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Streetdance Pedagogies
Contemporary streetdancers are faced with the challenge of navigating sedimented ideologies of Western dance training, as they teach in the studio. Yet the practices of early streetdance innovators remain embedded in the cultural histories and aesthetic philosophies of forms like boogaloo, popping, locking, waacking/punking, house and vogue. In my book Kinethic California, I think about the ways streetdance styles offer innovative approaches to dance training. Here, I am assembling videos where I dialogue with streetdance artists who teach studio practice classes and are using the book in conversation with their streetdance pedagogies.
Rose Gelfand is a streetdancer based in New York City, who teaches waacking classes through the lens of disability, drawing on her lived experiences of neurodivergence and transgressive embodiment, as a dancer participating in international streetdance battles.
This first dialogue in the Streetdance Pedagogies series happened on February 12, 2026, at the University of Washington Bothell campus School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, for students of the course Street and Club Dance Workshop.
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We specifically delve into the cultural history of disability that is embedded in the rebirth of the streetdance style known as waacking/punking, reflecting on the life of our dancestor in waacking, Tyrone Proctor. Then we discuss what these dance histories have to teach us in regard to shaping access-centered movement methods in the dance studio.