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A girl hip hop dancing, a very broad and common category of street dance.

Street dance is an umbrella term, similar to vernacular dance, used to describe dance styles that evolved outside of dance studios at more everyday spaces such as streets, school yards and nightclubs. They're often improvisational and social in nature, encouraging interaction and contact with the spectators and the other dancers.

Street dance is also commonly used specifically for the many hip hop dances and funk dance styles that began appearing in the United States in the 1970s, and are still alive and evolving within the hip hop culture of today, such as breakdance, popping, Locking (dance), hip hop new style and house dance. These dances are popular on all levels, as a form of exercise, an artform, or for competition, and are today practiced both at dance studios and more freely arranged spaces. Some schools use street dance as a form of physical education.

Unlike many other dance forms, most street dances encourage individuality and originality, and that dancers interpret the existing moves freely and even invent new ones to create a personal style of their own. Improvisation is the heart of most street dances, though choreography is also seen, mostly mixed with improvisation or used for prepared shows.

Generally, a street dance is based on a unique style or feel that are expressed through the dance, usually tied to a certain genre of music. As new moves evolve based on this feel, the dance is under constant development, and if the feel starts to change it might give birth to a completely new dance form.

see main article dance off

Battles are an important part of breakdance, a well-known and popular form of street dance.

Many street dances involve battles of some sort (known as jamming in other dance cultures), where individuals, couples or groups of people (called crews in hip hop contexts) dance against each other, with the observing crowd or a group of judges deciding the winner. Battles normally take place on a prepared stage or in a circle of free space on the dance floor, with the dancers taking turns to enter and executing their moves. Normally, if the street dance style is not a partner dance, only one dancer performs at a time, except when people from the same crew performs a choreographed routine. There are some exceptions to this, such as uprocking, which uses a line formation with the dancers facing each other on fixed positions on a straight line, dancing simultaneously.

Battles are very improvisational in nature, and the winners are often those who best manage to adapt to the music, their opponents and the current atmosphere. Though battles can become quite energetic, most dancers consider it important to show respect to other dancers, even to adversaries. To let the feelings in a battle become too personal is generally frowned upon.

Today, serious street dance competitions are getting increasingly popular, and a number of large reoccurring international events are taking place around the world, such as Battle of the Year and Juste Debout. These contests focus mainly on judged battles but also on choreographed shows.

Hip hop dancing by a young girl.

Some of the most famous street dance styles of today, such as breakdance, popping and locking, began appearing around the 1970s, and hip hop new style and house dance around the 1980s. Though some of these styles originally evolved seperatly from each other, most of them are today associated with the hip hop scene in one way or the other, as they share many street dance elements.

More recently, new street dance styles are emerging that are further inspired by hip hop and its music. Krumping, with its focus on highly energetic battles and movements, is an example of such a style that just recently became publicly known. It's also common to see some characteristics of street dance being mixed with other more traditional dance forms, creating styles such as street-jazz, a hybrid of modern hip hop styles and jazz dance. Such styles are generally focused more on choreography and performance and less on improvisation and battles, and are not always considered pure street dances, though a popular alternative to the more traditional and classical styles of studio dancing.

• Vernacular dance
• African American dance

Similarly in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, Dancehall music the contemporary version to Reggae, has spawned its own street dances, the movement has gathered momentum within the last five years where everyday a new dance is being tested on the streets. Most noted of them includes the Bogle, Worl-a dance, Jerry Springer, Dutty whine, Willy Bounce and Gangsta Rock to name a few. Others such as Tunda Clap and Rock-a-way were made popular on the North American scene by their inclusion in R & B superstar Usher's "YEAH" video. With the advent of You Tube Jamaican street dances such as Dutty Whine has become a world wide phenomenon and can be viewed being performed by people of all races all over the world. These dances have become so popular that artists race to produce and release the latest songs named after these dances, the more popular the dance increases the chance of the song becoming a hit, a present day anthem in the Dancehall music scene. Just like their North American counterparts these dancers practice their moves on street corners, at street dances and in the clubs. The absence of any formal structure within the street dance realm leaves much room for fiercely contested controversy among individual street dancers or crews as to who was the originator of a dance, especially when it becomes popular.

• "Dancing on the Through-Line: Rennie Harris and the Past and Future of Hip-Hop Dance" by Jeff Chang; from the series Democratic Vistas Profiles: Essays in the Arts and Democracy
• "Streetdance links"