Arts & Entertainment

A Global Contest for Hip-Hop Ladies

By Andrew Najjar

Staff writer

Sunlight poured through the window and onto the mural, an abstract splash of colors, in the main entry and hallway of the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, New York.

A group of dancers occupied the hallway. Some were sitting on the floor, eating, stretching and socializing. Some had headphones in their ears as they twirled, moonwalked and moved in various ways that hip-hop dancers do.

They wore baggy pants and oversized T-shirts, sneakers and flats and shoes, with short heels, for jazz and ballroom dancers.

They had arrived at the Knockdown Center for the 2018 Ladies Battle, a dance-off hosted by Ladies of Hip-Hop, an international dance project. It aims to help female hip-hop dancers refine their dance skills, raise their visibility as dance artists and claim their place in a hip-hop culture whose money-makers often are men.

“The bigger message is it let’s us empower each other through supporting each other. It’s a message that defines the culture,” said Michele Byrd-McPhee, who founded the group in Philadelphia in 2004 and is its executive director.

“It helps,” she added, “that most of our dancers teach all over. They help up on international scale.”

Her New York dance studio is in Manhattan’s East Village. Since March 2011, the project has trained dancers and hosted dance contests in Austria, Amsterdam and Canada, but attracts dancers from even more regions than that.

Dancer Perla Miscioscia flew to New York from her home in Geneva, Switzerland to battle at the Knockdown Center. She said being part of a global dance project is a way of breaking down borders and building relationships across races and cultures.

“To me, it’s just expression, the best expression ever,” Misciocscia said. “You don’t need to talk, you don’t need to write. You just need to move your body.”

Plus, she said, with Ladies of Hip-Hop, “you have this community … [Even] if you live in Europe, it’s all the same.”

Dancers with different levels of skill can enroll in classes and participate in events.

Ladies of Hip-Hop’s production designer, Cebo Carr, has enrolled his four daughters in the dance program. “I want my daughters to be around women of a certain … caliber,” he said. “I want them to experience the kind of professionalism, community and all-around togetherness that is the Ladies of Hip-Hop.”

Nadiah Nfuzion, who teachers hip-hop in New York and her native country, Australia, said she hopes that, by dancing her students learn that they are “individuals and beautiful in their own way” and “to accept your flaws as well as you’re beauty, and enjoy it.”

“To me,” said Kyle Clark, one of Byrd-McPhee’s friends and supporters, “ … dance is life”