Collection: Under A Groove: House Dance Aesthetics with Kelsa "K-Soul" Robinson

On Demand 

Participants will practice the techniques and underlying grooves associated with House dance, which grew out of the Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ House music subculture in Chicago and New York in the early 1980s, and is now practiced widely across the globe.  We will explore hallmarks of House movement including jacking, skating, footwork patterns, polyrhythm, the counter-pull of contrasting energies and directions in the body, while leaning into the spiritual and philosophical values held within house spaces including freedom, inclusion, community, upliftment and love.  

Kelsa “K-Soul” Robinson is a dance artist, culturally responsive educator and community organizer, a member of the internationally known street-dance crew since, Venus Fly, since 2005, and Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of BraveSoul Movement, founded in 2016. Kelsa’s movement training has been through a diverse range of spaces and forms, including House, Hip-Hop, capoeira, samba, salsa, Dunham technique and gymnastics.  A prominent focus of Robinson’s work is building reciprocal collaboration and meaningful exchange between Hip-Hop and the academy.  Kelsa currently serves as Assistant Professor of Instruction at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, a Fellow of Columbia's Antiracist Transformation Team, Coordinator of Columbia’s new Hip-Hop Studies Minor, and Curator of The B-SERIES, a biannual festival and co-curricular program celebrating Hip-Hop & street dance culture at the College since 2013.  Kelsa holds a bachelor degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master of urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.