Summer Dance Camp 2019 – Urban
What is Urban? For one of the most currently popular dance genre in the world, it’s very hard to define what “Urban” clearly is. It’s as personalized as contemporary, with global tastemakers influencing people worldwide while local choreographers finding out their own flavors. But no matter how many roots and influences it takes from, it is undeniable that urban is really cool to look at.
Summer Dance Camp 2019 had the opportunity to take two of the biggest names in current Urban landscape, both locally and globally, to teach an intensive course. Kamil, popularly known as Sayakamil on Instagram, is the current deputy director and company dancer of Six.5, the first urban dance company in Singapore. He is also a coach and choreographer at O School and as well as member of #teamyomo and Styles from Beyond. Trevor Takamoto, on the other hand, is a member of The Young Lions, a group started by Ian Eastwood, and also a weekly teacher at the Kinjaz Dojo, founded by Anthony Lee and Mike Song.
While several things are quite similar in both courses, each teacher brings in their own flavor to the performance. Both promoted discipline and conditioning in their classes, the participants are pushed to not only look good on the surface, but truly understanding how their body works and how to achieve the level of movement quality that is targeted in the performance. Control in the movements, contrasted by grooves and flow, can only be achieved by having the body completely warm and ready to act on a moment’s notice. On top of that, the musicality of both teachers are very precise and fine-tuned to the specific song that they chose to perform on. Thus, the pressure in these intensives are pretty high and participants are pushed to their limits during the course.
Each course have their own uniqueness as well. Trevor is known for his quality, an innate and complex sense of movement that is present in his seemingly simple performances and choreography. The challenge for the participants then become how to grasp and embody that quality in their own movements. However, true to his extensive background in choreographing and teaching, Trevor also managed to embrace the participants and modified his movements so that it can allow the participants to shine their own sense of self and movement quality while still challenging them to present their best capabilities. The end result is a cohesive piece that is complex in its simplicity and flowing with Trevor’s unique sense of movements, while not jeopardizing any of the participant’s identity and working to their best selves. Kamil, catering to a wide range of level of skills in the participants, utilized tools and groupings instead. By providing a clear intention and message in the choreography, Kamil allowed the students to work with their abilities within a structured framework. Participants were given choreographic tools, put within similarly-leveled groups of participants, and challenged through translating a piece originally made for Kamil’s own company in Singapore into a piece that is uniquely theirs.
The two final pieces were a spectacle to behold, each highlighting the participants uniqueness while still conveying the general intention and quality of the choreographers. Closing off the night of the Showcase, the two Urban courses provided an insight into the labor and effort that makes Urban, as a genre, so cool.
Watch the intensive performance from Trevor here and Kamil here, and the solo performance by Trevor Takamoto here and Kamil here.
This is a part of the coverage on Summer Dance Camp 2019! Read more on other genres covered in SDC 2019:
|| Introduction || Contemporary || Urban || Hip Hop || Vogue ||
|| Traditional Contemporary || Broadway || Collabonation || Showcase ||
