Hip Hop Beat -

What is a combination in
the Hip-Hop dance?

Time to explain about the hip hop beat, and how it is broken into hip hop combinations.

A combination is a collection of set movements which are performed continuously. Hip-Hop music is broken down into beats. Hip-Hop combination is broken down into 8 beats, we have 8 moves that are built on each one of the beats. You can think of a combination as a sentence in a song, or a short musical section. You can count the beats yourself. The 8th beat is usually the end of a sentence in a song, when you can "feel" a new section of the song is coming up, just like in a chorus.

Click on the movie to see of you feel the hip hop beat

In the clip you saw, there were 3 combinations. If you didn't recognize all three just watch the clip again, I'm sure you'll get it now....

The combinations really break down the hip hop beat of the song into smaller sections, so that if we put them together a whole dance will be created, like a song.
In the music world, a song is built one sentence after another .
In the dance world, the dance is built one combination after another.

If we "count" the rhythm, attach each count a single move, connect 8 of these, we have a combination- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

So how do we dance a fast dance?
For a fast dance we just double the moves. We count with an "and" between each beat:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5,....

What do we get? On every eight beats, instead of 8 moves we have 16.

1 – one move
and – second move
2 – third move etc.

And if we want to slow down the beat we just do one move on more counts, and that lengthens our movements and slows down our rhythm.

Now that we know what a combination is, we can continue with the lessons. If you came through the lesson page, click "back" in the browser to go back.

Back from hip hop beat and combinations - to the studio