![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/soul_street_dance.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSoul Street Dance combines hip-hop, storytelling and music, creating a dazzling, high energy show in the process. The two founders of the Houston-based company, Rock Williams and director Javier Garcia both have a long history as dancers. When the company in which they both performed ended its run, the two men knew they wanted to continue. They soon formed Soul Street Dance. The company seeks to combine soul (\u201cyou’ve gotta have soul with whatever you do in life, says Garcia) and street dancing.<\/p>\n
Street dancing encompasses a wide array of styles that Garcia colorfully describes as \u201ceverything mixed in a pot, like gumbo. You’ve got b-boying, breaking, pop-locking … whatever you want to call it.\u201d Soul Street Dance is a showcase that educates and inspires while entertaining audiences. He says that the Soul Street Dance presentations explore \u201cthe difference between somebody just talking in front of you and actually doing it. When we can showcase dance using different skill sets \u2013 and people see us really enjoying and loving what we’re doing \u2013 the people can feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Garcia and Williams are inspired to make Soul Street Dance something truly special. \u201cWe grew up in hardship, in rough neighborhoods,\u201d says Garcia. \u201cBut we were able to overcome that with our talents. And we want to tell people that they can do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though they rose from their circumstances, the members of Soul Street Dance recently encountered hardship of a different kind. Days before speaking with Bold Life<\/i>, Garcia and his colleagues faced Hurricane Harvey, the United States’ first major storm of the particularly severe 2017 hurricane season. Garcia saw that the disaster brought out the best in people. \u201cEverybody has been reaching out from all over,\u201d he says. \u201chelping and shipping supplies: people we know, people we don\u2019t know. It\u2019s been an amazing thing to see what\u2019s going on with America right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garcia and his colleagues are focused on the positive. And Soul Street Dance has taken its inspiring message around the world; in recent years the company has performed all across the United States as well as in Haiti, the United Kingdom, Moldova, Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Germany, Canada and Mexico. The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n
And while Garcia enjoys all of the shows, he treasures a special memory. \u201cThe coolest thing was in 2014 or 2015 when we went to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia,\u201d he says. Traveling as part of the U.S. State Department’s cultural ambassadors program, Soul Street Dance visited countries with a long and deep-seated antipathy toward one another. \u201cWe spent a week each in Azerbaijan and Armenia,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe did workshops and shows, and we collaborated with the dancers there. And we also held a hip hop competition in each one, picking the ten best dancers in each country.\u201d<\/p>\n
A month later they returned to the region, this time convening in neutral territory, on an island resort in Georgia. \u201cWe brought all the dancers, and did a big show at the end,\u201d says Garcia, beaming with pride. \u201cThe diplomats all came out too; everybody was cool. It was beautiful, with dancers everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience brought forth a kind of peace through dance. \u201cEverybody got the vibe and energy,\u201d Garcia says. \u201cWe dancers do it for the love of it. Politics and all that other stuff, none of it matters. We brought everybody together through hip hop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another popular program developed by Soul Street Dance is called \u201cThe Art of Hip Hop.\u201d That show spotlights the talents of Rock Williams. \u201cHe’s not only a pop-and-locker,\u201d Garcia says. \u201cHe’s a rapper, too.\u201d that program was originally designed for use abroad under the aegis of the State Department, but proved so popular that it’s now performed at shows here in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Soul Street Dance offers a number of programs, each with a specific theme and focus. Soul Street Dance\u2019s \u201cBreaking Backwards\u201d show features both Garcia and Williams plus other company members who alternate between dancing and deejaying.<\/p>\n
\u201cBreaking Backwards\u201d was the first program that Garcia and Rock developed when they started Soul Street Dance, and it remains among the group’s most popular offerings. The show is a music and dance travelogue through a large segment of the last century. \u201cWe do pieces from the 1920s all the way through to the ’80s,\u201d Garcia says. \u201cWe show the different genres, whatever was super-hyped in that era, and we put our own style to all of it, and let it all flow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soul Street Dance combines hip-hop, storytelling and music, creating a dazzling, high energy show in the process. The two founders of the Houston-based company, Rock Williams and director Javier Garcia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,41],"tags":[3721],"class_list":["post-16076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hip-hop","category-interview","tag-soul-street-dance","cat-36-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16078,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16076\/revisions\/16078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}