UW-Milwaukee Showcases Hip-Hop Dancers

“The crowning achievement of my freshman year,” is how Gigi Garcia would explain her experience in the 2014 Hip Hop Showcase on Dec. 11 at the Zelazo Center just across the street from the UW-Milwaukee union.

This relatively small but wonderfully opulent theater reverberated old and new hip hop hits with performances from not just current students but graduated students as well: All Samantha Wood’s – she is a teacher of dance at UWM and also in the Milwaukee community.

This event was a showcase of student choreography from UWM Dance Hip Hop classes, plus guest organizations and crews from around the city and region. Wood is a nationally experienced performer herself, having danced with the well-known hip hop group Dance 2XS, Neil Diamond, and on Oprah’s “Favorite Things” episode twice.

Garcia explained that having Wood as an instructor felt like her “experience as a professional hip hop dancer has directly affected how I see myself as a dancer” even though she is “not a dance major.”

And though it wouldn’t be without the practice in their Hip Hop 1 and 2 classes, all of Wood’s students performed, in groups of approximately eight students, their own choreography and arrangements that they created outside of class time.

When asked if preparing for this showcase all semester basically on their own was stressful, Garcia said, “It starts out hectic, but, I think I found myself.” She also said that this showcase and class helped her transition into her college self as she explained, ”Just being in the moment and enjoying myself, which is rare during finals, I realized that with dance it’s what you want it to be. It’s your vision, as opposed to being correct.”

Wood seems to have a similar outlook on dance and also on how it relates to her students and the community. She said as the show was coming to an end: “The kids are why we are here and why I am here. I learn from their dancing every day as well.”

It was not only the participatory students and teacher who enjoyed performing, but also the audience members, as Ashlee Briggs, a freshman at UWM and friend of a couple of the performers, said when at the showcase, “This is dumb to say but I feel inspired, or maybe not inspired, more like pumped up… I don’t know. I just feel something.”

After the show, Briggs said she would “most definitely want to come back,” as she was “really impressed” with not only the performers she knew but also all of the other students who spent so much time working on this event. When asked if she would ever take a Hip Hop 1 or 2 class, she replied with an inward chuckle and said, “I’m good with just watching my good friends do it, but it makes me think about maybe, again maybe, trying it out.”

However Garcia then responded to Briggs, saying that she should do it as “dancing made me feel proud, and confident, and better.”