Breaking
Dance
How to Create the Ultimate Red Bull Dance Your Style Playlist
Red Bull Dance Your Style is an all-styles street dance competition that challenges competitors to test their styles to mainstream hits randomly selected by the DJ.
An added twist to the Red Bull Dance Your Style battle format is that the competitors have no idea what genre of music they will get for their round; hip-hop dancers might have to get down to funky house, waackers might have to move to a classic rap track. The only thing that is guaranteed at a Red Bull Dance Your Style competition is that each song played will be a well-known, mainstream hit, or a popular, classic track.
Dancers in the crowd cheering for Waackxxxy
© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
POPPING
The California-born dance style is largely danced to electronic and funk music, but Poppers also get down to hip-hop and disco tracks that possess the right instrumental hits they can hit/pop to.
Some well-known, classic popping tracks are:
FREESTYLE HIP-HOP
The dance style born out of old-school party moves, it is danced to party starting, chart-topping, rap tracks. If it’s a mainstream, hip-hop hit, it’s usually perfect for a freestyle hip-hop dancer.
With new hip-hop tracks dropping regularly and DJs sampling other songs, the typical music for freestyle hip-hop is constantly refreshed and updated, but here are true classics:
HOUSE
The free flowing, club style is danced largely to electronic dance music, as well as the sub-genre of electronic music that the style’s name sake, including Funky House, Deep House, Electro House, Afro House, and many other types.
Popular, classic tracks in House dance are:
Kerri Chandler- "Vector Graphics" and "Coro"
CHICAGO FOOTWORK
A style that has created its own genre of music, the rapid movement of the feet that define the dance is reflected in the samples it mixes and the way it flips house music to create rapid rhythms delivered at 160 BPMS.
DJ produced Chicago Footwork tracks include:
Kidd dances at Dance Your Style USA Finals in Las Vegas.
© Jordan Nicholson / Red Bull Content Pool
WAACKING
The dance created by the black and Latino LGBTQ community in the disco clubs of LA, and originally called ‘Punking,’ is mostly danced to classic disco music.
Some popular Waacking tracks include:
Donna Summer- "I Feel Love," "Mac Arthur Park" and "Hot Stuff"
CJ and Co- "Devil's Gun"
VOGUE
Another dance that came from the LGBTQ community, was first danced to a lot of disco and house music with symbol crashes on every fourth beat, (known as a ‘Ha’ crash) but has also formed its own genre of music known as ‘ballroom’ music (mixing funk, hip hop, R&B, house, disco and electronic).
Popular Vogue songs include:
Masters at Work- "The Ha Dance" (A song sampled by a lot for Vogue track because of its ‘Ha’ crash)
DANCEHALL
The popular, Jamaican born, music genre that has inspired the creation of many ‘dancehall dances’ performed to the music. With its roots in reggae music, but characterized by its use of digital instruments and faster rhythms, some popular, well-known, dancehall songs include:
LOCKING
Funk music has always been the genre that Lockers get down to ever since the legendary Don Campbell created the style and it got mass exposure on the “Soul Train.”
Some popular, classic funk tracks in locking are:
Kool and The Gang- "Rated X" and "Good Times"
Zuce dances at Dance Your Style USA Finals in Las Vegas.
© Jordan Nicholson / Red Bull Content Pool
AFROBEATS
Afro dance styles have become increasingly popular in the last few years around the world, especially via social media. Afrobeats is now the widespread name given to a mix of West African music with soul, jazz, funk, and electronic music, but it was the Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti, who was the pioneer.
Some popular tracks that have started dance trends seen as part of the Afrobeats music trend, include:
For a deeper dive on each individual style, make sure to read the Red Bull Dance Your Style 101 story.
