Plasmodium falciparum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodium_falciparum 

 

Plasmodium falciparum
Macrogametocyte (left) and microgametocyte (right) of P. falciparum
Scientific classification
(unranked):	Diaphoretickes
Clade:	TSAR
Clade:	SAR
Infrakingdom:	Alveolata
Phylum:	Apicomplexa
Class:	Aconoidasida
Order:	Haemospororida
Family:	Plasmodiidae
Genus:	Plasmodium
Species:	P. falciparum
Binomial name
Plasmodium falciparum Welch, 1897
Synonyms
Oscillaria malariae Laveran, 1881 Plasmodium malariae Marchiafava and Celli, 1885 Laverania malariae Feletti and Grassi, 1890 Ematozoo falciforme Antolisei and Angelini, 1890 Haemamoeba immaculata Grassi, 1891 Haemamoeba laverani Labbe, 1894 Haematozoon falciforme Thayer and Hewetson, 1895 Haematozoon falciparum Welch, 1897 Haemosporidium sedecimanae Lewkowicz, 1897 Haemosporidium undecimanae Lewkowicz, 1897 Haemosporidium vigesimotertianae Lewkowicz, 1897

Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of Plasmodium that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito and causes the disease's most dangerous form, falciparum malaria. It is responsible for around 50% of all malaria cases. P. falciparum is therefore regarded as the deadliest parasite in humans, causing 405,000 deaths in 2018. It is also associated with the development of blood cancer (Burkitt's lymphoma) and is classified as Group 2A carcinogen.

The species originated from the malarial parasite Laverania found in gorillas, around 10,000 years ago. Alphonse Laveran was the first to identify the parasite in 1880, and named it Oscillaria malariae. Ronald Ross discovered its transmission by mosquito in 1897. Giovanni Battista Grassi elucidated the complete transmission from a female anopheline mosquito to humans in 1898. In 1897, William H. Welch created the name Plasmodium falciparum, which ICZN formally adopted in 1954. P. falciparum assumes several different forms during its life cycle. The human-infective stage are sporozoites from the salivary gland of a mosquito. The sporozoites grow and multiply in the liver to become merozoites. These merozoites invade the erythrocytes (RBCs) to form trophozoites, schizonts and gametocytes, during which the symptoms of malaria are produced. In the mosquito, the gametocytes undergo sexual reproduction to a zygote, which turns into ookinete. Ookinete forms oocyts from which sporozoites are formed.

As of the World Health Organization World Malaria Report 2019, there were 228 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2018, resulting in an estimated 405,000 deaths. Nearly all malarial deaths are caused by P. falciparum, and 94% of such cases occur in Africa. Children under five years of age are most affected, accounting for 61% of the total deaths. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 75% of cases were due to P. falciparum, whereas in most other malarial countries, other, less virulent plasmodial species predominate.

History

Laveran's drawing of various stages of P. falciparum as seen on fresh blood (1880).

Falciparum malaria was familiar to the ancient Greeks, who gave the general name πυρετός pyretós "fever". Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE) gave several descriptions on tertian fever and quartan fever. It was prevalent throughout the ancient Egyptian and Roman civilizations. It was the Romans who named the disease "malaria"—mala for bad, and aria for air, as they believed that the disease was spread by contaminated air, or miasma.

Discovery

A German physician, Johann Friedrich Meckel, must have been the first to see P. falciparum but without knowing what it was. In 1847 he reported the presence of black pigment granules from the blood and spleen of a patient who died of malaria. The French Army physician Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, while working at Bône Hospital (now Annaba in Algeria), correctly identified the parasite as a causative pathogen of malaria in 1880. He presented his discovery before the French Academy of Medicine in Paris, and published it in The Lancet, in 1881. He gave the scientific name Oscillaria malariae. But his discovery was received with skepticism mainly because by that time leading physicians such as Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs and Corrado Tommasi-Crudeli claimed that they had discovered a bacterium (which they called Bacillus malariae) as the pathogen of malaria. Laveran's discovery was widely accepted only after five years when Camillo Golgi confirmed the parasite using better microscope and staining technique. Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his work. In 1900, the Italian zoologist Giovanni Battista Grassi categorized Plasmodium species based on the timing of fever in the patient; malignant tertian malaria was caused by Laverania malariae (now P. falciparum), benign tertian malaria by Haemamoeba vivax (now P. vivax), and quartan malaria by Haemamoeba malariae (now P. malariae).

The British physician Patrick Manson formulated the mosquito-malaria theory in 1894; until that time, malarial parasites were believed to be spread in air as miasma, a Greek word for pollution. His colleague Ronald Ross, a British Army surgeon, travelled to India to test the theory. Ross discovered in 1897 that malarial parasites lived in certain mosquitoes. The next year, he demonstrated that a malarial parasite of birds could be transmitted by mosquitoes from one bird to another. Around the same time, Grassi demonstrated that P. falciparum was transmitted in humans only by female anopheline mosquito (in his case Anopheles claviger). Ross, Manson and Grassi were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902. Under controversial circumstances, only Ronald Ross was selected for the award.

There was a long debate on the taxonomy. It was only in 1954 the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature officially approved the binominal Plasmodium falciparum. The valid genus Plasmodium was created by two Italian physicians Ettore Marchiafava and Angelo Celli in 1885. The species name was introduced by an American physician William Henry Welch in 1897. It is derived from the Latin falx, meaning "sickle" and parum meaning "like or equal to another".

Origin and evolution

P. falciparum is now generally accepted to have evolved from Laverania (a subgenus of Plasmodium found in apes) species present in gorilla in Western Africa. Genetic diversity indicates that the human protozoan emerged around 10,000 years ago. The closest relative of P. falciparum is P. praefalciparum, a parasite of gorillas, as supported by mitochondrial, apicoplastic and nuclear DNA sequences. These two species are closely related to the chimpanzee parasite P. reichenowi, which was previously thought to be the closest relative of P. falciparum. P. falciparum was also once thought to originate from a parasite of birds.

Levels of genetic polymorphism are extremely low within the P. falciparum genome compared to that of closely related, ape infecting species of Plasmodium (including P. praefalciparum). This suggests that the origin of P. falciparum in humans is recent, as a single P. praefalciparum strain became capable of infecting humans. The genetic information of Plasmodium falciparum has signaled a recent expansion that coincides with the agricultural revolution. It is likely that the development of extensive agriculture increased mosquito population densities by giving rise to more breeding sites, which may have triggered the evolution and expansion of Plasmodium falciparum.

Structure

Blood smear from a P. falciparum culture (K1 strain - asexual forms) - several red blood cells have ring stages inside them. Close to the center is a schizont and on the left a trophozoite.

P. falciparum does not have a fixed structure but undergoes continuous change during the course of its life cycle. A sporozoite is spindle-shaped and 10-15 μm long. In the liver it grows into an ovoid schizont of 30-70 μm in diameter. Each schizont produces merozoites, each of which is roughly 1.5 μm in length and 1 μm in diameter. In the erythrocyte the merozoite form a ring-like structure, becoming a trophozoite. A trophozoites feed on the haemoglobin and forms a granular pigment called haemozoin. Unlike those of other Plasmodium species, the gametocytes of P. falciparum are elongated and crescent-shaped, by which they are sometimes identified. A mature gametocyte is 8-12 μm long and 3-6 μm wide. The ookinete is also elongated measuring about 18-24 μm. An oocyst is rounded and can grow up to 80 μm in diameter. Microscopic examination of a blood film reveals only early (ring-form) trophozoites and gametocytes that are in the peripheral blood. Mature trophozoites or schizonts in peripheral blood smears, as these are usually sequestered in the tissues. On occasion, faint, comma-shaped, red dots are seen on the erythrocyte surface. These dots are Maurer's cleft and are secretory organelles that produce proteins and enzymes essential for nutrient uptake and immune evasion processes.

The apical complex, which is actually a combination of organelles, is an important structure. It contains secretory organelles called rhoptries and micronemes, which are vital for mobility, adhesion, host cell invasion, and parasitophorous vacuole formation. As an apicomplexan, it harbours a plastid, an apicoplast, similar to plant chloroplasts, which they probably acquired by engulfing (or being invaded by) a eukaryotic alga and retaining the algal plastid as a distinctive organelle encased within four membranes. The apicoplast is involved in the synthesis of lipids and several other compounds and provides an attractive drug target. During the asexual blood stage of infection, an essential function of the apicoplast is to produce the isoprenoid precursors isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl pyrophosphate (DMAPP) via the MEP (non-mevalonate) pathway .

Genome

In 1995 the Malaria Genome Project was set up to sequence the genome of P. falciparum. The genome of its mitochondrion was reported in 1995, that of the nonphotosynthetic plastid known as the apicoplast in 1996, and the sequence of the first nuclear chromosome (chromosome 2) in 1998. The sequence of chromosome 3 was reported in 1999 and the entire genome was reported on 3 October 2002. The roughly 24-megabase genome is extremely AT-rich (about 80%) and is organised into 14 chromosomes. Just over 5,300 genes were described. Many genes involved in antigenic variation are located in the subtelomeric regions of the chromosomes. These are divided into the var, rif, and stevor families. Within the genome, there exist 59 var, 149 rif, and 28 stevor genes, along with multiple pseudogenes and truncations. It is estimated that 551, or roughly 10%, of the predicted nuclear-encoded proteins are targeted to the apicoplast, while 4.7% of the proteome is targeted to the mitochondria.

Life cycle

Humans are the intermediate hosts in which asexual reproduction occurs, and female anopheline mosquitos are the definitive hosts harbouring the sexual reproduction stage.

In humans

Life cycle of Plasmodium

Infection in humans begins with the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito. Out of about 460 species of Anopheles mosquito, more than 70 species transmit falciparum malaria. Anopheles gambiae is one of the best known and most prevalent vectors, particularly in Africa.

The infective stage called sporozoites released from the salivary glands through the proboscis of the mosquito enter the bloodstream during feeding. The mosquito saliva contains antihemostatic and anti-inflammatory enzymes that disrupt blood clotting and inhibit the pain reaction. Typically, each infected bite contains 20-200 sporozoites. The immune system clears the sporozoites from the circulation within 30 minutes. But a few escape and quickly invade liver cells (hepatocytes). The sporozoites move in the blood stream by gliding, which is driven by motor made up of proteins actin and myosin beneath their plasma membrane.

Liver stage or exo-erythrocytic schizogony

Entering the hepatocytes, the parasite loses its apical complex and surface coat, and transforms into a trophozoite. Within the parasitophorous vacuole of the hepatocyte, it undergoes 13-14 rounds of mitosis and meiosis which produce a syncytial cell (coenocyte) called a schizont. This process is called schizogony. A schizont contains tens of thousands of nuclei. From the surface of the schizont, tens of thousands of haploid (1n) daughter cells called merozoites emerge. The liver stage can produce up to 90,000 merozoites, which are eventually released into the bloodstream in parasite-filled vesicles called merosomes.

Blood stage or erythrocytic schizogony

Merozoites use the apicomplexan invasion organelles (apical complex, pellicle and surface coat) to recognize and enter the host erythrocyte (red blood cell). The parasite first binds to the erythrocyte in a random orientation. It then reorients such that the apical complex is in proximity to the erythrocyte membrane. The parasite forms a parasitophorous vacuole, to allow for its development inside the erythrocyte. This infection cycle occurs in a highly synchronous fashion, with roughly all of the parasites throughout the blood in the same stage of development. This precise clocking mechanism has been shown to be dependent on the human host's own circadian rhythm.

Within the erythrocyte, the parasite metabolism depends on the digestion of hemoglobin. The clinical symptoms of malaria such as fever, anemia, and neurological disorder are produced during the blood stage.

The parasite can also alter the morphology of the erythrocyte, causing knobs on the erythrocyte membrane. Infected erythrocytes are often sequestered in various human tissues or organs, such as the heart, liver and brain. This is caused by parasite-derived cell surface proteins being present on the erythrocyte membrane, and it is these proteins that bind to receptors on human cells. Sequestration in the brain causes cerebral malaria, a very severe form of the disease, which increases the victim's likelihood of death.

Trophozoite

After invading the erythrocyte, the parasite loses its specific invasion organelles (apical complex and surface coat) and de-differentiates into a round trophozoite located within a parasitophorous vacuole. The young trophozoite (or "ring" stage, because of its morphology on stained blood films) grows substantially before undergoing schizogony.

Schizont

At the schizont stage, the parasite replicates its DNA multiple times and multiple mitotic divisions occur asynchronously. Each schizont forms 16-18 merozoites. The red blood cells are ruptured by the merozoites. The liberated merozoites invade fresh erythrocytes. A free merozoite is in the bloodstream for roughly 60 seconds before it enters another erythrocyte.

The duration of each blood stage is approximately 48 hours. This gives rise to the characteristic clinical manifestations of falciparum malaria, such as fever and chills, corresponding to the synchronous rupture of the infected erythrocytes.

Gametocyte

Some merozoites differentiate into sexual forms, male and female gametocytes. These gametocytes take roughly 7–15 days to reach full maturity, through the process called gametocytogenesis. These are then taken up by a female Anopheles mosquito during a blood meal.

Incubation period

The time of appearance of the symptoms from infection (called incubation period) is shortest for P. falciparum among Plasmodium species. An average incubation period is 11 days, but may range from 9 to 30 days. In isolated cases, prolonged incubation period as long as 2, 3 or even 8 years have been recorded. Pregnancy and co-infection with HIV are important conditions for delayed symptoms. Parasites can be detected from blood samples by the 10th day after infection (pre-patent period).

In mosquitoes

Within the mosquito midgut, the female gamete maturation process entails slight morphological changes, becoming more enlarged and spherical. The male gametocyte undergoes a rapid nuclear division within 15 minutes, producing eight flagellated microgametes by a process called exflagellation. The flagellated microgamete fertilizes the female macrogamete to produce a diploid cell called a zygote. The zygote then develops into an ookinete. The ookinete is a motile cell, capable of invading other organs of the mosquito. It traverses the peritrophic membrane of the mosquito midgut and crosses the midgut epithelium. Once through the epithelium, the ookinete enters the basal lamina, and settles to an immotile oocyst. For several days, the oocyst undergoes 10 to 11 rounds of cell division to create a syncytial cell (sporoblast) containing thousands of nuclei. Meiosis takes place inside the sporoblast to produce over 3,000 haploid daughter cells called sporozoites on the surface of the mother cell. Immature sporozoites break through the oocyst wall into the haemolymph. They migrate to the mosquito salivary glands where they undergo further development and become infective to humans.

Interaction with human immune system

Immune response

A single anopheline mosquito can transmit hundreds of P. falciparum sporozoites in a single bite under experimental conditions. But in nature the number is generally less than 80. The sporozoites do not enter the blood stream directly and remain in the skin tissue for 2 to 3 hours. About 15–20% sporozoites enter the lymphatic system where they activate dendritic cells, which send them for destruction by T lymphocytes (CD8+ T cells). At 48 hours after infection, Plasmodium-specific CD8+ T cells can be detected in the lymph nodes connected to the skin cells. Most of the sporozites remaining in the skin tissue are subsequently killed by the innate immune system. The sporozoite glycoprotein specifically activates mast cells. The mast cells then produce signalling molecules such as TNFα and MIP-2, which activate cell eaters (professional phagocytes) such as neutrophils and macrophages.

Only a small number (0.5-5%) of sporozoites enter the blood stream into the liver. In the liver, the activated CD8+ T cells from the lymph bind the sporozoites through the circumsporozoite protein (CSP). Antigen presentation by dendritic cells in the skin tissue to T cells is also a crucial process. From this stage onward the parasites produce different proteins that help in suppressing communication of the immune cells. Even at the height of the infection when RBCs are ruptured, the immune signals are not strong enough to activate macrophages or natural killer cells.

Immune system evasion

Although P. falciparum is easily recognized by human immune system while in the bloodstream, it evades immunity by producing over 2,000 cell membrane antigens The initial infective stage sporozoites produce circumsporozoite protein (CSP), which binds to hepatocytes. Binding to and entry into the hepatocytes is aided by another protein, thrombospondin-related anonymous protein (TRAP). TRAP and other secretory proteins (including sporozoite microneme protein essential for cell traversal 1, SPECT1 and SPECT2) from microneme allow the sporozoite to move through the blood, avoiding immune cells and penetrating hepatocytes.

During erythrocyte invasion, merozoites release merozoite cap protein-1 (MCP1), apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA1), erythrocyte-binding antigens (EBA), myosin A tail domain interacting protein (MTIP), and merozoite surface proteins (MSPs). Of these MSPs, MSP1 and MSP2 are primarily responsible for avoiding immune cells. The virulence of P. falciparum is mediated by erythrocyte membrane proteins, which are produced by the schizonts and trophozoites inside the erythrocytes and are displayed on the erythrocyte membrane. PfEMP1 is the most important, capable of acting as both an antigen and an adhesion molecule.

Pathogenesis

The clinical symptoms of falciparum malaria are produced by the rupture of schizont and destruction of erythrocytes. Most of the patients experience fever (>92% of cases), chills (79%), headaches (70%), and sweating (64%). Dizziness, malaise, muscle pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, mild diarrhea, and dry cough are also generally associated. High heartrate, jaundice, pallor, orthostatic hypotension, enlarged liver, and enlarged spleen are also diagnosed.

P. falciparum works via sequestration, a distinctive property not shared by few other Plasmodiae. The mature schizonts change the surface properties of infected erythrocytes, causing them to stick to blood vessel walls (cytoadherence). This leads to obstruction of the microcirculation and results in dysfunction of multiple organs, such as the brain in cerebral malaria.

P. falciparum is responsible for (almost) all severe human illnesses and deaths due to malaria, in a condition called complicated or severe malaria. Complicated malaria occurs more commonly in children under age 5, and sometimes in pregnant women (a condition specifically called pregnancy-associated malaria). Women become susceptible to severe malaria during their first pregnancy. Susceptibility to severe malaria is reduced in subsequent pregnancies due to increased antibody levels against variant surface antigens that appear on infected erythrocytes. But increased immunity in mother increases susceptibility to malaria in newborn babies.

Distribution and epidemiology

Play media

The Z(T) normalized index of temperature suitability for P. falciparum displayed by week across an average year.

P. falciparum is found in all continents except Europe. According to the WHO World Malaria Report 2019, 228 million people suffered from malaria in 2018, a slight decrease from 231 million in 2017. 405,000 people died from it. The infection is most prevalent in Africa, where 94% of malaria deaths occur. Children under five years of age are most affected and 61% of malaria deaths occurred in this age group. 80% of the infection is found in Sub-Saharan Africa, 7% in the South-East Asia, and 2% in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nigeria has the highest incidence with 27% of the total global cases. Outside Africa, India has the highest incidence with 4.5% of the global burden. Europe is regarded as a malaria-free region. Historically, the parasite and its disease had been most well known in Europe. But medical programmes, such as insecticide spraying, drug therapy and environmental engineering since the early 20th century resulted in complete eradication in the 1970s. It is estimated that approximately 2.4 billion people are at constant risk of infection.

Treatment

History

In 1640, Huan del Vego first employed the tincture of the cinchona bark for treating malaria; the native Indians of Peru and Ecuador had been using it even earlier for treating fevers. Thompson (1650) introduced this "Jesuits' bark" to England. Its first recorded use there was by John Metford of Northampton in 1656. Morton (1696) presented the first detailed description of the clinical picture of malaria and of its treatment with cinchona. Gize (1816) studied the extraction of crystalline quinine from the cinchona bark and Pelletier and Caventou (1820) in France extracted pure quinine alkaloids, which they named quinine and cinchonine. The total synthesis of quinine was achieved by American chemists R.B. Woodward and W.E. Doering in 1944. Woodward received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.

Attempts to make synthetic antimalarials began in 1891. Atabrine, developed in 1933, was used widely throughout the Pacific in World War II, but was unpopular because of its adverse effects.^[68] In the late 1930s, the Germans developed chloroquine, which went into use in the North African campaigns. Creating a secret military project called Project 523, Mao Zedong encouraged Chinese scientists to find new antimalarials after seeing the casualties in the Vietnam War. Tu Youyou discovered artemisinin in the 1970s from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua). This drug became known to Western scientists in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is now a standard treatment. Tu won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.

Uncomplicated malaria

According to WHO guidelines 2010, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the recommended first-line antimalarial treatments for uncomplicated malaria caused by P. falciparum. WHO recommends combinations such as artemether/lumefantrine, artesunate/amodiaquine, artesunate/mefloquine, artesunate/sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, and dihydroartemisinin/piperaquine.

The choice of ACT is based on the level of resistance to the constituents in the combination. Artemisinin and its derivatives are not appropriate for monotherapy. As second-line antimalarial treatment, when initial treatment does not work, an alternative ACT known to be effective in the region is recommended, such as artesunate plus tetracycline or doxycycline or clindamycin, and quinine plus tetracycline or doxycycline or clindamycin. Any of these combinations is to be given for 7 days. For pregnant women, the recommended first-line treatment during the first trimester is quinine plus clindamycin for 7 days. Artesunate plus clindamycin for 7 days is indicated if this treatment fails. For travellers returning to nonendemic countries, atovaquone/proguanil, artemether/lumefantrineany and quinine plus doxycycline or clindamycin are recommended.

Severe malaria

For adults, intravenous (IV) or intramuscular (IM) artesunate is recommended. Quinine is an acceptable alternative if parenteral artesunate is not available.

For children, especially in the malaria-endemic areas of Africa, artesunate IV or IM, quinine (IV infusion or divided IM injection), and artemether IM are recommended.

Parenteral antimalarials should be administered for a minimum of 24 hours, irrespective of the patient's ability to tolerate oral medication earlier. Thereafter, complete treatment is recommended including complete course of ACT or quinine plus clindamycin or doxycycline.

Vaccination

RTS,S is the only candidate as malaria vaccine to have gone through clinical trials. Analysis of the results of the phase III trial (conducted between 2011 and 2016) revealed a rather low efficacy (20-39% depending on age, with up to 50% in 5–17-month aged babies), indicating that the vaccine will not lead to full protection and eradication.

Cancer

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified malaria due to P. falciparum as Group 2A carcinogen, meaning that the parasite is probably a cancer-causing agent in humans. Its association with a blood cell (lymphocyte) cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma is established. Burkit's lymphoma was discovered by Denis Burkitt in 1958 from African children, and he later speculated that the cancer was likely due to certain infectious diseases. In 1964, a virus, later called Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) after the discoverers, was identified from the cancer cells. The virus was subsequently proved to be the direct cancer agent, and is now classified as Group 1 carcinogen. In 1989, it was realised that EBV requires other infections such as with malaria to cause lymphocyte transformation. It was reported that the incidence of Burkitt's lymphoma decreased with effective treatment of malaria over several years. The actual role played by P. falciparum remained unclear for the next two-and-half decades. EBV had been known to induce lymphocytes to become cancerous using its viral proteins (antigens such as EBNA-1, EBNA-2, LMP-1, and LMP2A). From 2014, it became clear that P. falciparum contributes to the development of the lymphoma. P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes directly bind to B lymphocytes through the CIDR1α domain of PfEMP1. This binding activates toll-like receptors (TLR7 and TLR10) causing continuous activation of lymphocytes to undergo proliferation and differentiation into plasma cells, thereby increasing the secretion of IgM and cytokines. This in turn activates an enzyme called activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), which tends to cause mutation in the DNA (by double-strand break) of an EBV-infected lymphocytes. The damaged DNA undergoes uncontrolled replication, thus making the cell cancerous.

Influence on the human genome

The high mortality and morbidity caused by P. falciparum has placed great selective pressure on the human genome. Several genetic factors provide some resistance to Plasmodium infection, including sickle cell trait, thalassaemia traits, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, and the absence of Duffy antigens on red blood cells. E. A. Beet, a doctor working in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) had observed in 1948 that sickle-cell disease was related to a lower rate of malaria infections. This suggestion was reiterated by J. B. S. Haldane in 1948, who suggested that thalassaemia might provide similar protection. This hypothesis has since been confirmed and extended to hemoglobin E, hemoglobin C and Hemoglobin S.

Hip-hop dance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip-hop_dance

 

Hip-hop dance
A b-boy performing in Turkey surrounded by a group of spectators.
Main Styles
Breaking – Locking – Popping
Derivative Styles
Street	Memphis Jookin' – Turfing – Jerkin' – Krumping
Studio	Commercial/New Style – Jazz-funk – Lyrical hip-hop
Cultural Markers
Influences	Uprock – Roboting – Boogaloo
Attributes	Crews – Freestyle – Battles- Cyphers-
Cultural Origins
Turntables – Funk – African Americans – Puerto Rican Americans – Hhhhhhdyla N dancing/Party dancing

Hip-hop dance refers to street dance styles primarily performed to hip-hop music or that have evolved as part of hip-hop culture. It includes a wide range of styles primarily breaking which was created in the 1970s and made popular by dance crews in the United States. The television show Soul Train and the 1980s films Breakin', Beat Street, and Wild Style showcased these crews and dance styles in their early stages; therefore, giving hip-hop mainstream exposure. The dance industry responded with a commercial, studio-based version of hip-hop—sometimes called "new style"—and a hip-hop influenced style of jazz dance called "jazz-funk". Classically trained dancers developed these studio styles in order to create choreography from the hip-hop dances that were performed on the street. Because of this development, hip-hop dance is practiced in both dance studios and outdoor spaces.

The commercialization of hip-hop dance continued into the 1990s and 2000s with the production of several television shows and movies such as The Grind, Planet B-Boy, Rize, StreetDance 3D, America's Best Dance Crew, Saigon Electric, the Step Up film series, and The LXD, a web series. Though the dance is established in entertainment, including mild representation in theater, it maintains a strong presence in urban neighborhoods which has led to the creation of street dance derivatives Memphis jookin, turfing, jerkin', and krump.

1980s films, television shows, and the Internet have contributed to introducing hip-hop dance outside the United States. Since being exposed, educational opportunities and dance competitions have helped maintain its presence worldwide. Europe hosts several international hip-hop dance competitions such as the UK B-Boy Championships, Juste Debout, and EuroBattle. Australia hosts a team-based competition called World Supremacy Battlegrounds and Japan hosts a two-on-two competition called World Dance Colosseum.

What distinguishes hip-hop from other forms of dance is that it is often "freestyle" (improvisational) in nature and hip-hop dance crews often engage in freestyle dance competitions—colloquially referred to as "battles". Crews, freestyling, and battles are identifiers of this style. Hip-hop dance can be a form of entertainment or a hobby. It can also be a way to stay active in competitive dance and a way to make a living by dancing professionally.

History

Hip-hop dance is a broad category that includes a variety of styles. The older dance styles that were created in the 1970s include uprock, breaking, and the funk styles. Breaking was created in The Bronx, New York in the early 1970s. In its earliest form, it began as elaborations on James Brown's "Good Foot" dance which debuted in 1972. Breaking at this period was not primarily floor-oriented as seen today; it started out as toprock which dancers perform while standing up. An influence on toprock was uprock which was created in Brooklyn, New York. Uprock looks similar to toprock, but it is more aggressive and looks like a fight. Uprock is also performed with partners, but in toprock—and in breaking in general—each person takes turns dancing. In 1973, DJ Kool Herc invented the break beat. A break beat is a rhythmic, musical interlude of a song that has been looped over and over again to extend that instrumental solo. Kool Herc did this to provide a means for dancers who attended his parties to demonstrate their skills. B-boy and b-girl stands for "break-boy" and "break-girl"; b-boys and b-girls dance to the break of a record. Further influenced by martial arts and gymnastics, breaking went from being a purely upright dance style—toprock only—to becoming more floor-oriented.

At the same time that breaking was developing in New York, other styles were being created in California. The funk styles refer to several street dance styles created in California in the 1970s such as roboting, bopping, hitting, locking, bustin', popping, boogaloo, strutting, sac-ing, and dime-stopping. Out of all of these dances, Boogaloo is one of the oldest. It started out as a 1960s fad dance and was the subject of several songs released during that time such as "Do the Boogaloo" and "My Baby Likes to Boogaloo". From being a fad, it developed into a street dance style called Boogaloo in Oakland, CA, as well as a separate music genre called Latin boogaloo. The most popular and widely practiced of the funk styles are Locking and popping. The television show Soul Train played a large role in giving these styles commercial exposure. Both The Lockers and The Electric Boogaloos—dance crews responsible for the spread of locking and popping—performed on this show.

It is historically inaccurate to say that the funk styles were always considered hip-hop. In an interview with Racked, Moncell Durden, assistant dance professor at the University of Southern California, is quoted as saying "Hip-hop dance involves two dances: breaking and social dances. That's it. Nothing else is hip-hop." The funk styles were adopted into hip-hop in large part due to the media. The media identified these styles as "breakdance" which caused confusion about their origin. They were created on the west coast independent from breaking and were originally danced to funk music, rather than hip-hop music.

As breaking, locking, and popping gained popularity in the 1980s, hip-hop social dancing (party dancing) started to develop. Novelty and fad dances such as the Roger Rabbit, the Cabbage Patch, and the Worm appeared in the 1980s followed by the Humpty dance and the Running Man in the 1990s. The music of the day was the driving force in the development of these dances. For example, the 1980s rap group Gucci Crew II had a song called "The Cabbage Patch" that the dance of the same name was based on. 2000s era social dances include the Cha Cha Slide, the Cat Daddy, and the Dougie. The previously mentioned dances are a sample of the many that have appeared since hip-hop developed into a distinct dance style. Like hip-hop music, hip-hop social dancing continues to change as new songs are released and new dances are created to accompany them.

Main styles

Breaking

A b-boy in an airchair freeze at Street Summit 2006 in Moscow.

Breaking was created in the South Bronx, New York City during the early 1970s. It is the first hip-hop dance style. At the time of its creation, it was the only hip-hop dance style because Afrika Bambaataa classified it as one of the five pillars of hip-hop culture along with MCing (rapping), DJing (turntablism), graffiti writing (bombing), and knowledge. Though African Americans created breaking, Puerto Ricans maintained its growth and development when it was considered a fad in the late 1970s. In a 2001 interview Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón, the president of Rock Steady Crew, commented on how Puerto Ricans contributed to breaking: "I think the difference is when the brothas first started doing [it] and it was at its infancy they weren't doing acrobatic moves. That didn't come into play until more Puerto Ricans got involved in the mid 70s. We then took the dance, evolved it and kept it alive. In '79 I was getting dissed. I would go into a dance and I would get dissed by a lot of brothas who would ask 'Why y'all still doing that dance? That's played out'. By 79, there were very few African American brothas that was doing this... We always maintained the flava. It was like a changing of the guard and all we did was add more flava to something that already existed." Breaking includes four foundational dances: toprock, footwork-oriented steps performed while standing up; downrock, footwork performed with both hands and feet on the floor; freezes, stylish poses done on your hands; and power moves, complex and impressive acrobatic moves. Transitions from toprock to downrock are called "drops."

Traditionally, breakers dance within a cypher or an Apache Line. A cypher is a circular shaped dance space formed by spectators that breakers use to perform or battle in. Cyphers work well for one-on-one b-boy or b-girl (break-boy/break-girl) battles; however, Apache Lines are more appropriate when the battle is between two crews—teams of street dancers. In contrast to the circular shape of a cypher, competing crews face each other in an Apache Line, challenge each other, and execute their burns (a move intended to humiliate the opponent, i.e. crotch grabbing).

Locking

Locking, originally called Campbellocking, was created in 1969 in Los Angeles, California by Don "Campbellock" Campbell and popularized by his crew The Lockers. In addition to Campbell, the original members of The Lockers were Fred "Mr. Penguin" Berry, Leo "Fluky Luke" Williamson, Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quiñones, Bill "Slim the Robot" Williams, Greg "Campbellock Jr" Pope, and Toni Basil, who also served as the group's manager. At the 2009 World Hip Hop Dance Championships, Basil became the first female recipient of the Living Legend Award in honor of her role in giving locking commercial exposure.

Locking looks similar to popping, and the two are frequently confused by the casual observer. In locking, dancers hold their positions longer. The lock is the primary move used in locking. It is "similar to a freeze or a sudden pause." A locker's dancing is characterized by frequently locking in place and after a brief freeze moving again. According to Dance Spirit magazine, a dancer cannot perform both locking and popping simultaneously; thus, it is incorrect to call locking "pop-locking". While both styles are from Los Angeles, locking and popping are two distinct funk styles with their own histories, their own set of dance moves, their own pioneers, and their own competition categories. Locking is more playful and character-driven, whereas popping is more illusory. In popping, dancers push the boundaries of what they can do with their bodies. Locking has specific dance moves that distinguish it from popping and other funk styles. In the 2006 book Total Chaos, hip-hop historian Jorge "Popmaster Fabel" Pabon lists some of these moves which include "the lock, points, skeeter [rabbits], scooby doos, stop 'n go, which-away, and the fancies." In addition, Lockers commonly use a distinctive dress style characterized by colorful clothing with stripes and suspenders.

Popping

External video

Watch: "The Black Messengers as Mechanical Device performing Boogaloo techniques Posing Hard and popping on the Gong Show, aired on national tv in 1977 (4-min mark)" on YouTube

Popping was derived from the earlier Boogaloo street dance movement taking place in Oakland, California during the late 1960s, the Boogaloo dance form incorporated techniques of soulful footwork steps, arm movements, stop-motion animation, the robot, & posing hard - which contracted muscles during robotic poses to the music of Funk. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s - Boogaloo groups in Oakland, CA such as One Plus One, the Black Resurgents and the Black Messengers would help popularize the dance. Early Boogaloo movements would inspire groups throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and eventually spread to Fresno, California in the 1970s and popularized by Samuel "Boogaloo Sam" Solomon and his crew the Electric Boogaloos. It is based on the technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in a dancer's body, referred to as a pop or a hit. It is also known as Posing Hard from the Boogaloo tradition, this technique was innovated by the Boogaloo group, the Black Messengers from Oakland. When performed correctly, each hit is synchronized to the rhythm and beats of the music. Popping is also used as an umbrella term to refer to a wide range of closely related illusionary dance styles such as strobing, liquid, animation, twisto-flex, and waving. Dancers often integrate these styles with standard popping to create a more varied performance. In all of these subgenres it appears to the spectator that the body is popping. The difference between each subgenre is how exaggerated the popping is. In liquid, the body movements look like water. The popping is so smooth that the movements do not look like popping at all; they look fluid. The opposite of this is strobing (also called ticking) in which the movements are staccato and jerky.

Popping as an umbrella term also includes gliding. Gliding is a lower body dance performed with little to no movements in the chest or arms. In gliding a dancer appears as if they are drifting across the floor on ice. Opposite from gliding is tutting, an upper body dance that uses the arms, hands, and wrists to form right angles and create geometric box-like shapes. Tutting can be done primarily with the fingers rather than the arms. This method is called finger tutting. In both variations the movements are intricate, linear, and form 90° or 45° angles. In practice, tutting looks like the characters on the art of ancient Egypt, hence the name—a reference to King Tut.

While popping as an umbrella term is widely used by hip-hop dancers and in competitive hip-hop dancing, Timothy "Popin' Pete" Solomon of the Electric Boogaloos disagrees with the use of the word "popping" in this way. Many of these related styles (animation, liquid, tutting, etc.) can not be traced to one person or group. Solomon states "There are people who wave and there are people who tut. They're not popping. I say this to give the people who created other styles their just dues and their props."

Derivative street styles

Decades after breaking, locking, and popping became established, four new dance styles appeared. Three of them come from California and one comes from Tennessee. Memphis Jookin' was created in the 1980s in Memphis, Tennessee. It is an evolution of an older Memphis line dance called The Gangsta' Walk. According to Dance magazine, jookin is characterized by dancers "gliding footwork... popping and waving... [and] using the tips of their sneakers to balance on pointe." Gliding on tiptoes is fundamental to this dance. While watching a jookin' battle in Jackson, Tennessee, dance critic Alastair Macaulay observed that "the most evidently sensational feature of jookin is the extensive use of what a ballet observer is bound to call pointwork: the men, in sneakers, go onto tiptoe... many of the men not only rose onto point but also hopped, turned, ran and balanced on point." Jookers have traditionally practiced their moves at the Crystal Palace skating rink in Memphis, which is akin to how milongueros practice their moves in public spaces in Buenos Aires.

Turfing, an acronym for Taking Up Room on the Floor, was created in 2002 by Jeriel Bey in Oakland, California. Turfing is a fusion of miming and gliding that places heavy emphasis on storytelling (through movement) and illusion. Other than San Francisco Bay Area pride, turfing avoided becoming a fad due to local turf dance competitions and local youth programs that promote turfing as a form of physical activity.

The dance style Jerkin' was popularized in 2009 by the New Boyz's rap song "You're a Jerk". This song went viral via their MySpace page before they had a manager or were signed to a record label. After hearing about the song, Los Angeles radio station Power 106 hired the New Boyz to perform at local high schools. These shows led to "You're a Jerk" entering the radio's playlist. Later the same year, rap duo Audio Push released the song and video "Teach Me How to Jerk" which showcased the different dance moves within jerkin' including the Reject—the Running Man done in reverse. Dancers who perform jerkin' typically wear bright colors, skinny jeans, Mohawks, and Vans sneakers. This trend echos locking dancers in the 1970s who traditionally wore suspenders and black and white striped socks. Of the dance, journalist Jeff Weiss from LA Weekly stated "For a youth culture weaned on the cult of individualism, jerkin' is its apotheosis." Similar to breaking, locking, and popping, jerkin's popularity spread through dance crews. For example, The Rej3ctz (crew) created both the Cat Daddy and the Reject dance moves.

Although jookin', turfing, and jerkin' generated regional support and media attention, none have reached the same zenith as krumping. Ceasare "Tight Eyez" Willis and Jo'Artis "Big Mijo" Ratti created krumping in the early 2000s in South Central, Los Angeles. It was only practiced in Los Angeles until it gained mainstream exposure after being featured in several music videos and showcased in the krumping documentary Rize. Rize was screened at several film festivals before it was commercially released in the summer of 2005. Clowning, the less aggressive predecessor to krumping, was created in 1992 by Thomas "Tommy the Clown" Johnson. Johnson and his dancers would paint their faces and perform clowning for children at birthday parties or for the general public at other functions as a form of entertainment. In contrast, krumping focuses on highly energetic battles and movements which Johnson describes as intense, fast-paced, and sharp. Of the dance, journalist Taisha Paggett from Dance magazine stated "If movement were words, [krumping] would be a poetry slam." Compared to breaking and the funk styles, jookin', turfing, jerkin', and krumping are relatively new. The music driving the dances and the cultural similarities between these street dance styles, the funk styles, and breaking have brought them together under the same subculture of hip-hop.

Dance industry

Commercial/New Style

The dance industry responded to hip-hop dance by creating a commercial version of it. This urban choreography or studio hip-hop, sometimes called "new style", is the kind of hip-hop dance seen in rap, R&B, and pop music videos and concerts. From the point of view of someone deeply immersed in hip-hop culture, anything that looks like hip-hop dance that did not come from the streets and is not improvisational in nature is not a true hip-hop dance form. In an interview with Dance magazine, choreographer and hip-hop dance teacher Emilio "Buddha Stretch" Austin, Jr. described his point-of-view:

“

There are a lot of jazz dancers out there doing pseudo hip hop. A lot of teachers don't know the history, they're just teaching the steps. They're learning from videos, but they don't know the culture. If all you see is Britney Spears, you think that's hip hop, but that's never been hip hop. It's completely watered down. And studios could [sic] care less, because hip hop is one of their biggest moneymakers.

”

Stage performance can suppress improvisation which defined hip-hop dance early in its development. Furthermore, meshing different dance styles together dissolves their structures and identities. In an interview with The Bronx Journal, choreographer and artistic director Safi Thomas expressed a similar qualm as Austin concerning hip-hop instruction within the studio:

“

In a lot of studios what you find is people just doing movement to hip-hop music. So if there's hip-hop music in the background, and they're moving, they're calling it a hip-hop class. The problem with that is let's say I wanted to teach a ballet class and I just come in, and I throw on Mozart, and I just start moving—and I'm not doing any of the foundational elements. I am not doing any of the movement vocabulary of ballet. I can not call that a ballet class and that's what happens in relation to hip-hop... within the studio realm there is no standard for the art form, and [the teachers] don't know what the foundational elements of the art are. They know nothing about popping, nothing about locking, nothing about boogaloo, breaking, or the hip-hop dance—the social dances—or any of that. They know none of the history which spans over 30–35 years, and so they pretty much cut off any type of edification that a dancer can have.

”

Hip-hop dancer Joseph Coine performing in 2011 in Wallace Theater at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

 

The term "new style" was created by dancers outside the United States. According to Moncell Durden, adjunct professor at Drexel University and director of the film History and Concept of Hip-Hop Dance, the 1992 dance documentary Wreckin' Shop From Brooklyn was very influential to hip-hop dancers in France and Japan. These dancers wanted to move like the New York hip-hop dancers who were profiled in the documentary. They called the social dancing (party dancing) they saw "new style" which was short for "New York Style".

In the context of the commercial dance industry, hip hop (or new style hip-hop for dancers in France and Japan) is choreographed urban party dancing with studio technique added to it. From a technical aspect, it is characterized as hard-hitting involving flexibility and isolations—moving a specific body part independently from others.

"I would say that Toni Basil was sort of our Abe Saperstein in terms of how she was able to organize us into a professional dance troupe. I remember her teaching us how to count music. She was like, okay, we were like, count music? How do you count soul? It was crazy, you know?... all of our cues kind of went something like this, boom, pop, do boom, pada da boom, pada like that. And she was like, how do you guys get in sync like that? I said it's a feeling, you know?"

Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quiñones;
The Lockers

A significant juncture in the development of hip-hop was the addition of eight-counts, a method of counting dance steps to stay in sync with the music. Toni Basil introduced this studio technique into locking in the 1970s. Basil was trained in ballet before being introduced to street dance by Don Campbell, the creator of locking and founding member of The Lockers dance crew. She is responsible for teaching the rest of The Lockers how to dance to counts. Traditionally hip-hop dance, or any form of street dance, is not performed to counts as these styles were created on the street rather than in a studio setting. Therefore, the introduction of counts was a pivotal move into bringing hip-hop dance from the street into the studio. Even with this addition, it would be years before commercial hip-hop developed into its current form.

A second important event in the development of hip-hop was the start of hip-hop dance instruction. Buddha Stretch was a pioneer in this field. He started teaching formal hip-hop dance classes in 1989 at Broadway Dance Center in New York City where he continues to teach today. Around the same time, hip-hop party dancing started to appear in music videos and on television—this was another important point in the development and commercialization of hip-hop. An early example of this is when Janet Jackson performed the Running Man in her 1989 music video for the song "Rhythm Nation" which was choreographed by street dancer Anthony Thomas. The dance was so popular during this time it was also performed by 1990s rappers MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice in their choreographed routines. Michael Jackson also used hip-hop in his 1992 music video "Remember The Time" which was choreographed by a then 21-year-old Fatima Robinson. At the time, Robinson was a street dancer with no formal training and "Remember the Time" was her first music video job. According to MTV.com, "Dances have always been a part of hip-hop culture — from the running man to the Soulja Boy dance..." and this era was the start of commercial hip-hop choreography as it looks today: dance routines are not specific to one genre (strictly popping, strictly locking, or strictly breaking) but rather an amalgamation of urban party dancing with studio technique added to it.

Jazz-funk

Another style the dance industry created in response to hip-hop was jazz-funk. Jazz-funk (also called street-jazz) is a hybrid of hip-hop and jazz dance. This style was shown in its early form on a sketch comedy series called In Living Color. The resident dance troupe, The Fly Girls, opened and closed every show with a hip-hop and jazz performance choreographed by Rosie Perez. R&B singer Beyoncé uses this style. Korean dance crew Prepix also uses this style. They have choreographed for K-pop singers Jay Park and G.NA as well as for K-pop boy bands 2PM and B2ST. Although jazz-funk borrows from hip-hop dance, it is not considered a style of hip-hop because the foundational movements are jazz. In hip-hop—even in lyrical hip-hop—there are no pirouettes or arabesques and dancers do not perform on relevé (on the balls of the feet). However, these methods are used in jazz-funk and in jazz dance in general.

Business developments

Other developments in the dance industry occurred in response to the growing popularity of hip-hop. On the traveling convention circuit there were tap, ballet, and jazz dance conventions, but there were none specifically for hip-hop. The same void existed in dancewear. There was dancewear for tap, ballet, and jazz dancers but none for hip-hop dancers. Monsters of Hip Hop and Nappytabs dancewear were formed to answer to both needs. Nappytabs is the first line of hip-hop dancewear. Because their clothing is made for hip-hop dancers, they do not sell leotards, unitards, tights, or leg warmers. Their line consists of tank tops, shorts, t-shirts, sweat pants, harem pants, and hoodies. Monsters of Hip Hop (MOHH) was founded in 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland by Andy Funk, Becky Funk, and Angie Servant. The convention is dedicated exclusively to hip-hop instruction. Fatima Robinson, Stefan "Mr. Wiggles" Clemente, and Timothy "Popin' Pete" Solomon have taught classes at MOHH in the past. Every year, the convention brings together its top student dancers for a professionally choreographed showcase in Los Angeles called Monsters of Hip Hop: The Show.

MOHH may have been the first hip-hop dance convention, but it is not the only one that exists. Urban Dance Camp (UDC) is a six-week-long German-based dance convention held every year in Lörrach, a small town on the border of France and Switzerland. In a report on the event by a local paper, Bettina Kraft, the manager of UDC, estimated that 85% of the participants were from outside Germany. In 2009 Kraft created Urban Dance Showcase, a parallel event to UDC reserved only for performances by professional choreographers, dance crews, and UDC teachers. Dancers such as Shaun Evaristo, Les Twins, I.aM.mE, b-boy Lilou, and b-boy Hong 10 have performed at the showcase in the past.

Aside from dancewear and conventions, developments in agency representation occurred as well. Although limited, representation for individual dancers had existed since the 1980s at the beginning of the music video era due to the pioneering work of talent agent Julie McDonald. However, the UK-based dance agencies ProDance and Superbad Talent were created to exclusively represent street dancers.

Entertainment

Movies

The entertainment industry has been largely responsible for introducing hip-hop dance to mainstream audiences around the world. The first hip-hop films Wild Style, Beat Street, and Breakin' were made in the 1980s. When Wild Style opened in Japan, Rock Steady Crew performed breaking in Tokyo's Harajuku shopping district to promote the film. Wild Style was the first movie centered around hip-hop culture; however, Flashdance was the first commercially released film to feature breaking. In 1984, Beat Street was released in West Germany and screened at the Cannes Film Festival which helped to introduce breaking, graffiti writing, and turntablism to this part of Europe. Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo brought the funk styles to the cinema. Breaking, locking, popping, and waacking were performed in these films. At this time in the 1980s, the United States was not the only country producing hip-hop films. In 1985, Yuen Woo-ping directed a hip-hop themed romantic comedy in Hong Kong called Mismatched Couples starring Donnie Yen. Another hip-hop film, Electro Rock, was released the same year in the United Kingdom. This film featured a then 14-year-old Hanifa "Bubbles" McQueen Hudson, the UK's first b-girl.

Several hip-hop dance films were produced after the millennium. The Freshest Kids: A History of the B-Boy, Neukölln Unlimited, B-Girl, Bouncing Cats, Planet B-Boy, and Battle of the Year: The Dream Team all showcase breaking. Films such as Honey, Save the Last Dance, You Got Served, the Step Up film series, StreetDance 3D, Hype Nation, Saigon Electric, Berlin Dance Battle 3D, and ABCD: Any Body Can Dance showcase all forms of hip-hop dance, especially new style hip-hop. Rize, The Heart of Krump, and Shake City 101 are documentaries about krumping. All of these movies and documentaries are examples of films where the plot and theme surround hip-hop dance and how it affects the characters' lives. Bouncing Cats is the story of b-boy Abraham "Abramz" Tekya who uses b-boying to empower youth in Uganda. In 2010, the film won "Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking" at Newport Beach Film Festival and "Best Documentary Feature" at Urbanworld Film Festival. Saigon Electric was Vietnam's first hip-hop film. It was written, produced, and directed by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Stephane Gauger. The film is about two female dancers (a ribbon dancer and a hip-hop dancer) and how their respective romances, the threat of their community center being torn down, and the stress of an upcoming dance battle affects their friendship. The film was choreographed by Viet Max and Ricky Cole. In 2012, it won a Golden Kite Prize (the Vietnamese equivalent of The Oscars/BAFTAs) for "Best Film" and "Best Actress".

Television

Before reaching movie audiences, hip-hop dance was already being broadcast on television. Soul Train was a syndicated, music variety show that featured social dancing and performances by African-American soul, funk, and R&B singers. The show was broadcast in South Korea via the US Armed Forces Korea Network. Before officially becoming a crew, The Lockers made several appearances on this show. After becoming a crew, The Electric Boogaloos also appeared on the show. Soul Train premiered in 1970. During its 36 year run, the resident freestyle dancers were referred to as the Soul Train Gang. Auditions were held in 1971 when the show moved from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California. Dancers who wanted to get on Soul Train after this time had to rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from dancers who were already employed by the show. A regular feature during the broadcast was the Soul Train Line. To participate, the dancers formed two lines of equal length facing each other with a large space in between them. Each dancer in line would take their turn dancing down the middle.

Other music variety shows on television at this time were American Bandstand, Solid Gold, and Top of the Pops. Unlike Soul Train which focused on soul and funk, these shows promoted Top 40 music and pop acts. Solid Gold employed a permanent dance troupe called the Solid Gold Dancers who performed choreographed routines to musical performances. Lucinda Dickey, an actress and dancer who played the lead role in the Breakin' films, appeared on the show during the 1982–1983 season as a Solid Gold dancer. In 1983, street dancers Marc "Mr. Freeze" Lemberger from Rock Steady Crew, Timothy "Popin' Pete" Solomon and Dane "Robot Dane" Parker from the Electric Boogaloos, and locking dancers Alpha "Omega" Anderson and Lewis "Deputy" Green also appeared on Solid Gold during a performance to the song "What a Feeling" from the movie Flashdance. In 1982 during a performance in London on Top of the Pops, street dancer Jeffrey Daniel performed popping and the backslide during the song "A Night to Remember". This was the first time popping was shown on British television, thus spreading its popularity in the United Kingdom. A year later, Michael Jackson also performed the backslide during a performance of "Billie Jean" on the Motown 25 TV special. He called it the moonwalk and his performance spread its popularity all over the world to much larger extent than Daniel's performance did. It was Jeffrey Daniel who taught Michael Jackson how to do the backslide/moonwalk.

The JabbaWockeez, winners of the first season of America's Best Dance Crew, performing in 2008 at Vivid Nightclub in San Jose, California.

A few hip-hop dance shows appeared on television in the 1990s such as 1991's The Party Machine with Nia Peeples and 1992's The Grind. Several hip-hop dance shows premiered in the 2000s including (but not limited to) Dance Fever, Dance 360, The Wade Robson Project, MTV Dance Crew, America's Best Dance Crew, Dance on Sunset, and Shake It Up. In 2006, MTV France documented the creation of a dance crew for an original series called MTV Dance Crew. Viewers were able to see the crew from auditions to the selection of the final eight who were subsequently named Original Soul. Original Soul was coached by three professional choreographers who mentored them and helped refine their dancing. Over the course of 32 episodes they routinely participated in professional dance battles including the popping battle at Juste Debout, the Seven 2 Smoke battle at The Notorious IBE, and b-boy battles at Chelles Battle Pro. B-boy Lilou, b-boy crew Phase T, and promoter Bruce Ykanji (the founder of Juste Debout) all made appearances in the show.

The founders of Hip Hop International, Howard and Karen Schwartz, created the reality hip-hop dance competition America's Best Dance Crew (ABDC) in 2008. On the show, different crews competed in dance challenges against each other every week. ABDC contributed to the exposure of several crews such as Jabbawockeez, Quest, Beat Freaks, and Poreotics. These crews now have official websites, work with musical artists, and perform at live events. The JabbaWockeeZ had a show in Las Vegas, Nevada called MÜS.I.C. at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino. MÜS.I.C. was the first hip-hop dance stage show on the Las Vegas Strip. In 2012, the Jabbawockeez performed the show during a five-month residency at the Jupiters Hotel and Casino in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Both Poreotics and Hokuto "Hok" Konishi from Quest were nominated for a 2011 MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography. Poreotics was nominated with singer Bruno Mars for his video "The Lazy Song". Hok was nominated for LMFAO's video "Party Rock Anthem"; the rest of Quest crew appeared in the video as featured dancers.

In contrast to ABDC, individual dancers from all backgrounds compete on the reality dance competition So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and World of Dance (WOD). It has a similar premise to the Idol series of singing competitions with initial auditions leading to the selection of a winner over the course of several episodes. In 2008, poppers Robert "Mr. Fantastic" Muraine and Phillip "Pacman" Chbeeb auditioned during season four of the US SYTYCD series. Neither made it to the final "Top 20", but the judges were so impressed with their dancing that both were invited back to participate in a popping battle against each other on the show's live finale. According to Muraine, this was the first popping battle that was nationally televised. After the battle, hip-hop dancer Joshua Allen was declared the winner of season four of the competition. The same year Mona-Jeanette Berntsen, a hip-hop dancer from Norway, won the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Scandinavia. In 2017, hip hop duo Les Twins won the inaugural season of World of Dance. Hip hop dance crew The Lab won the following year. 

Hip-hop dance has also been popular among viewers of the Got Talent series. French hip-hop dancer Salah won the first season of Incroyable Talent in 2006. French b-boy Junior won the second season in 2007. In 2008, hip-hop dancer George Sampson won Britain's Got Talent, Danish popping and roboting duo Robot Boys won Talent 2008 (da), and hip-hop dance crew Quick won the Norwegian version of the show. After George Sampson, dance crew Diversity won the next season of Britain's Got Talent in 2009. The same year, Brazilian crew D-Efeitos won Qual é o Seu Talento? (What's Your Talent?). In 2010, Justice Crew won Australia's Got Talent. After signing a recording contract with Sony Music Australia, Justice Crew shot a video for their single "Dance with Me" featuring rapper Flo Rida and America's Best Dance Crew alumni Beat Freaks. In 2015, nine years after he won Incroyable Talent, hip-hop dancer Salah won the fourth season of Arabs Got Talent.

Theater

Choreographer and artistic director Rennie Harris in 2011.

Though hip-hop dancing is established on film and on television, it has not gained the same level of exposure in theater. This may be due to the fact that the dance is performed more in film and in television than it is in a theatrical setting. B-boy and popper Stefan "Mr. Wiggles" Clemente and hip-hop historian Jorge "Popmaster Fabel" Pabon were involved in hip-hop theater at its inception. Their dance company, GhettOriginal, produced the first hip-hop stage shows: 1991's off Broadway musical So! What Happens Now? and 1995's Jam on the Groove. Both shows were performed by the Rock Steady Crew, Magnificent Force, and the Rhythm Technicians. Aside from the pioneers in New York City was Rennie Harris' Puremovement hip-hop theater company. Harris founded Puremovement in 1992 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of Puremovement's theater shows Rome & Jewels won two Black Theater Alliance Awards and three Bessie Awards. In 2012, Harris and his company toured Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian territories as part of Dance Motion USA, a program sponsored by the US State Department to showcase American dance to other countries and promote cultural exchange.

German b-boy pioneer Niels "Storm" Robitzky has his performance roots in hip-hop theater. In 1991, Robitzky—who went by the name "Swipe"—left Germany with his crew Battle Squad for New York City to look for b-boy legends they could study under. When he got to New York, he met b-boy Gabriel "Kwikstep" Dionisio who personally mentored him and introduced him to New York techniques. While in New York, he also learned about the funk styles from Clemente. Clemente and Dionisio knew each other since Dionisio was an original member of both GhettOriginal and the Rhythm Technicians. A year later in 1992, Robitzky performed with GhettOriginal at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and at the Lincoln Center in New York City. It was Dionisio who gave Robitzky a new name, "Storm". In 2000, he wrote a book called Von Swipe zu Storm: Breakdance in Deutschland (From Swipe to Storm: Breakdance in Germany).

Dancers in the United Kingdom have had success in hip-hop theater. In 2006, hip-hop dance company Boy Blue Entertainment won a Laurence Olivier Award for their show Pied Piper. In 2008, Into the Hoods became the first hip-hop theater show to perform in London's West End. It eventually went on to become the West End's longest running dance show ever.

Online content

YAK Films is a three-man team that films urban dance around the world. It was founded in Oakland, California by Yoram Savion and Kash Grimes. Their first videos were of the Turf Feinz dance crew performing turfing—a regional hip-hop dance style from Oakland. After generating significant views on YouTube, they started YAK (Yoram And Kash) Films and added music producer Ben "B'zwax" Tarquin to the team. From shooting videos only in the United States, they were able to easily transition to covering dance events in Europe due to Savion's dual French citizenship. In 2009, they filmed Battle of the Year's first one-on-one b-boy competition, and in 2010 they filmed dance battles at Juste Debout, a French street dance competition. Some of their more popular videos have been featured in Oakland Local and the Huffington Post.

Juba Films was founded in Germany by Julien Bam and Gong Bao. Rather than film freestyle content, Juba ("Ju"lien and "Ba"o) produces short films with a storyline. For their short b-boy film "More Than Bread", they won first place at the 7th International Online Dance Festival in 2011. In 2012, the Daily Mail wrote an article about Juba's short film "With a Piece of Chalk" after the video went viral and started trending on Mashable. Both Juba Films and YAK Films appeared at The Notorious IBE's New Dance Media Conference discussing the relationship between street dance and visual arts. Although Juba Films has won an award and YAK Films has booked high-profile events, they are not the only film production teams distributing hip-hop dance videos on the Internet. House of Crews, Strife TV, Pacific Rim Video Press, ProDance TV, Battle Fest Extreme, Urban Dance Show, Ocke Films, World of Dance Network, and Canal Street TV also produce hundreds of high-quality hip-hop dance content.

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The LXD) was a good-versus-evil themed web series about a group of dancers who discover they have super powers through their dance moves. Each character specializes in one dance style. Consequently, a wide range of styles are displayed including krumping, tutting, breaking, locking, boogaloo, and popping. The majority of the dancing shown in the series is hip-hop; however, other styles were also performed including jazz, tap, and ballet. AdvertisingAge.com gave the series a favorable review stating "...each episode of 'LXD' packs a wealth of narrative sophistication into its eight or nine minutes. Combine this with the theater-worthy production values and a cast that exerts itself to an ungodly extent, and the end result is – pun time! – extraordinary." The LXD premiered July 7, 2010 on Hulu. In 2012, Jon Chu, the writer, director, and producer of The LXD, launched a dance channel on YouTube called DS2DIO (pronounced D-Studio). Through this channel, Chu also made The LXD available on YouTube. Before then, it could only be viewed on Hulu. September 2019 Independent Artist E-Styles Dropped a Music Video The Poetic Flow via Youtube featuring one of most popular YouTube dancers today Non Stop Marquese Scott and new up in coming dancer Alian 2 Wavy. The video focus on Hip Hop Dance and Culture. 

International competitions

The 2010 winners of the b-boy crew battle at Freestyle Session Taiwan.

• UK B-Boy Championships was founded by DJ Hooch in 1996 in London. There are four world championship titles: breaking crew champions, solo b-boy champion, solo popping champion, and solo hip-hop champion. The world finals also include the "Fresh Awards" (best dressed) which are hosted and judged every year by Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón—the president of Rock Steady Crew. In 2011, DJ Hooch wrote a book about the competition called B-Boy Championships: From Bronx to Brixton.
• Freestyle Session was founded in 1997 in California by graffiti writer and DJ Chris "Cros1" Wright. It is the largest breaking competition in the United States. The main competitive event is for b-boy crews, but there are also popping and locking competitions for solo competitors. Although the US is the flagship location for Freestyle Session, it is not the only country where it is held. Promoters outside the US pay Cros1 to use Freestyle Session's name and fly him to their location to judge the competition. Using this method, Freestyle Session has been held in 18 other countries including Poland, Russia, Switzerland, and Venezuela.
• Hip Hop International (HHI) was founded in 2002 in the United States by Howard and Karen Schwartz. There are two categories of competitions: World Battles and World Hip Hop Dance Championship. Within the World Battles category, there are four titles including three-on-three breaking champions, one-on-one popping champion, one-on-one locking champion, and one-on-one all styles (freestyle) champion. The World Hip Hop Dance Championship is for hip-hop crews. There are four divisions: junior (ages 8–12), varsity (13–17), adult (18+), and mega crew (all ages). Each crew must have at least five but not more than nine people (mega crew must have 15–40) and must perform a routine that showcases three styles of hip-hop dance. For the 2009 competition, there were 120 crews representing 30 countries. HHI also created the USA Hip Hop Dance Championship and the television show America's Best Dance Crew.
• Juste Debout was founded in 2002 by Bruce Ykanji in Paris. Competition categories include popping, hip-hop, locking, house, toprock, and experimental. Breaking is not included to put more focus on dance styles performed while standing up, hence the name (French for Just Standing). There are not any team trophies at Juste Debout. The experimental and toprock categories are only for solo dancers; popping, new style, locking, and house are for duos. In 2008, Ingrid "Shéyen" Gamboa, the editor-in-chief of Juste Debout magazine, wrote a book called Hip-hop: L'histoire de la danse (Hip Hop: A history of the dance).
• United Dance Organisation (UDO) was founded in 2002 in the United Kingdom. UDO operates the British Street Dance Championships, the European Street Dance Championships, the North American Championships, and the World Street Dance Championships. The European championships are held in Germany rather than in the UK.
• Street Dance Kemp Europe (SDK Europe) is a competition and dance convention founded in 2004 in Jedovnice, Czech Republic. There is a hip-hop crew battle and solo battles for house, krumping, locking, hip-hop male, and hip-hop female dancers. SDK Europe begins every year in the summer and lasts seven days. Daytime hours are reserved primarily for dance workshops and classes taught by an international pool of instructors; competitive events are held at night. All of the classes, workshops, and competitive events are held outside.
• EuroBattle was founded in 2005 in Portugal by Max from Momentum crew. There are five competitive events for solo dancers including b-boying, b-girling, hip-hop, locking, and popping.^[182] The international final is held in Porto but the winner of the Spanish qualifying tournament also gets to compete at the UK B-Boy Championships in London.
• World Supremacy Battlegrounds is a hip-hop dance competition based in Australia. The heritage of World Supremacy Battlegrounds goes back to 2002 when it began as GROOVE, a local hip-hop competition held in Sydney. Over the three years that followed, the competition was renamed Battlegrounds and went national to include dance crews from all over Australia. It became international in 2006 when crews from the Philippines, Japan, and New Zealand entered the competition. There are four dance crew categories: open (all ages), junior (12 and under), varsity (12–18), and monster (all ages, 20–40 members). For the 2011 competition, teams from Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Guam, New Zealand, Samoa, and South Africa came to compete.
• World of Dance Tour (WOD) was founded in 2008 by Myron Marten and David Gonzales in Pomona, California. It differs from other competitions because there is no final championship. WOD travels to different cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe and holds a competition in each location; therefore, WOD distinguishes itself as a tour. Each tour stop is a stand-alone competition; they are all related to each other in name only. In 2013, WOD traveled to New York City, Vallejo, Seattle, Vancouver, Berlin, Dallas, Toronto, San Diego, Montreal, Eindhoven, Boston, Orlando, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Union City, and Antwerp. WOD reached a larger audience in 2017 when NBC started airing a television show based off the competition.
• World Dance Colosseum is a two-on-two dance competition founded in Japan. There are five two-on-two world championship titles: b-boying, locking, popping, hip-hop, and house. Japanese dancers qualify for the international final through preliminary tournaments held in the country but foreign dancers do not qualify through tournaments because 30 of the top-ranked foreign dancers are automatically invited to participate in the final. At the final, the winning duos from the Japanese tournaments compete against the top-ranked foreign duos to determine who is the best.
• Vibe Dance Competition is a choreography competition that was started by Joseph Lising in 1995 as a Greek Talent Show at UC Irvine. It later evolved into one of the biggest competitions for choreography hip hop teams in the world, hosting teams from all over the US, Canada, the Philippines, and Japan.

Education

In 2004, Safi Thomas founded the Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory (HHDC) in New York City. Thomas' goal was to provide a comprehensive education to hip-hop dancers that was comparable to what ballet, modern, and jazz dancers experience at their respective institutions. HHDC provides a formal curriculum with dance classes (breaking, freestyle, locking, etc.) and academic classes (dance theory, physiology, kinesiology, etc.) to people who want to pursue hip-hop dance as a career. It is the only educational institution in the United States that is exclusively dedicated to hip-hop dance instruction. HHDC does not grant degrees. It is a non-profit organization and repertory company that grants certifications to dancers that complete the three-year program.

Three years later in 2007, the University of East London's Center for Performing Arts Development (CPAD) started intake for the only bachelor's degree program in the world specializing in hip-hop, urban, and global dance forms. The CPAD's program also lasts three years, but it is not exclusive to hip-hop. Students also study African dance, kathak, Bollywood, and capoeira.