Award-winning hip hop dance artist Kashmir Leese thinks streetdance classes are teaching the wrong thing, doesn’t like Diversity and wishes more people knew their krumping from their wacking.

Kashmir Leese took a starring roll in ‘Watch This Space‘ at 2008’s International Dance Festival Birmingham. As a member of 2FaCeD Dance Company, he was the body-popping dancer who drew some of the loudest cheers when he stepped up for his solos.

Since the last festival Kashmir has carried on refining his moves, picked up awards and strengthened his reputation.

The 20-year-old professional dancer knows he still has a lot to learn about hip hop culture (he keeps a growing list of influential people in hip hop at home), but he is adamant that, if streetdance is going to become more accessible and be taught in schools, it’s got to be done by the right people in the right way.

“When you say streetdance people think it’s routines. But streetdance is a collective term from streetdance styles. A lot of people don’t know what voguing and wacking is because they’ve never seen it and in the UK we don’t know where it originated from. One studio I went to had a hip hop class and a streetdance class – but they were teaching some sort of streetjazz, and people will think that is streetdance. I don’t mind, because people are dancing. But it is frustrating when people get it wrong because it went through a lot to get to where it is now.”

Born and bred in Birmingham, Leese remembers seeing his friend’s Bollywood films and being sucked in by the impressive movements in the martial arts scenes. He enjoyed drama at school and went to study performing arts, theatre and dance at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College. A year later he self-taught himself hip hop using YouTube videos, practising the styles at Broken Silence in Newtown. He joined 2FaCeD Dance Company in 2007, touring with them around the UK and collaborating with contemporary choreographer Hofesh Schechter for International Dance Festival Birmingham ‘08.

Leese has gone on to form the hip hop collective, Smash Bro’z, who won awards at the UK Hip Hop Dance Championships and qualified to go to the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in Las Vegas in July - but they couldn’t raise enough money to go.

“We went to London and I entered the freestyle battle. I was beaten by another friend and got second place. We ranked third  in the adult group finals and qualified for Las Vegas, but we didn’t raise enough money in the end. There was a lot of support, but no people with money helping us. The only money we had was from busking on the streets everyday.”

Leese now teaches hip hop and funk styles at Birmingham’s DanceXchange, as well as running classes for the hip hop societies at Loughborough and Aston Universities. He sees the hip hop culture in the West Midlands as spread out across Bboys, graffiti artists, and MCs – but feels these groups remain fairly separate instead of joined as a collective, and more could be done to encourage the development of hip hop and its expression in dance in the region:

“There’s a few groups in Birmingham, but they are generic and don’t know their history and they’re not hungry. In London, everyone’s competing against each other and hungry to get better. Here, everyone just thinks they are the best, so they’re not going to improve.”

When Leese teaches young children he always starts by educating them about the history and fundamentals of hip hop and streetdance, as he feels they have both developed the wrong image. Hip hop, he says, is wrongly portrayed as having an association with gangs, shootings and swearing. Streetdance is often thought of as punchy dance routines, more akin to cheerleading, due to many dance schools misleadingly calling their lessons ’streetdance’ despite not teaching any of the streetdance styles, of which there are many:

“Streetdance involves six or seven styles – popping, locking, house, breaking, krumping, voguing and wacking.”

Many of these styles started off as social dances – for example krumping, one of the newest streetdance styles, started off as clowning and developed into a raw expression of emotions – a certain way of popping your chest. Each style has a specific origin and history with a pioneering dancer or creator, says Leese such as Don Campbell for locking. Voguing came from the gay community; not from Madonna, but from posing. Then the straight-guys’ pastiche of voguing developed into a new style – ‘punking’. What’s more, each style has a specific music it is danced to – for example, popping was done to funk music and electro beats. Leese believes children learning the dance styles should be educated with some of the culture and history of hip hop and streetdance, to make sure it stays true to its name.

“To be a streetdancer you need to know your streetdance styles. You can’t say you’re a maths teacher without first learning maths.

“Already people are getting it wrong but are still teaching it. So the question would be – who has the right to teach it?”

What’s more, he says that dance groups like Diversity, who came to prominence via Britain’s Got Talent, worsen the situation because they don’t include the range of styles in their dances, despite having talent.

“For me, Britain’s Got Talent is an issue. When Diversity won it, one of my friends said ‘The whole streetdance vision has just been ruined’ because Diversity are good, but they don’t do streetdance – popping, locking. To me it looks like cheerleading. To do streetdance you need to do the streetdance styles. Flawless, they did it, they did popping, locking. I don’t know why they didn’t win. Diversity have got talent and the entertainment factor but technically Flawless were better. ”

“A collaboration of styles is what hip hop culture is about. From contemporary to breaking. Some people say they do merge styles but they don’t do it the the right way. They do contemporary for four eights and locking for two eights. They need to merge it so it doesn’t lose its originality and its culture, but looks good and you can see what it is.”

So what does the future hold for Kashmir Leese?

He’s working with West Midlands Youth Dance Strategy Manager Toby Norman-Wright on a solo performance called L’Après-midi d’un Faune, to be shown next year. He’s also working on a group piece with the Smash Bro’z. He expresses a desire to focus on his own creative work and take a step back from teaching. He also hopes that Smash Bro’z – dejected after being unable to go to Las Vegas – will re-group and continue to create new dances as well as performing at San Fransisco hip hop festival.