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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’