatly in a tidy little box so they can sell their concept/teach their classes and market themselves as some kind of hip hop culture. A culture that does not exist only its individual facets. So if a person wishes to believe that others are not true hip hop followers because they don’t do some of the facets/elements of hip hop, then they need to look again at where their interest started and it is there, only there that they will find the answer. Let the history of the individual elements serve their place and be celebrated for their contribution to the mainstream label we know as ‘Hip Hop’.
Stop the chastising of others and celebrate awareness of the art forms in all their glory.
In-fighting amongst so called hip hop type fraternity’s is not a new thing and no doubt my words will fall on deaf ears as I will be classed as not being down with the hood and all that which makes me laugh because the majority of ‘Hip Hop’ dancers nowadays aren’t from any type of really down trodden hood, so I I ask the question, ‘Do you really know what it feels like in the hood? How do you know the real expressions to put into your body? Oh, you probably learned from videos of others or from the very same instructors who showed you one element of the hip hop dance forms, but did this make this way of learning any less genuine to you?
The originators of dance imitated something or someone inadvertently, you too are following the same track. No one dances like you, no one walks like you, because you are different, so you will express your dance differently, this creates individuality. Times gone by there were debates over which dance system could beat which i.e. trained dancer versus street dancer, popping versus locking, breaking versus…. I think you get the picture. To me, to embrace the fullness and purity of what you as a dancer are portraying, there should be no snobbiness between systems and definitely not between groups of the same form of dance articulation or individual dance systems that work comfortably in parallel demonstrating their own unique stance in the dance world.
I have great respect for anyone trying to pull together what they believe to be their dancing systems heritage, whether it be in the martial arts, immediate family or corporate establishment. I believe this can only help better inform others of where things have come from and the intentions behind such things as particular moves in martial arts or dance. What I do have grave concerns over is when a person tries to pull together separate unique techniques/concepts which are flourishing in their own right and attempts to create a culture called ‘Hip Hop’. The hip hop culture never happened in the past and it would be foolhardy to suggest that the individual facets must be embraced to be deemed a fully fledged mainstream ‘Hip Hop’ dancer.
Anything positive that lets you express yourself honestly must surely be celebrated and I do not profess to be a don dancer, in fact I would class myself as a non dancer now, but I have in the past put my humility aside and danced in competitions many years ago, winning some and placing second in others. If I did a pop, lock, jazz footwork, bodywave into Michael Jackson spin then into the running man, vouging and wriggly worm does this mean I was expressing myself in any less a format or was I just being me.
Although you or I can’t speak for the originators of any dance system, I am sure they were merely expressing themselves and when you really feel the rhytmn, really feel the beat, the only true dance is unchoreographed naturalness, which is what the originators all were and yet in modern day dance a lot of time is spent arguing debating how to choreograph and replicate their natural unchoreographed moves, seems to me each and every dancer, whether trained or untrained, street or private school should look to be originators of their own style and celebrated their own uniqueness rather than searching for something in the past that was happy to be disjointed, happy to set the trail for individualism.
Now is the time for new beginnings and celebrate the past for what it was ‘The beacon for moving forward, not backwards’
Word from the wise ‘Kashmir Leese. Be the first to create, then you can build a culture’
I extend and invitation for Kashmir Leese to join our discussions
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