Jamaica

Dancehall, say what?

 

The sunny Jamaica is one of the most beautiful islands in the Carribean Sea and is also the homeland of dancehall. The annual average temperature is 27 degrees Celsius - which is a good reason to party all year long! Dancehall is a music genre originated in the late 70s from reggae.

The dancehall, as a dance, concentrates most of all on the moves. Apart from shaking your behind, Dancehall includes hundreds and hundreads of different moves. This dance is found in Jamaica where the music and the dance came together. Most Dancehall dance moves are created spontaneously during street parties, this makes it hard to say who created the dance and which version one performed.

There are songs that are about just one dance move, but there are also songs in which you can hear several dance moves. The difficulty with these songs is to correctly understand the lyrics - Jamaicans use Patois in their dancehall songs. It is the language mostly spoken in Jamaica and is quite distant from their official language (English).

Dancehall is all about attitude and energy - we may even say these two things are far more important than knowledge and technical skills.

 

Did I make you curious about Jamaican Dancehall? Check out the following website for over 800 videos with dancehall moves, or check out the videos below for some step to step moves for beginners

 

http://www.gangalee.net/dancehall_info.php