Real Talk Dance Convo: Women in Hip-Hop connects the rising female forces of an international scene
Voices gather from Vancouver to Manila to the Bronx, in Made in BC and Vancouver Street Dance Festival event, May 21
MycsVilloso, Michele Byrd-McPhee, Alex ‘Spicey’ Landé, Natasha Gorrie, and Kathleen Adams will all be joining the panel discussion.
Women are an ever-growing force in breakdancing—and they’re only starting to connect around the globe.
Made in BC and the Vancouver Street Dance Festival present Real Talk Dance Convo: Women in Hip-Hop on May 21 at 5 pm
WHEN VANCOUVER’S Caroline Loke started breakingdancing, she was entering a decidedly male-dominated culture.
“I didn’t want to battle because it was mostly guys and it was a bit intimidating,” she recalls.
The circle, she explains, can be a daunting place for a woman. “Men are physically stronger, doing all these power moves,” she says. “A lot of women have a different appraoch—it’s more stylistic.”
But Loke stuck with it, becoming chair of the ever-growing Vancouver Street Dance Festival. And she’s seen more and more women enter the arena.
“Definitely it’s grown—at the Vancouver Street Dance Festival it’s something we’ve always tried to promote,” she says, pointing to the summer event’s Ladies First program and the fact that many of its DJs are women.
The trend is being reflected in spots around North America and the world; the most high-profile milestone came in 2018, the first time the Red Bull BC One world-championship breakdancing competition allow B-girls to compete.
Now a new Vancouver-led roundtable being presented by the street-dance fest along with Made in BC aims to connect women in hip-hop even further—this time on a North American and global scale.
Real Talk Dance Convo: Women in Hip-Hop boasts an impressive roster of pioneers in the field. They include New York City’s Michele Byrd-McPhee, executive director of the trailblazing Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival—devoted entirely to women dancers; Natasha Gorrie of Vancouver’s own Diamonds in the Rough; Montreal hip-hop choreographer Alex ‘Spicey’ Landé; and all the way from the Philippines, Mycs Villoso, director of The HipHop Dance Convention, the biggest gathering of hip-hop dance in that country. The panel moderator comes direct from the birthplace of hip-hop, The Bronx: Kathleen Adams is cofounder of Momma's Hip-Hop Kitchen—a multifaceted hip-hop event designed to showcase and empower women artists, especially women of color.
The Vancouver Street Dance Festival has always put female artists at the forefront, but its live events aren’t possible during lockdown.
“The main goal is to create a network and connect other women in hip-hop togtehtr and just sort of encourage each other,” Loke says. “Other than the big female-centred events, it doesnt feel like tehre is a huge network of women in hip-hop. So hopefully we can connect womenf rom around the world.”
Topics will include the ways to support women artists and panellists’ experiences creating large-scale platforms to share the work.
Loke hopes the discussion will build connections that could lead to collaborations on future events—should the world open up again. Even across Canada, women in streetdance have not as yet formed those strong bonds
“This is Vancouver reaching out. We’re super local and we reach down to the Pacific Northwest and maybe a bit down to LA, but between here to Toronto there’s not been a lot of collaboration,” Loke says. “Hopefully it could lead to some global connection.”
Caroline Loke hopes the global connections can continue via event collaborations when the world opens up again.
That connection is needed more than ever, of course, with a pandemic keeping people apart. The Vancouver Street Dance Festival had to cancel the live rendition of its insanely popular event, whose hub is at Robson Square, last year. Battles moved online—at great effort. And though it hasn’t made an official announcement for this year yet, things are not looking promising for August 2021 either.
“Its been incredibly difficult for the dancers in the community here; a lot are getting Zoom fatigue,” Loke says.
For its part, Made in BC is trying to support street and hip-hop styles as much as other dance forms through the pandemic. In early 2021, the organization collaborated with Hiit’aGan.iina Kuuyas Naay – Skidegate Youth Centre in Haida Gwaii to offer a virtual Hip-Hop Academy with online workshops in music, dance and spoken word. It culminated in online performances featuring Indigenous and BIPOC artists from the Bronx, Haida Gwaii, Tofino, and Edmonton.
With that work, and the strengthening bond between female artists across the continent and the Pacific, the community—with its growing ranks of women—will have a better chance of battling its way out of the pandemic and onto the dance floor again.
Related Articles
