ABSTRACT
In the decades following World War II, nothing went as planned in the daily lives of a handful of artists who developed the corporeal artistic practices that eventually coalesced into and became labeled as butoh and hip-hop dance. In the 1960s and 1970s, the northeastern margins of New York City were also transformed by American-ness, but of a more archetypally insular and hermetic expansion: namely, postwar suburbia. Rennie Harris speaks of the confluence between hip-hop and butoh in terms of dancers from marginalized populations expressly engaging with an urban body in crisis. In the 1960s to 1970s, the diverse foundational dances of what later coalesced under the "hip-hop" tag developed at parties, in backyards, and on street corners to any appropriate tune; whatever had a groove for the crowd and a solid break-beat for the street dancers, and a positive message didn't hurt.
