House And Hip Hop Converge at The Dance Center This April

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, partnering with national and local community organizations, artist practitioners and scholars, continues its B-Series, a biannual celebration of hip hop and street dance, with Under 1 Roof: A House & Hip-Hop Convergence featuring B-Bout It, a street-dance jam and battle. Partnering with Kuumba Lynx, Urbanized Music, BraveSoul Movement, Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation, New Rhythm Arts Center and The Community Schools Program, the B-Series presents a mini hip-hop and street dance festival featuring presentations, workshops, dialogue sessions and a community dance jam and competition.

Under 1 Roof brings together artist practitioners, educators, students, scholars and cultural ambassadors to share and build around the interconnected histories and current directions in the house and hip-hop cultural movements. "While many think of house and hip-hop as distinct cultural movements with their own language, ethos and aesthetics, there has also been considerable exchange between the two worlds," said Columbia College Chicago Assistant Professor of Instruction Kelsa Robinson, curator of the B-Series. "Under 1 Roof not only emphasizes the connections, but also the lesser known contributions to house and hip-hop culture from Chicago and the Midwest."

Under 1 Roof features panels, presentations, dialogue sessions and workshops around house and hip-hop culture and the associated dance and musical traditions. A highlight of the two-day festival is the B-Bout It jam, a dance party featuring ciphers, performances and freestyle battles (a form of competition specific to Afrodiasporan street-dance cultures). "Whether you are a veteran street dancer, a serious competitor who has won international titles or someone who has never set foot inside of the scene, we invite and encourage you to participate and join us in experiencing the energy and movement," commented Robinson.

The Spring 2018 B-Series: Under 1 Roof is curated by Kelsa "K-Soul" Robinson, Dance Center assistant professor of instruction also representing Venus Fly and BraveSoul Movement; Daniel "BRAVEMONK" Haywood, Dance Center faculty member also representing Phaze II Crosstown Crew and BraveSoul Movement; and Amina Norman-Hawkins, Columbia College Chicago Music Department faculty member also representing Urbanized Music, Chicago Hip-Hop Initiative and Chi-Rock Nation. Key partners include: Kuumba Lynx, Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation, New Rhythm Arts Center and the Community Schools Program of Columbia College Chicago.

The schedule to date is as follows:

Friday, April 13-two locations
Continuing Education, 1312 S. Michigan Ave., 104 Recital Hall:

• Film Screenings Around Contemporary Black Social Dances of the Midwest: Detroit Jit and Chicago Footwork | 4-6 p.m.- Haleem "Stringz" Rasul, documentarian and producer of The Jitterbugs: Pioneers of The Jit, shares highlights from the film, his perspectives on the project and his role as a participant in the art form and culture; following is a Chicago footwork film screening by Wills Glasspiegel and Jamal "Litebulb" Oliver of The Era Footwork Crew, including dance films and documentaries from their ongoing collaborations in Chicago
• Talk on Social Dance and Mental Health | 6:30-7:30 p.m. | Jason Yee, Ph.D.-Explores the role of dance and rhythmic movement as a tool for the promotion of mental health. After brief examination of the socio-historical context of deep house culture, participants introduce a perspective that argues for wide dissemination of dance and movement pedagogy as a public health concern
• Panel/Verbal Cypher | 7:30-9 p.m. | House and Hip-Hop-Chicago Stories, featuring dancers, DJs and producers who lived in and between these scenes during the '80s and '90s

The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., Studio 300-DJ and Producer sessions:

• Hip-Hop and House Music Production Discussion and Student Beat Showcase | 7-9 p.m. | Producers and DJs discuss Chicago's hip-hop and house music scenes during the '80's & '90s. Guests will discuss topics from music production styles and techniques to advancements in technology, while exploring Chicago's influence on both genres across the globe. The discussion culminates in a Student Beat Showcase welcoming Columbia student producers to showcase their work, receive feedback from professionals and connect with other students. With guest hip-hop producers Coolout Chris, DJ Ceez, Taigo Onez and Tony Baines
• Under 1 Roof Opening Party | 9-10 p.m. | Listen, dance, vibe and build!

Saturday, April 14-the Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.

• Dance Workshops | 12-3 p.m. | Detroit Jit and Chicago Footwork/House Workshops (Room 300)
• Chicago House and Hip-Hop Exhibit | 2-8 p.m. | Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation/Midway Documentary
• B-Bout It Jam | 2-8 p.m.-a dance party including battles, performances and awards
  • Host: BRAVEMONK (Phaze II, BraveSoul, Alkemy)
  • Judges: Stringz (Hardcore Detroit), Bboy House (Furious Styles), Sneeks (Chicago Tribe), Quanzy (Don's of Chicago Footwork) and K-Soul (Venus Fly, BraveSoul)
• Two dance battle categories: hip hop/breaks and house/juke
• $400 in cash prizes (two $50 second place prizes, two $150 first place prizes)
• Cypher awards
• Performance by Kuumba Lynx

For updates, visit colum.edu/dancecenterpresents and facebook.com/BHipHopSeries.

The Dance Center
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance. The Dance Center has been named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine, "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader and Chicago's top dance venue by Newcity, and Time Out Chicago cited it as "...consistently offering one of Chicago's strongest lineups of contemporary and experimental touring dance companies." Programs at the Dance Center are supported, in part, by the Alphawood Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for the Arts and Culture at Prince, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley Jr. Family Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions from the Illinois Arts Council and the Crane Group. Special thanks to Friends of the Dance Center for their generous contributions to the Dance Center's work.

Featured Artists and Presenters

DJ Moz Definite, originally from K-town, Little Village, Chicago, has been DJing for more than 30 years starting at age 10. His cousin, his biggest influence, not only gave him his start, he also gave him the ability to practice at a young age because he had the resources. He worked for Andre Lopez, owner of Hot Jams Records and manager for No Name Entertainment DJs. He was the first event organizer to bring Judy Torres to Chicago in the early 1990s, and Chicago's very own -remier artist Latin Soul (Promise Me). Dj Moz Definite also holds the title of DJ, producer, re-mixer and marketing director for ATB Promo, Jaguar Ent. He is a member of Zulu Nation, Renegades of Funk (Alpha Zulus), Chi-Rock Nation and Armory Massive DJ Team, as well as cofounder of Intel Music Group. He considers himself a renaissance DJ with his years of experience allowing him to think out of the box in him music sections. Dj Moz Definite has participated in the DMC battles and has won the Battle of the DJs at the Wild Hare, Kool Mixx, Guitar Center and current 2014 Battle of the Scratch DJs. Dj Moz Definite has DJd for artists such as Twista, Nas, Rebel Diaz, Fat Joe, Noreaga, Kool Herc, Africa Bambaata, Camp Lo, LDA and Boy Wonder, and he is currently the official DJ for Ang 13, Army of TWO and Mc Longshot. He has been a brand ambassador DJ for Adidas, Puma, Nike and currently Under Armour. He is the official DJ for Chicago clothing lines Iridium and Kings Without Crowns. He has been a resident DJ for WCRX 88.1, WCYC/WRTE 90.5, WHPK 88.5 and Power Style Radio. Dj Moz Definite is the musical director for the free 99 DJ workshops for Kuumba Lynx.

Wills Glasspiegel is a documentarian, radio journalist and visual artist writing about the cultural history of Chicago footwork music and dance for his dissertation in African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Wills has produced radio segments for NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition, focusing on a range of topics from women in Nollywood to Detroit techno. He was a co-recipient of a Peabody Award in 2014 for his contributions to the radio program Afropop Worldwide. Musical albums by international and local Chicago artists have featured Wills' photography and collages as cover art, and museums and galleries including MANA Contemporary and the Minneapolis Institute of Art have exhibited his films. Wills received his undergraduate degree in English from Yale and holds a master's degree in media, culture and communications from New York University. In 2017, he cofounded Open the Circle, a nonprofit organization devoted to channeling financial resources into marginalized communities through the arts. Wills received the Crossing Boundaries Arts Prize from the University of Chicago in 2015 and was recognized among Fader Magazine's "cultural organizers of the year" in 2016 for his work with The Era Footwork Crew.

Daniel "BRAVEMONK" Haywood, a cultural ambassador and leader in the hip-hop community, has served both nationally and internationally as an artist, performer, educator, choreographer, host, judge and competitor during the last 18 years. His credits include International Cultural Festival of Contemporary Dance in Algiers, Hip-Hop Theater Festival at the MCA, the movie Dreams produced by Lions Gate Films and a feature in the book Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 1970-2010. BRAVEMONK is a member of Chicago's legendary and internationally recognized breaking crew Phaze II Crosstown Crew (est. 1982), a founding contributor and co-host of Power Style Radio and co-founding artistic director of BraveSoul Movement. BRAVEMONK's movement vocabulary is rooted in African-American urban vernacular dance forms including breaking, hip-hop social dances and house. He also draws on his training in martial arts and other embodied Afro-diasporic movement languages. BRAVEMONK is currently on faculty at Hubbard Street and the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and is a recipient of the 2017 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award.

Michael Lim (aka Sneeks) is a veteran b-boy and house dancer of the world-renowned, Chicago Tribe (3rd Gen), which has been dancing for 24+ years. Starting out as a house dancer with his younger brother "Check-It," he turned his focus towards breaking/b-boying (aka breakdance) and gained much notoriety and awards as a footwork specialist in the scene. Currently he is an active member of the house dance community, looking to infuse the original Chicago flavor with New York and other scene influences and spread the love of the dance in the Midwest. Sneeks is the creator and admin of ChicagoBboy.com, one of the first and longest running b-boying forums in the country. He is part of the Check-It Productions team (multimedia and promotions director), which throws one of the largest dance festival and battle series in the U.S., 'City Vs City." He is also the creator and organizer of "Slick City," Chicago's largest dance battle featuring multiple urban dance styles (breaking, toprock, popping and house), which helps bring awareness to the importance of the cultural arts in our communities and donates the proceeds to local charities. Learn more about his crew, Chicago Tribe, at chicagotribecrew.com.

Kuumba Lynx is an urban arts youth development organization founded in 1966 by three women: Jaquanda Villegas, Leida Garcia-Mukwacha and Jacinda Bullie. For two decades, alongside many of Chicago's artists, activists, educators and youth communities, KL has honed an arts masking practice that presents, preserves and promotes hip hop as a tool to reimagine and demonstrate a more just world. KL's program facilitators are a collective of artists, activists, educators and healers.

Edson "Bboy House" Magana was born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago. With more than 24 years of accomplishments and contributions to the Arizonans hip-hop community, House has been a student of visual and physical forms of hip hop. With strong roots within hip-hop culture, the dance and foundations, House continues to be blessed with opportunities to compete, judge and host numerous dance competitions/battles around the world. His stage work has led him to a 29-city tour in Japan along side The Tap Dogs as well as representing team USA in Red Bull's London "Beat Battle," New Zealand's X-Air games and Germany's "Battle of the Year," to name a few. House has appeared at the Furious Styles Crew Anniversary as president/dancer/co-producer and has just celebrated their 23rd anniversary. House has been part of the NBA's Phoenix Suns fast Breaker, WNBA's Hip Hop Squad and the NAS "I Can" music video. He recently returned from teaching, competing and judging in Europe, continuing the development of Furious Styles crew with their extended chapters in Spain and Denmark. As an ASU graduate with a B.A. in psychology/sociology, he can be seen teaching and lecturing at universities, colleges and schools across the country on hip-hop culture. His dance career is in continual growth, and he has most recently received his master's in fine arts with a focus on urban arts. He has been selected by the U.S. Department of State to participate in the 2017-2018 Next Level program and will spend two weeks in Morocco to lead art workshops that engage local artists and young people, encourage entrepreneurship and promote conflict resolution. The Next Level program is designed to share America's rich hip-hop music, dance and visual art contributions to the global cultural scene as it fosters cross-cultural communication and people-to-people connections to global audiences.

Amina Norman-Hawkins, born in the United States and raised in Nigeria, is now an internationally recognized voice of grassroots hip-hop activism. She is a writer, performing artist, filmmaker and hip-hop practitioner, who has spent the past 20 years actively involved in the preservation of Chicago's hip-hop culture and community, as well as a staunch advocate of hip hop as a vehicle for social change. She is co-founder of Chicago Hip-Hop Initiative, Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Month and the "B-Girl Power" movement. In 2010, she became a U.S. Cultural Envoy spending two weeks leading a team of three Chicago-based hip-hop artists on a Peace and Tolerance tour throughout the West African nation of Cote d'Ivoire. The following year, she produced the documentary Keep It Moving - The Movie, which premiered to much acclaim in the 2011 Chicago International Movies & Music Festival. Currently, she performs around the country as one half of the hip-hop duo Urbanized Music, alongside producer/emcee Coolout Chris. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago and serves as a teaching artist for Columbia's Community Schools. In both roles she brings her expertise as an artist into the classroom with the hope of inspiring and empowering students to unlock their most authentic creative potential through the arts.

Jamal "Litebulb" Oliver is a dancer and dance activist at the forefront of footwork culture in Chicago. Known for the intricacy and velocity of his moves, Litebulb has performed with leading artists like Chance the Rapper and DJ Rashad. Since 2009, he has traveled to international stages, from New York PS-1 to the Barbican in London. In 2014, he co-founded The Era Footwork Crew (The Era). Now touring global venues and Chicago schools with The Era, Bulb's practice is both intensely local and broadly international. He has received awards and grants for his innovative work, including recognition as a "dancer of the year" in Dance Magazine, a major arts grant from Chicago Dancemakers Forum and University of Chicago/Arts and Public Life and recognition as a "cultural organizer of the year" and as a choreographer of the year by Newcity magazine. He also appeared in a dance cameo with fellow footworker P-Top in the movie Manglehorn with Al Pacino. Litebulb was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, where he lives and works today. In 2017, he cofounded Open the Circle, a nonprofit organization devoted to channeling financial resources into marginalized communities through the arts.

DJ Phil, born and raised in Chicago, traces his earliest musical influence to listening to oldies from the '70s and '80s as a child in his grandmother's car. Meanwhile, his uncle was listening to 102.7 FM WBMX, featuring artists such as Frankie Knuckles, Armando Rivera, Ron Hardy, Little Louis and others, which were his first exposures to house music DJs. By the age of 12, Phil was exposed to ghetto-house mix tapes circulating around the Chicago underground. These experiences led to further involvement in the burgeoning Chicago Ghettohouse and Juke movement. Phil has found inspiration through many forms of music and artists, ranging from legendary producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to J Dilla, DJ Deeon, Funk, Traxman, Polo, Clent, Jammin' Gerald, Gant and of course Spinn and Rashad. By 2010, through hard work and dedication, Phil was collaborating with artists at the top of the game in the footwork community, such as DJ Rashad, DJ Manny, DJ Earl and more. After a first EP on Ghettophiles, collaborations with DJ Rashad on Hyperdub Records and a track featured in Global Footwork Vol.1 on Booty Call Records, Phil struck back with the Road Trip EP. Including tracks with the Legendary RP Boo and Teklife's DJ Manny, this project is his most complete work, with all his influences from soul to rave, acid to jungle.

Quanzy Pugh aka Q.V.I.P grew up on the West Side of Chicago. He used to go to the Park District with his mother to see Main Attraction and Fade Squad dance and got bit by the footwork bug, which started his footwork career in 1993. The first group he performed with, T.W.J (Together We Jack) in the Garfield Park area at the Golden Dome, had opportunities to perform at the Bud Billiken Parade and the Apollo (in Showtime at The Apollo). Shortly after T.W.J. broke up, and he joined Main Attraction, eventually becoming captain of the best squads on the West Side. He was taught by some of the best footworkers in the world, including Pork Chop, Bo, Stickx, Davidson, Boone, Tracy, Popcorn, Mario, Rob, Defly, Puppet Master Rob, Bobby, D.B and Rome. He started a group called 187 (Murder of the Dance), which traveled around Chicago looking for dancers to train and promote. Together they performed and opened for artists including Soulja Boy, Diggy Simmons, Chris Brown, Bow Wow, Mims, Rick Ross, One Chance and New Boys, as well as perform in Twista's "Pimp Like Me" and "Watch My Feet" videos. They performed at the WGCI Back To School Jam, America's Got Talent-Chicago, America's Best Dance Crew-ATL and New York Blaze the Stage, as well as their own 187 concerts. Currently he has a New Group called Don's of Chicago Footwork, which is actively performing and spreading the footwork love around the world.

Haleem "Stringz" Rasul, dance artist, educator, choreographer and filmmaker, is well-versed in many popular urban dance forms, most notably: breakin', house dance and Detroit's cultural dance style known as jit. Stringz is founder of Hardcore Detroit, a dance company and fashion label established in 2001 and voted best dance company in the Real Detroit Reader's Poll (2010). Rasul has taught, judged and competed throughout the nation and overseas, gaining international respect for his dance skills and knowledge. He is a recipient of two distinguished grant awards through the Kresge and Knight Arts foundations, earning him the title of Dance Ambassador of Detroit. After exploring dance in other communities, Rasul gained more appreciation for Detroit's own innovations, and by March 2009, he tracked down the Jitterbugs, the group recognized for developing the Detroit Jit in the 1970s. Compiling exclusive interviews with them and other pioneers, he released a film illustrating the history of the jit through oral narratives, images and never-before-seen footage. This historical dance film project also includes a groundbreaking How To Jit instructional. In recent years, Rasul has served as a cultural ambassador and guest artist in several communities around the world, including Zimbabwe, spearheaded by the Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit (2015); Sichuan province of China as a collaborative effort with local Detroit-based theatre ensemble the Hinterlands (2016) and Bandung, Indonesia through the Next Level Hip-Hop Diplomacy Program (2016). Rasul has also served as a guest artist in residence teaching jit at California State University, Wayne State University and Eastern Michigan University. Rasul holds a bachelor's degree from Western Michigan University and has recently been named an official Cultural Ambassador for the U.S. State Department.

Kelsa "K-Soul" Robinson is a dance artist, educator and community development specialist with strong grounding in the underground house, hip-hop and street dance communities. As a member of Venus Fly, an internationally known all-styles crew, K-Soul has performed and served as a guest artist at venues including B.Supreme (London, UK), B-girl Be (Minneapolis, MN) J.U.I.C.E. Hip-Hop Dance Festival (Hollywood, CA) and Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago, IL). K-Soul is an assistant professor of instruction at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and co-founding artistic director of BraveSoul Movement. She is also curator of the B-Series and has been instrumental in developing and launching the Hip-Hop Studies Minor at Columbia College Chicago. K-Soul holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master's degree in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Jason Yee, Ph.D. is research scientist at the Center for Translational NeuroImaging at Northeastern University and The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. He leads an interdisciplinary program of research centered around unraveling the neural underpinnings of social behavior. He is primarily interested in questions that involve sex differences, stress and characterizing how the brain changes as an individual progresses through the life course. As a fixture in house circles from Smart Bar to Slicks, he has a longstanding interest in house dance and has been percolating on how to combine it with his interest in the brain since moving to Chicago in 2000.

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