Dance Crew

A dance crew is a group of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. As hip-hop culture spread throughout New York, the more breaking crews got together to practice and battle against each other. It was during this time that the different dance moves within breaking would develop organically.The same can be said about different dance moves within the funk styles – popping and locking – and decades later with krumping. Being a part of a crew was the only way to learn when these styles began. Forming and participating in a dance crew is how you practiced, improved, made friends, and built relationships. In the beginning, crews were neighborhood-based and would engage in battles in their respective cities. Today, crews can battle in organized competitions with other crews from around the country and around the world.


Crews still form based on friendships and neighborhoods (ex: Diversity). They also form for a variety of other reasons such as theme (JabbaWockeeZ), gender (Beat Freaks), ethnicity (Kaba Modern), and dance style (We Are Heroes). Crews are not exclusive. It is common for dancers to be involved in more than one crew, especially if one particular group is style specific (popping only for example) and a dancer wants to stay well-rounded.Furthermore, dance crews are not just formed within the hip-hop context anymore. The FootworKINGz is a dance crew that performs footwork, a style of house dance, and Fanny Pak does contemporary.


Although dance crews are more prevalent in hip-hop, dance companies do exist in both the United States and abroad. Examples include Culture Shock (USA), Lux Aeterna (USA),[note 9] Boy Blue Entertainment (UK), Bounce Streetdance Company (Sweden), 2Faced Dance (UK), Funkbrella Dance Company (USA), Blaze Streetdance Company (Netherlands), and Zoo Nation (UK).