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B-SERIES: B-Long + Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference Series


B-Series 10th Anniversary FestivaL

B-Long: Honoring and Examining Lineage, Legacy and Belonging in Hip Hop & Street Dance Culture

Thursday - Sunday, February 29, March 1, 2, and 3

Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 South Michigan Avenue

FREE

Since 2013, the Dance Center’s B-Series has celebrated artists specializing in underground street dance forms such as Breaking, Popping, and House. For the 10th anniversary, co-curators Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood, Kelsa “K-Soul” Rieger-Haywood, and Amina Norman-Hawkins are partnering with Red Bull and Dr. Imani Kai Johnson’s Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference Series for a four-day festival of workshops, cyphers, panels, screenings, battles, and jams uniting academic scholars, commercial practitioners, and community innovators.

Headlining judges will be globally celebrated House, Hip Hop, and Waacking icon LaTasha Barnes, Popper Jonathan “BIONIC” Bayani (Rock Force Crew / Machine Gone Funk), freestyler Mikey Disko (MOP TOP / Knuckle Neck Tribe / Soul Sector), Chicago’s own legendary Lady Sol, and pioneering Footworker Q.V.I.P.

Exhibits by the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, the Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum, and Saad Mukhtar’s curated Remind Rewind in Time from the Breaking Project collection.

Saturday, March 2nd’s winning B-LONG Open Styles Battle Crew will receive $2,500 ($500 per dancer), second place will receive $500 ($100 per dancer). B-LONG’s opening set cypher winners will be selected for automatic entry into the Top 16 at the Red Bull Dance Your Style Chicago Auditions on Sunday March 3 where the finalists will move on to the Red Bull Dance Your Style Kansas City Qualifier.

The Chicago Black Social Culture Map is a public humanities project documenting Black social culture from the Great Migration through the early 21st century with a focus on the emergence of house culture in the 1980s. Through the map experience which includes panels, archiving stations, and on site mapping, participants learn how to preserve their own archives and learn about the importance of Chicago’s rich Black social culture history. At its core, CBSCM values Black cultural histories and cultural production as structures of knowledge and meaning making that should be more visible to all. 

Founded in 2021 by Darrell “Artistic” Roberts, Carrico “Kingdom Rock” Sanders and Brian Gorman, Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum is an organic treasure trove of flyers, photos, clothing, tapes and other artifacts that adorn the inside of a Bronzville home on Chicago’s Southside.  This pop-up exhibit features a sampling of artifacts and information about Chicago Hip Hop history and the Museum itself. 

Organized by Breaking Project, Remind Rewind in Time curated by Saad Mukhtar, features selected media from the Breaking Project collection. The exhibit features legacy media that prompts visitors to reflect on the evolution of technology and communication, especially in contrast to today’s digital media landscape. It underscores the transformative shift from analog to digital, highlighting how new media technologies have revolutionized sharing and consuming cultural content. This juxtaposition invites a deeper contemplation of the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural transmission in the digital age.

AND Don’t miss the Chicago premiere of LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum the following weekend!

Support

The presentation of the B-Series 10th Anniversary is made possible in part by support from Alphawood Foundation, Chicago Arts Recovery Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Honey Pot Performance's The Chicago Black Social Culture Map, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and Red Bull.

The presentation of 7NMS|PROPHET Wkshp: PILLARS was made possible in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

This project is partially supported by a grant from the Office of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Columbia College Chicago.

Earlier Event: January 25
Lunch with Sonia
Later Event: March 7
LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum