In-Sync: Why The Best Hip-Hop Dance Teams Are So Good

When people think of most dance styles, especially in Hip-Hop, they think of the individual – the specific b-boy/b-girl, waacker, houser, popper, or locker. However, the amazement of dance is not with the individual, but in the team. 

The ability to choreograph and become in sync with your crew or partner – like Les Twins, RUSHBALL, Kinjaz, The Brotherhood, and The Royal Family – leads to some of the most mesmerizing dance moves, performances, and battles we've ever seen. 

I never thought I would cry from watching someone dance, but I tear up every time I watch this video. This is how powerful a dance team can be, taking on a heavy subject like being in an orphanage and evolving it into a masterful story about fear, loneliness, and camaraderie.

The teams that are best in-sync are amazing dancers, yes, but they also have higher-levels of feedback, self-awareness, and memory that make them stand-out from individual dancers (and out-of-sync teams). The compounding power of everyone working together and bringing to life a vision elevates the routine beyond their individual, physical capabilities.    

So, how can teams get in better sync? 

Better feedback   

There are different levels of feedback from the individual to the entire ensemble, and they need to be critiqued differently. Certain types of feedback will be more important early in a routine, whereas other feedback will be more important once the routine is about to be performed in the competition. 

Corrective Feedback

One type of feedback - and the most rare - is corrective feedback, where you identify sequences and movements that need correcting, and offer ways on how to improve them. This type of feedback usually translates into having open sessions outside of practice, where teammates help each other correctly complete certain moves. On larger teams, they can split you into smaller groups where you can perform the routine and get more helpful feedback from the rest of the members. 

Many teams also use mirrors as a corrective feedback tool. They're lifesavers. Dance studios have them, and when you can't afford dance studio time, teams practice in front of glass buildings or places where you can see each other's reflections. Here, fellow dancers that are next to you in the performance or watching you from the sidelines can see where you're straying off and give you helpful tips that they see other teammates do to execute the choreography better. A lot of corrective feedback is also up to the individual. You need to be able to see yourself and self-correct so you align with your team, so having mirrors is a must. A routine couldn't be put together with only external feedback.

Informational feedback

The second type is informational feedback, where someone points out what you're doing right and wrong, but no suggestions on how to improve it. Hip-Hop dance teams can get relatively large, around 35-40 people. Choreographers can only see so much, and often don't have time to tell a single individual what they need to change to improve. Instead, they'll call out what you're doing wrong; when you're hitting the wrong angle or level, using a weird facial expression, if you're off a count, etc.    

Outcome feedback

The last type is outcome feedback, commenting about your overall performance and whether it's good or bad, without explicitly stating what you're doing right or wrong. For example receiving an B on your exam is outcome feedback; the grade only indicates your overall performance, not exactly what you should do to improve so you can get an A. 

This feedback can come in many forms with dance, from audiences' cheers and claps to your dance captain trashing your rehearsal. I'm not joking about that last one, I've heard "that was trash" many-a-times from captains, choreographers, and people we've asked to give us critiques when doing a "full-out" practice (where we try to do our dance routine as if we were performing on stage). But, you would be surprised how useful “that was trash” can be; sometimes, you’re half-assing the routine and need someone to tell you to give more energy. So, outcome feedback serves its purpose later on after you’re done learning choreography, and can give a team an overall review of how they’re executing. 

I think teams that are the best at mimicking each other and achieving their creative vision are best at using all three types of feedback in the right situations. Whether it's planning three open sessions a week for more frequent corrective feedback or bringing in friends and family to critique a “full-out” rehearsal so they can gauge what’s resonating with an audience - they're relentless in communicating to each other about what needs to be improved and how to get there.   

Here's what a full-out rehearsal and the real thing looks like:

More self-awareness, but for the greater good of the team 

The best Hip-Hop dancers have an uncanny physical awareness of how their body moves, but to be mindful of your body, it requires dancers to build a  strong foundation of self-awareness. In many cases, you're not the only one choreographing, so you have to adopt someone else's style that may be different from yours. To get those segments right, you need to understand who you are as a dancer, your strengths and weakness, and the obstacles you'll face on a particular piece so you can overcome them and embody the choreographer's vision. 

Author and Performance Coach, Alan Stein Jr. discusses in his book, Raise Your Game that having high levels of self-awareness and a person's ability to improve their self-awareness is the first step of being a successful athlete. For dance teams, this is ten-fold. It's a paradox, but I think a dancer's ability to consciously recognize their own uniqueness allows them to mold their movements with someone else. Someone who’s trained in waacking, which is more sharp and intentional for example, needs to be aware that they may have more difficulty learning a piece that has more groovier, relaxed movements. Dancers also come in different body shapes and sizes - someone who’s 6 feet tall has to know how it feels to bend down and hit the same level as their 5’5 teammate, so they both can create the same picture for an audience.  Strong self-awareness allows a group of highly capable and unique dancers to make the bodily micro-adjustments required to put the team's vision first.    

There’s an interesting dynamic where "good" dance crews usually have a few outstanding dancers that stand out from the others and are constantly showcased, whereas I think the "great" dance crews have everyone participate in all of the "complex" sequences and no one stands out individually.

You go from focusing on individually showcased dancers with a cool background, to being "focused" on the entire crew at the same time with no single intended focal point.

The Jabbawockeez (fun fact: they were the first winner of America's Best Dance Crew on MTV, back in 2008) are a great example - they wore white masks to erase their individuality. No single person is above the team. Seven dancers become one body, and it shows through their cleanliness and synchronization.    

The Royal Family dance crew embodies this as well. Dancer and choreographer, Parris Gobbel has a specific dancehall, fem style, and incorporates a lot repetitive movements that the entire crew does in sync, where as most crews would leave those kinds of movements to just a handful of dancers. Everyone in the squad - no matter how great they are as an individual dancer - adopts her style so they can execute the choreography. 

Retention and recall

For the most part, dancers only have an hour to learn a new dance routine. That's not a lot of time. 

At practice, repetition is a team's best friend. You become decent at "marking," simulating movements with partial gestures,  so you can envision what the dance should look like while becoming more aware of where the moves are happening in the song and saving your energy.  Some groups even have signature dance moves they’ll use in nearly every routine; not only does this make that particular part of the routine easier and cleaner due to the sheer number of repetitions, but it also doubles as a sort of team branding. 

While they say practice makes perfect, I also think some of the best teams incorporate a lot of recall, where the team will periodically perform routines or moves they've done in the past. These exercises help  dancers retain a wide repertoire of dance moves that they can execute at a high level. It helps transfer these moves to their long term memory - how their body looks and feels making these movements. Choreographers use this knowledge as a reference point for teaching new, but similar moves -  it's helpful to have a large library of dance moves people are familiar with to use as starting or reference points. 

You’ll have an hour to learn something like this.

A note about concepts and themes

I think the strength of the crew is both  the complexity of the choreography and how in-sync the crew is, plus bonus points for the narrative or storytelling. It seems like the emotional appeal of having a group carry out a storyline, concept, or theme is far greater than an individual doing the same. I've been a part of dance routines with concepts from having a sleepover, to a stalker following her love interest, and I've seen themes from Toy Story, to sperm finding its way to an egg. With the right execution, I think the group's ability to tell a story or to convey a message has significantly more power than the individual. And teams should take advantage of that. 

Staying in the discomfort long enough to learn    

Dancing is painful and often pushes your body and mind outside its comfort zone. You want to escape, and nowadays, it's easy to do so. But dancing is one of those rare things that make the struggle worth it. 

If you're not taken aback by it - because you're looking for those challenges and want to grow from them - embracing discomfort allows you to ask more questions and learn more from others, which ultimately helps you succeed.   

I think the one thing that the best dance teams, leaders, artists do that separates them from the rest, is their ability and willingness to stay in their discomfort longer than most people. 

Josh Waitzkin, a child prodigy chess player and international chess master, talks about this extensively in his book, The Art of Learning. Waitzkin notes that when other kid chess players were not emotionally prepared to struggle, he used this imperfection to his advantage. He made a point not to let internal conflict derail his efforts and cultivated inspiring internal conditions that allowed him to succeed mentally, even when he was uncomfortable.   

In dance, and perhaps more generally, it's about being open when you're vulnerable and afraid; whether it's a challenging movement that you're not sure you can execute or a piece that's speaking emotionally to you about a relationship you've had. Embracing discomfort is also about transmuting the uncomfortable emotions into productive ones, like reframing the adrenaline rush you get before you take the stage as part of your excitement to perform, not nerves. The best teams cultivate a sense that discomfort is part of the process.  

The pinnacle of dance is synchronization and the beauty in groups of people doing complex movements in unison. In order to achieve that beauty, these are the three things dancers need to focus on.