Margaret Smith

            Marlin Harrington, a dance minor at Columbia College Chicago, takes an extra class over at the Lou Conte Dance Studio on West Jackson Boulevard every Thursday night.  When he gets to the studio, however, he doesn’t pull out his jazz, tap or ballet shoes from his bag.  Instead, Harrington puts on his coolest pair of sneakers and starts to stretch on the floor.

            Hip-hop isn’t just for the clubs anymore.  Dance studios around the country have been adding hip-hop classes to their repertoire, and in Chicago, they are becoming more and more common.  Teachers draw inspiration from their own personal background to create dance combinations that are both exciting and high energy for experienced dancers and non-classically trained students alike.

            “It’s on the upswing,” said Christopher McCray, founder and artistic director of Corpo Dance Studio on Ravenswood Avenue.

            The Corpo Dance Studio has offered hip-hop since it opened in September 2007, and, according to McCray, people continually ask about the classes.

            “It’s definitely one of our higher demand classes,” he said.

             McCray thinks the classes are so popular because people look at it as something they can actually do, both inside and outside of the studio.  

            “Out of the dance aesthetics around, it’s more accessible to the masses,” he said.  “People view it as ‘Oh, I can go in sweats and a t-shirt and learn something I can use at the club.’”

             Shannon Westveer, director at All About Dance on Clark Street, agrees.

            “People like it because they want to be able to go out and dance and look like they know what they’re doing,” she said.

            All About Dance offers hip-hop classes for both kids and adults. According to Westveer, right now it’s the most popular class for kids, and the adult fan base is growing.

            “It’s all the hype out [in the dance world],” she said.

            Joel Hall Dancers and Center on Berwyn Avenue has been offering hip-hop for 10 years now.  According to Manager Vanessa Truzillion, the classes have even grown in the last year or so.

            Truzillion thinks a lot of hip-hop dance fans are inspired what they see in music videos and TV channels like MTV.

            “There’s this whole little underground culture that has stepped in the mainstream and cultural dance forms,” she said.

            Joel Hall Dancers and Centers, Corpo Dance Studio and All About Dance all have more than one hip-hop instructor teaching classes, and each teacher has a different style.  Teachers use their own expertise to conduct classes and create combinations, which provides a wide variety of lessons and moves for students.

            The Corpo Dance Studio, for example, has two hip-hop teachers, Tenile Pritchard and Chris Courtney. Courtney focuses on old school hip-hop, mixing in popping and locking with new dance forms.  Pritchard, originally from New York, adds an East Coast flavor to her dances that is fun, sassy, and largely funk-based.  Girls flock to her class on Wednesday nights, shaking their hips and stepping with a strong, fierce attitude that is both fun and feminine.      

            Harrington takes the Thursday night beginner class at the Lou Conte Dance Studio with Trae Turner.  Turner is a dancer and choreographer for The Collective Hip-Hop Dance Crew and head of the Chicago branch for the Hip-Hop ConnXion, a non-profit hip-hop dance team designed to educate young, intermediate dancers and create positive role models.

            “His style is so unique,” Harrington said.  “I love it.”

            Originally from Detroit, Harrington has been taking hip-hop classes since he was 6.  He started attending classes at Lou Conte when he moved to Chicago last fall for school.  According to him, it’s always packed in the studio.

            “There’s new people every time,” he said.

 

W.C. 617

 

Source List

 

Marlin Harrington, Student at Columbia College Chicago

Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 8:00 p.m.

(313)623-5569

 

Christopher McCray, Artistic Director at Corpo Dance Studio

Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 4:50 p.m.

(773)472-1921

 

Shannon Westveer, Director at All About Dance

Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 5:30 p.m.

(773)572-8701

           

Vanessa Truzillion, Manager at Joel Hall Dancers and Center

Interviewed over the phone on 4/19/08 at 4:50 p.m.

(773)293-0900

            For five journalism students, their first time personally working with a Chicago police officer certainly wasn’t a good one.

            Five Columbia College Chicago journalism majors who tried to record a Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy beat meeting Wednesday ran into trouble after police officers refused to let them tape record, and ordered them to turn their devices off.

The students were covering a CAPS meeting at beat 1834 for one of their classes, said Thomas Pardee, one of the students present.  According to the Columbia sophomore, him and his classmates arrived early to the meeting.  Only two members of the public were there, and four or five police officers were sitting behind a table at the front of the room.  The students sat down in the back, and about three or four of them pulled out their tape recorders and recorded the entire meeting.  Nothing happened during the meeting; it was afterwards, when they broke up to conduct individual interviews, that the trouble began.

            Pardee said he was recording an interview when one of the officers, Sergeant Banaszkiewicz, came up to him and told him he wasn’t allowed to record at a CAPS meeting.

            “He said that I should know for the future that I wasn’t allowed to tape record those meetings, and if I did it again we would be kicked out,” Pardee said.  “He was really rude, and that’s putting it mildly.”

             Srgt. Banaszkiwicz then told all of the students to turn off their tape recorders, and ordered them to spread the word to their classes.

            “I was just very angered at the fact that this officer thought it was his job to educate us and that he did it so viciously,” Pardee said. “What I’ve found is that a lot of them think they know the rules.  They think they know your job better than you do.” 

            According to Monique Bond, Director of News Affairs for the Chicago Police Department, the media is not encouraged to tape record meetings for the benefit of the public.  Citizens may feel uncomfortable talking about crime if members of the media are taking down their every word, and in CAPS meetings, citizens should be able to talk as freely as possible.

            “We don’t want them to feel like they’re being monitored, watched, or taped,” Bond said.  “It makes them hesitant to come forward with information.  This is the one time where we have an opportunity to hear community concerns.”

            However, police protocol does dictate that citizens can vote to decide if they want their meetings to be recorded by the media or not.  Sometimes citizens may want to share their information with reporters, Bond said.

            “When there are large meetings, usually they want the media there, but we just have to give the option to the community first,” Bond said.  “We have the right to reserve the privacy of the citizens.”

            Pardee has never heard any of these rules, though.

Either has Heather Kimmons, assistant public access counselor for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

According to Kimmons, journalists should be allowed to record during CAPS meetings.

Under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, section 2.05, any person can record an open meeting using tape, film, or any other meetings.  Authorities can set rules to ensure that meetings aren’t interfered with, but they cannot ban recording devices all together. 

            “[All rules and rights] would turn upon whether this was a meeting of the public body,” Kimmons said.  “In all likelihood, this would qualify as an open meeting, in which case any person is allowed to record.”

            The rules still seem to be a bit unclear between police officers and the media.  For Thomas Pardee, however, it’s obvious what he got out of this experience.

            “Police are representatives for the Police Department, and this officer was a terrible representative,” he said.  “Chicago police officers don’t have the best reputation as it is, and it seems to me that it should be part of their job to prove that wrong.  That’s the opposite of what he did that day.”

 

 

WC: 673

 

Source List

 

CAPS Meeting – Beat 1834

In-person on 2/27/08

 

Thomas Pardee, Journalism Student at Columbia College Chicago

(209) 681-4368

Interviewed over the phone on 3/11/08

 

Heather Kimmons, Assistant Public Access Counselor for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan

(217) 557-0548

Interviewed over the phone by Margaret on 3/11/08

 

Monique Bond, Director of News Affairs for the Chicago Police Department

(312) 745-6110

Monique.bond@chicagopolice.org

Interviewed over the phone by Thomas on 3/11/08