Above and Beyond the Battle: Virtuosity and Collectivity within Televised Street Dance Crew Competitions

This chapter explores competitive street dance crew choreography in relation to interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks regarding virtuosity and excess. Through a close analysis of five performances featured on the British television talent shows of Britain’s Got Talent and Got to Dance, this chapter examines the concept of virtuosity as transcendence in relation to the continued emphasis on technology and the street dance body. Through the choreographic application of animation techniques, synchronicity, the construction of “meta-bodies,” and the narrative of ordinary versus extraordinary, this chapter reveals that crews create the illusion of transgression through their affinity with technology, while also competing with their cinematic counterparts. Through this analysis, this chapter further reveals the negotiation between the individualistic nature of the virtuoso and the crew collective within the neoliberal capitalist framework of the competition.

This material was originally published in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition edited by Dodds, S., 2018, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190639082.013.28. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://global.oup.com/academic/rights.