How to learn hip hop dance by yourself

Hip Hop Dance Moves For Beginners

Learn how to dance hip hop with our hip hop moves. They are perfect for those of you who want to get into hip hop dancing and learn some basic steps. These hip hop dance moves are some of the most popular moves out there and could be used to dance at parties, clubs and any other events.

Hip Hop Dance Tutorial #1: Start With Learning The Basic Rhythm

Hip Hop Dance Tutorial #2: The 2 Step Basic Move (From 5X Hip Hop Course)

Many more moves below this video

More FREE Beginner Hip Hop dance moves

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Get Sean's Hip Hop Course:

5X Hip Hip Course For Beginner
Learn basic hip hop moves with 25 step by step video lessons. This course is broken down into 5 modules that focus on different types of moves: Footwork, Upper Body, Waving, Step Touch and Iconic Moves. You will love this 2+ hours of detailed instruction for beginners.

These beginner hip hop dance moves on this page are easy to learn because they teach you one move at a time - as opposed to long, complicated routines.

This way you can use them individually or combine them with other steps however you feel. We recommend that you first pay attention to the footwork and timing of the step and then add your own styling to it only after. These hip hop dance videos are general hip hop steps that are good for adults and kids. They could be used with popular hip hop music in any situation.

Remember that Hip Hop is all about isolating the different body parts so make sure that you understand what body part moves first and in what sequence. Once you mastered these moves you can also check out other related Hip Hop styles like the free style dance lessons, how to break dance, how to dance to dubstep and popping dance moves.

If you are looking to learn other dance styles check out Online dance lessons.

TIPS: How to dance Hip Hop Better

1. It's all about attitude - Remember that Hip Hop dancing is all about "selling" the performance. Commit to each movement and be confident about everything you do.

2. Learn the basics first - the better your basics are, the better you will be able to execute the more intermediate and advanced Hip Hop moves. So don't jump the gun, instead master the fundamentals.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice - You need to hone down your skills as often as possible. Make sure to practice before every class and at your spare time in between classes. The key is to get the steps into your muscle memory.

Interested in other styles?

Click below:
How to hip hop dance online
How to Ballroom dance videos
Ballet dance moves
How to dance in a club
Learntodance.com homepage

How to get started learning hip-hop without classes — Dance, Work, Balance

Professional dancers can all agree: there is no substitute for taking dance classes. But between the closing of studios due to the COVID pandemic or the need to save money for other higher priority expenses, you may be looking for ways to get started in your hip-hop dance training without paying for classes. Here are 3 simple things you can do starting today to give you a head start in dance before the studios reopen.

At the dance studio, when taking a hip hop class, you benefit in many ways: direct feedback from the instructor, the benefit of connecting with others in the class, learning the experience of a professional audition, and of course, the facilities (since dance studios come equipped with mirrors and nice floors, although you can easily set up your own home dance studio.)

But let’s say you’re just getting started in dancing hip-hop with no intent to become professional. Maybe you are still young, still in school, or just looking to get some physical exercise or learn about the culture. What should you do to get started in learning hip hop dance without classes?

Use the free resources available to you.
At the risk of sounding old, let me just remind everyone that the world’s knowledge can be accessed by your smartphone. What this means for you is that you can access practically every aspect of hip hop dance, from terminology and history to choreography tutorials and freestyle battles using this handheld device that fits in your pocket. (Back when I wanted to watch some dance, I’d either have to wait for the right show to come on TV, buy / rent a VHS, or fly all the way to NYC just to watch the street corner pop off.)
Simply put, you have tremendous access to any style of dance you want to learn about. Steezy is a great YouTube channel with tons of free content and highly reputable instructors. This is a wonderful jumping off point. From there, find someone whose style you enjoy learning or watching, then search that name on YouTube. Choreographers nowadays are very aware of their presence on social media, so you should be able to find several videos of your favorite choreographers and dancers.
Once you’ve found your favorites, watch and copy their moves. This will help you build up your “dance vocabulary.” Slow down their videos with the build in feature in the YouTube browser, and try and figure out what they are doing. I rewound my VHS tapes so many times until they became nearly unplayable - simply clicking on YouTube is a huge improvement in technology over these past 25 years!
The added bonus of YouTube: You may even digitally wander off and learn about some completely new dance styles!
Without a doubt, most of the content you’ll see isn’t great. But some of it is. Your goal is to find the dancers who resonate best with your movement and the way you see yourself dancing in the future. The range in quality is just the same when taking dance classes at a studio: some instructors are better equipped to teach than others. Until you can get back into the studio, take in all you can via the magic of YouTube, and learn from multiple sources. You’ll gain a better understanding of what works for you and what doesn’t.
Build the habit of dancing daily.
Dancers develop a particular set of muscles, just as other athletes do. As such, it is important to keep these muscles active and toned - not just physically, but also mentally. And the best way to stay in shape is to use those muscles regularly.
Start by committing yourself to 10 minutes of practice or training each day. After about a week, this time will feel very short. Keep adding time devoted to working on dance. For example, you may choose to watch your favorite choreography performance on YouTube, then spend 30 minutes deconstructing their dance and replicating their moves in your own dance space.
I used to dance for a couple hours a day, with a minimum of “forced” time of 20 minutes. Whenever I injured my knee or ankle, I would stay seated and focus on upper body techniques, like hits and arm waves. Even when I was sick with the flu, I would just focus on visualizing myself dancing, a very important aspect of training!
The key reason why this should become a habit is to prepare yourself for when classes reopen. There are good habits that will take you far as a dancer, and regular rehearsal and discipline is one of the best. This is a skill that comes from and is mastered from within, and is only peripheral during studio time.
Watch, encourage, but also critique yourself.
Of the three steps, this is mentally the most draining. Have you ever heard a recording of your own voice, then realized how much you hate your voice? It’s just as bad with video - but it’s potentially your biggest source of growth without taking class.
In a studio, the teacher’s job is to help you gain skills. In beginners classes, they give you the skills of how to mimic their movements - where to place your hand in the six step, how to shift your body weight in top rock, and so on. But when you are learning at home, you have to figure it out by trial and error. What works and what doesn’t work? Just as importantly, what looked good and what didn’t?
A set of mirrors in your home dance studio is a great starting place, but that instant feedback will only take you so far. You’ll really want to make a video of yourself. Grab a tripod, point your phone camera at yourself, then spend 10 minutes practicing your six step.
Here comes the tough part - watch all of it. Fight the urge to skip over the parts that are cringe, because they are cringe for your potential audience as well. It’s a painful exercise, but I promise it’ll show you what you need to know. Do you slow down at certain points? Focus on making those parts more fluid. Does your body look awkward? Figure out how to get your elbow out of that weird place.
But the last step is just as important: compliment yourself. Point out what you did right, even if it means you have to dig really hard. Is your understanding of the musicality great? Does your top rock have a really nice groove to it, even if your down rock is a bit sloppy?
This is the question you really want to answer: Was I better than I was yesterday? Hopefully, yes.

Soon enough, the studios will reopen and we can all go back to finding our favorite local dance studio and teachers. In the mean time, keep these three tips in mind, and you’ll be in great shape for when that day arrives.

teaching basic movements and features of dance

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Hip-hop, like any other dance direction, is best studied at a professional school. After all, only a qualified teacher will find an individual approach to a new student and teach the necessary movements. But if this is not possible, or if you want to come to class prepared, you can try to master the direction of hip-hop at home. How to dance the first movements, now we will tell.

Like any dance, hip-hop training includes getting acquainted not only with the basic movements of the style, but also with a certain philosophy. And in this direction it is special. Hip-hop came to us in the second half of the last century from the most disadvantaged areas of New York and Los Angeles. Tired of injustice, aggression and blood, teenagers, who mostly did not have the cleanest reputation, invented their own special way to resolve conflicts - with the help of dance battles and rap parties. Hip-hop is a free dance, a challenge to society and a protest against any inequality. That is why the main thing in this style is not at all the clarity of the learned movements, but the sense of rhythm, improvisation and expression of the individuality of the performer.

Getting Started: Preparation and Basic Movements

Before learning hip-hop for beginners, you should make sure that you feel comfortable doing it. According to experienced dancers, three things will help you relax and start learning:

Appropriate environment: flat floor, spacious room, full-length mirror.
Loose clothing and comfortable shoes. Nothing should hinder movement.
Hip-hop rhythmic music.

A little ritual will help you tune yourself into the wave of hip-hop: stand with your legs apart, put your hands down and close your eyes. Listen carefully to the sound of the music and try to learn to hear the beat. Rock to the beat. And now you have already mastered the first movement. Congratulations! It's time to move on to more complex elements.

The basic movements of hip-hop are swing and step. You are already familiar with the first one. Now try to put your right foot to the side and stretch your right hand up. Bend your right leg, transferring your body weight to it, and lower your arm to shoulder level. Turn the body to the left, bend the left leg, and put the right leg on the toe. Now lower your right knee, arch your back and reach your hands to the floor. When you manage to complete this combination, consider yourself a good start in hip-hop.

Here are some more basic hip-hop moves for beginners:

Starting position - standing, feet shoulder-width apart, and arms along the body. We squeeze the brushes into a fist and alternately bring forward one hand, then the other. Then we connect the legs bent at the knee: left hand - right leg, right leg - left hand.
Starting position - standing. We jump in place and cross our legs, and bend our arms as if we were rowing.
Starting position - standing, feet slightly wider than shoulders. We put the right leg a little back, bend the legs at the knees, which at the same time look straight. With the right hand we cover the face, with the left, folded into a fist, we put it in the region of the heart. Then at the same time we tilt our head to the right and unclench the left hand, and after that we turn the right knee and right hand to the right.
Starting position - standing, feet firmly pressed to the floor, knees slightly bent. We put the spread fingers of the right hand on the chest, keep the elbow parallel to the floor. We bend in an arc, as if we received a blow right in the heart. Then we make two turns in different directions, straighten our back and return to the starting position. The hand at this time falls from the heart to the waist. At the end, we throw the pelvis forward again, round the back and tighten the buttocks.

You can achieve the first results quite quickly. But when you start to study closely how to dance hip hop, you will soon notice that there are no clear movements and rules in this direction. Having mastered a few basic elements, the dancers begin to improvise, create their own combinations and dance as creative fantasy suggests.

How to continue: choosing a style

If you have mastered the first movements of hip-hop from videos and photos on the Internet, it's time to choose the direction in which you will develop further. Hip-hop culture is a wide range of dance styles that differ from each other both in elements and in general mood. The main ones are:

Breakdance is still popular basic style of hip-hop, on which the direction originated.
Popping - rhythmic contraction of various muscle groups to the music so that it looks like jolts on the performer's body;
Wave - smooth and plastic movements of the body, the most famous of which is the wave with hands;
Afro-jazz - shaking mainly the lower and most prominent part of the body in women;
Crump - energetic shaking of various limbs to the music so that it seems as if someone has moved into the dancer;
New Style, also known as freestyle, is an improvisational dance that combines not only hip-hop movements, but also elements borrowed from more than a dozen other dance styles.
La Style - Hip-hop, where the emphasis is on entertainment, so this style is used mainly in videos and when staging shows.
Ragga jazz is a dance tuned to the music: the performer's legs work under the drums, and the hands become active during the recitative.
Locking - an energetic dance with "locks" - freezing in different positions for a few seconds or periodically slowing down the movement.
Power move is a spectacular style that includes complex acrobatic elements, handstands, various twists, and transitions.
C-walk is a “language” dance with a criminal past that emphasizes intense and very dynamic footwork.

Women's and men's hip-hop

The next step in how to learn hip-hop without leaving home is to bring a little femininity or, conversely, brutality into your existing skills - depending on your gender accessories. The thing is that female and male hip-hop are somewhat different from each other, and, therefore, representatives of the beautiful and strong half are trained in this direction in different ways.

Hip-hop dancing for beginner girls is based on plasticity, flexibility and unobtrusive sexuality. Girls wear baggy sweatpants and hoodies on a par with men, perform sweeping movements, but their execution looks different: hips, legs and shoulders are more involved, the elements are a little smoother and sexier.

Male hip-hop, on the contrary, is more daring, energetic and sometimes even aggressive. The focus is on the work of the arms and body, acrobatic elements and movements that require strength and male endurance.

If you prefer to learn this difficult direction from videos, it is better to initially choose hip hop training, where the movements will be performed by a dancer of your gender. Together with the right technique, you will be able to capture the gender characteristics of the choreographic elements.

A few more secrets

Learning to dance hip-hop at home, without classes with a professional teacher, is not easy, but real. Especially if you add training with a few more components. Here, as in learning a foreign language, only complete immersion in the culture will help. So, here are some tips from “experienced” hiphopers who have mastered a lot not under the guidance of a qualified mentor, but at home by the mirror:

Videos with basic exercises will help you master some of the moves, but for additional skills, it is better to turn to online courses. Hip-hop lessons for beginners are regularly held online, often live.
Hiphop parties and hangouts will help you melt into this culture and make new acquaintances. Yes, of course, everyone will laugh at your first dances, but no one drags you to the center of the circle. While you're learning, watch the pros dance, adopt a style, and memorize some moves to practice at home.
Clear training regimen. Only with regular practice can you achieve results. In addition, our body is set to a certain schedule, and if you exercise at a certain time, it will prepare for stress. As experienced dancers note, the optimal duration of even home workouts is two hours. This is enough for warming up, and for the lesson itself, and for stretching after.
Additional physical activities. If you are in the mood not just for basic hip-hop movements, but for serious hip-hop elements with tricks, strengthening the muscles of the whole body is indispensable. You will need strong arms, strong core muscles, and no extra weight. This can be achieved by exercising in the gym or additional weight training at home.
Compliance with safety regulations. Be sure to dance in comfortable non-slip shoes and loose clothing. Do not start training without a proper warm-up, and when practicing acrobatic elements, lay something soft on the floor.

Video tutorials will be enough to learn how to dance hip-hop. But to become a real dancer, you need to study the subculture from the inside. It is believed that a hiphoper has achieved true mastery when he is in perfect control of his body, does not “slow down” on the dance floor, knows how to improvise and select universal movements for any music. Hip-hop dance lends itself only to the very persistent and disciplined, those who are able to understand and accept its "philosophy of freedom".

Do not forget that there are many professionals around who are ready to help you take your first steps in hip-hop or improve the skills you learned at home. Qualified teachers of the La Boca dance club will find an individual approach to you, work out with you the technique of performing movements and even acrobatic elements. You don't have to go far: "La Boca" is located in the very center of St. Petersburg - on "Petrogradka"

Video: basic hip-hop movements

How to learn to dance hip hop at home

Each of us can become an excellent dancer, because the human body is just created for dancing. Many people have a sense of rhythm, emotions corresponding to music help to create a mood, and as for movements, they can always be diversified. Those simple steps that we give out in clubs are usually not enough to express yourself through dance, impress someone who is nearby and just get a huge positive charge. So let's start learning hip-hop! Why hip hop? Because it's easy, nice, interesting, and it's also cool to be able to dance as well as Beyoncé or Justin Timberlake.

Hard to learn, cool to fight

Hip-hop dancers usually demonstrate their skills in open combat. The so-called battle is an opportunity here and now to prove that your style is better. Also, battles contribute to the improvement of technique, the search for new movements and sequences, and the general steady growth of the dancer's skill. This technique works great in the Dragon School. All students, overcoming timidity at first, go to the center of the hall one on one with the "enemy" and show him, the teacher and themselves (first of all) that the lesson has been learned and progress is evident. Such “paired” performances help to painlessly record your mistakes and shortcomings, and at the same time borrow something new from colleagues.

That is why learning to dance hip-hop at home is more difficult. Results alone are not achieved so quickly. But home self-study allows you to get acquainted with its basics well.

A screen instead of a mirror

So, let's learn to dance hip-hop at home. To begin with, we free up space, dress more comfortably, put on sneakers. What for? Leg muscles that have become unaccustomed to regular loads can fail at the most unexpected moment, and sneakers will help to avoid sprains, the legs will warm up faster in them, therefore, there will be fewer injuries. Of course, hip-hop is no more traumatic than any other modern dance! Problems can only arise with the corners of the furniture in the room or with uneven floors. This is another reason why it is preferable to study in a special room.

But once we start, we don't stop. There are a lot of video tutorials on the Internet, it is quite difficult to choose the best one. Therefore, take my word for it and stop at the lessons from Alexander Dragon. This is not just a set of movements, but complexes developed within the framework of the author's "Quick Start" methodology. For starters, let's stretch. Let the monitor be like a mirror, repeat the movements in a mirror. Remember that a good workout is the key to the result. Let's get started!

First - to rock

Hip-hop is dominated by the concept of "groove" (in Russia it is also called "kach"). This is a drive from music, rhythm and body movement to the beat. It does not matter what the mirror shows at first, the main thing is that you enjoy it and do not intend to stop. The easiest way to catch a groove is by bending your knees to the beat. Try it! And now you can get acquainted with the simple basic movements of hip-hop dance. How to study at home? Just. Watch the video from the Dragon!

Unity of styles

When we learn hop-hop at home, a lot of questions arise.