How Hiplet, a Fusion of Hip Hop and Ballet, is Redefining the Dance World | W Magazine

After founding the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center in 1981, Homer Bryant realized that by blending rap and ballet he might be able to get kids interested in dance, and thus Hiplet was born. In the two years since Homer Bryant first posted a video online of his students performing Hiplet, a dance movement that blends ballet on pointe with hip hop, it has become an all-out cultural phenomenon. “We’ve traveled all over the world and gotten over a billion views,” says Bryant. Read the full interview and see more here: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/hiplet-hip-hop-ballet-dancers Back in the early 1990s, Homer Bryant, who founded the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center in 1981, attended a rap concert in Canada and noticed how the cadence of the music allowed the kids to easily remember the lyrics. Backed by music he’d written himself, he began developing what would become Hiplet, a dance movement he eventually trademarked in 2009 that blends ballet on pointe with hip-hop. And in the two years since he first posted a video online of his students performing it, Hiplet has become an all-out cultural phenomenon. Much of the appeal of Hiplet is the sheer newness of seeing classically-trained ballet dancers plié and pirouette and then break out into a sassy nae-nae. But also, its social impact: In giving African-American dancers, who have often struggled to fit into the world of ballet, a space to shine, Bryant is empowering a community of kids. Among them, Zipporah Wils