Educate before you Recreate

Go Backtorsdag 5 maj 2022

Editorial: How did locking spread

How did locking spread?

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Once the style of dance became popular within its originating community and was exposed on soul train it grew and developed from those original dancers into a performance first locally within the innercity schools and then as the popularity of the local performance developed it attracted Hollywood as a professional act.

It was at that point when it exposed opportunity as it appeared to be a dance style with no restriction or criteria that could not be copied through observation so groups formed everywhere from coast to coast and individual dancers flocked to LA and some into the innercity to observe first hand the magic of the dance. Many of these dancers sought the exposure they saw on soul train through shows like American Bandstand with their imitating style of Campbellocking and it’s fashions. Shows sprung up nation wide flooded with dancers of the soul train styles creating local legend all over the country.

But there was one direct connection as the dance reached the mid 1970s members of the original lockers relocated to Orange County. The residence of one of its recent members and that once segregated community now had opened its doors to the popular group. Now when new dancers migrated from other cities and states to pursue the Streetdance scene , soul train locking scene they no longer sought the inner-city of Los Angeles ,Watts sort Compton. They now migrated to party in what they saw was the place of opportunity. A place where the original members of the Lockers partied. The place where producers felt safe . And where the face of the Art form now portrayed an interracial flavor.people from that suburban scene pictured dancers who stuck to the inner-city portrayal of the style as too ghetto or to hard and many from the inner-city scene picture the dancers who came from their neighborhoods but were now partying in Orange County as sell outs and the dancers they were now teaching as not authentic.


Because many of the dancers from that Orange County scene never interacted in the inner-city scene is the reason why so many from that scene see it as the original scene and the original era. And will deny the cultural connection as the foundation to it as a cultural dance art form