Life got rough for Stephanie Egbert in high school, one of many
teens seeking escape from the family issues that cloud their
days.
Gilroy – Life got rough for Stephanie Egbert in high school, one of many teens seeking escape from the family issues that cloud their days. Jazz and tap dance didn’t provide the warmth and sense of belonging she got when she joined the Hip-hop Craze dance group at Lana’s Dance Studio. She was more than part of a dance team, she was part of a movement, culture and a family that helped her gain a sense of peace.
“I decided to take hip-hop because the team became my family. It was an escape for me because the past few years I’ve been going through some rough times, and dancing and the team has been a way for me to leave my problems at the door and really have an escape. It’s the only thing that keeps me going,” said Egbert, now 21, of Morgan Hill and a Live Oak High School graduate.
Egbert is one of the 48 students that make up the dance group, which has the opportunity to send 10 members to New York later this summer to compete on national television. It is the group’s chance to bring Gilroy regional and national recognition. But first, it has to pay the bills.
Hip-hop Craze is holding a fund-raiser at the Gavilan College theater Sunday, June 17 to show off their award-winning moves.
This is the first time in five years that the team, made up of Gilroy and Morgan Hill kids ages 8 to 23, will perform locally, and will be broadcast on Black Entertainment Television.
Hip-hop Craze is a competitive hip-hop dance team training out of Lana’s Dance Studio in Gilroy and Morgan Hill. They compete throughout the Bay Area. The team has been around for five years and is taught by 22-year-old Tiffany Maaske.
“It’s your job to look like you’re having fun even at practice,” said Maaske to her students during practice. “[Your competitors] are not better than you, they just get into it better than you do.”
Last year, Hip-hop Craze earned fourth- and second-place honors out of the 400 hip-hop dances routines at the 2006 nationals in Las Vegas. This year, they’ve competed six times, and won most of their regional events with hopes of winning first place at the national competition in Las Vegas in mid-July.
Some parents were skeptical about sending their children off to competitions because of the “bad rap” that the style has – including Nimia Phillips, but her perspective changed when she met Maaske and the students.
“The teacher, Tiffany, doesn’t use vulgar music,” Phillips said. “She edits it. They are not allowed to talk that language,” she added. “My daughter was from tap and jazz, then she went to hip-hop tummy showing, but she enjoys this group more than the other one.”
Egbert, the Live Oak Graduate, believes older generations have disdain for the hip-hop movement, which can contribute to the lack of support that the team gets.
“I think that a lot of people don’t understand that there is a culture behind hip-hop and that it’s not just rap music and cussing,” Egbert said. “It’s a lifestyle, it’s dancing, its art, and I think that a lot of people, mostly older generations, are not very open minded and somewhat judgmental, and they think that younger generations are too wild, and that our music is too wild.”
The content of youth culture today is, to an extent, hip-hop. It is the only genre of popular entertainment that consistently crosses class, ethnicity, gender and age. Just as rock music was a vehicle for the countercultural attitudes that provoked social upheaval among the middle classes in the 1960s, hip-hop in general and gangsta rap in particular have carried urban underclass sensibilities to the wider society – which has reacted with equal parts enchantment, imitation and outrage.
But today hip-hop is more acceptable with most races because of its popularity and integration into mainstream culture.
While hip-hop functions as an escape, it has also strengthened relationships within the group. Just ask Sherida Brinson, who brings both her children to dance at the studio.
“Hip-hop is a boy and girl type of thing. It gave my son something else to be a part of, and I noticed it made him have a closer relationship with his sister,” Brinson said.
Philips and other parents have noticed that hip-hop is also a factor of acceptance in today’s world.
“That’s the ‘in’ thing now, the music and the dance. You’re cool if you go to parties and you can actually dance. You’re popular if you could do the moves,” she said.
Now, as the individuals in the team grow, their dance moves are scoring them a chance at recognition on national TV.
Maaske sent a video clip of her students to BET where dance teams go to compete. For Maaske’s students, it is their shot at national recognition.
Not just anybody gets chosen for BET. The show invites dance groups from throughout the country to compete. Thousands of people audition, and they only pick 115 a year. Hip hop Craze was one of the teams chosen. The videos are shown Monday through Friday on the BET network, and people from home vote through the Internet for the best team. The best team wins by the votes of viewers.
But before they make Gilroy famous, the team needs to raise funds to send the students to Washington D.C., and to Las Vegas for the nationals.
“Our team is always looking for sponsors. It would be a lot easier to go to Vegas, and I would also like to travel to L.A. to complete. In the Bay Area, you compete against the same people,” Maaske said.
The team will perform its fund-raiser at the Gavilan College Theater at 6pm Sunday. Tickets will be sold in advance for $10, and at the door $14 through the instructor or the students.
“It’s unfortunate that [more dancers] can’t go to the nationals because of the money, and it would make it easier if we had more sponsors,” Egbert said. “I wish that people could see that it’s a real positive thing for Gilroy and help us out with their sponsorship.”
