Dance Masterz

Do you remember Cross Colours Clothing in early 90s? Cross Colours was an American-made hip-hop clothing brand, whose products peaked in popularity between Fall 1992 and Spring 1993. The trend hit the hip hop kids in Japan also during the time. Personally, its design is no longer appealing to me, I have to admit that I was one of the kids who bought the buggy pants with big Cross Colours logo on it. This is before we started wearing 1992 Polo Olympic games model series or Tommy Hilfiger like this

The group you see here was called “Cross Colours Dancers” and the group was made up for promoting the Cross Colours clothing. I am not sure if this is done for Japan or not. Please let me know if you knew about this group. One of the prominent dancers you see here is Robert who appeared at 2:02. Also, I like the girl after Robert! I don’t have any more information about Robert and other dancers. Judging from the way they dance, it look like they are from West Coast. Any information about them is appreciated.Song: Instrumental Version of “Oochi Coochi LA LA LA” by MC Brains

I have lot of responses regarding “Wreckin Shop from Brooklyn” and “House of Trez” videos. The era between 1990-1994 was special to me as a dancer. I always thought it is just me because the era was the time I was into dancing most. But it seems like many people around the world had the same special feeing about that era. Like I said before, this is the time when hip hop dancing was hip hop unlike today where you see the mixture of Jazz and Hip hop in music video. Because music videos today are often choreographed by dancer from Jazz Background dancer, not underground dancers. I am not sure how many professional choreographers with underground background exsits today. Those underground dancers were gone when gangsta rap music like Dr. Dre and Snoop hit the music industry. People wanted to be a gangsta and no music video featured dancers any more at that time. In my opinion, I stop seeing real hip hop dancers in music video after this gangsta music trend. What do you think? Is this just me who thinks this way. Am I just another old guy who can not catch up with the latest style thinking “It used to be better back then…” I would like to hear your opinion.

Anyway…

This is a clip from music video for Japanese group “ZOO”. ZOO was a pop group but the most of members came from underground dancer background. The members of ZOO always had great respect for dancers in the US. In this clip, they featured NY dancers they admired. You can see Kito dancing I mentioned previously a little bit. Leslie is aka Big Les, who used to be appeared on BET as a host I believe.

As you noticed, I started uploading original clips from my collection. I will continue to do so. so, stay tuned. This is one of the most rare video clips. It is really interesting to see all famous NY dancers when they are young though Marjory looks the same! I can not identify some of the dancers. At 2:40, I can recognize Peter Paul, Calef, Link, who are the other dancers? One guy look like Shannon (a guy who does lot of jacking) is that him?

This is the respond to one of the requests from viewers!

Just like the movie “Flash Dance” is so important for the history of bboying culure, this clip is extremely important when we talk about hip hop dance culutre. This clip you see here is actually edited sequence of several excerpts from a documentary “Wreckin Shop from Brooklyn”. This documentary was aired in PBS in 1992. Directed by music video director, Dian Martel, this documentary captured the vibe of golden age of hip hop era -early 90s. It features hip hop and house dancers in New York such as Mop Top Crew (Buddha Stretch, Peter Paul, Caleaf, Henry Link, E-Joe) and Misfitss (Rubberband, Marquest, Kito, Peek A Boo, Prancer). As many people consider this era as golden age of hip hop dancing, I recall music videos in this era featured lot of real hip hop dancers unlike today’s music video where you see the mixture of jazz and hip hop. One interesting dancer in this video is Kito from Misfitss. He has his unique rhythm in dancing though it may hard to see that in this video. But I saw him dancing in other video and he was different in a sense that he seems to dance off beat purposefully but still look fresh. The best scene comes at the end of the documentary which is the battle at club. In this clip, it starts around 7:20.

Dancers appeared in this video are

00:35 Kito
00:41 Marquest, Prancer
01:47 Buddha Stretch, Link, Loose Joint
03:42 E-Joe, Tony?
03:57 Caleaf, Ramier (Caleaf’s Brother)
04:51 Rubber Band, Prancer, Kito, Marquest

6:23 Kito
7:03 Marquest

7:25 Loose Joint
7:30 Caleaf
7:33 Loose joint
7:43 Peek a boo
7:49 Peter paul
8:00 Stretch
8:15 Rubber band
8:23 kito
8:27 Peek A Boo
8:36 Peter paul
8:47 Kito
8:51 Marquest
9:01 Rubber Band
9:10 Marquest
9:14 Ramier
9:19 Marquest

This is a scene from the movie “Flash Dance” in 1983 where Jenifer Beals run into kids dancing on the street performed by Rock Steady Crew. What this scene did was planting the seeds of so-called Breakdancing culture all over the world. (I don’t like the term “Breakdancing”, by the way. It was created by the media.) Many bboys from 80s ALL OVER THE WORLD often describe the scene as turning point of their life inspiring them to start dancing. The song played in the scene is “Just a Begun” Jimmy Castor Bunch. This song became one of the anthem songs for breaking since then.