Rock Dance InternationalAbout Rock Dance International
Rock Dance International is a non-profit association in formation, devoted to one dance: Up Rock, also called Rock Dance.
What we do
- Document the history of the dance and keep the testimony of the people who made it.
- Teach it at every level and to every age, including dancers who come from other styles.
- Connect rockers, crews, DJs and organizers across countries.
- Help teachers, judges and organizers make a decent living from it.
- Use the dance to bring neighborhoods and generations together.
The motto for passing the dance on:
Don’t hide it, divide it.
How we check what we publish
Every fact on this site comes from a source anyone can check. Most are the rockers themselves, in interviews and oral histories; the rest are archived crew websites, books and press. To keep the pages clean, the sources are listed apart, on the sources page, each one linked to the original. Only a literal quote carries its link in the text, with the speaker’s name.
More detail
- Our study archive. We keep a private copy of the interviews for study, so nothing gets lost. We never publish those copies: the site sends you to the originals.
- Quotes we print. A spoken quote goes on the site only when it reads the same in two independent transcriptions. When it does not, we tell what the person said in our own words and link the minute.
- When accounts differ. Where Up Rock started, who named it, when the jerk came in: the people who were there remember it differently. The pages say so when they differ, and the sources page lets anyone check each account.
Work with us
Crews, DJs, organizers, researchers and institutions can write to rockdanceinternational@gmail.com. If you have photos, flyers, videos or memories of Up Rock that should be kept, we would like to hear from you. Institutions and researchers will find the whole archive behind this site on the sources page.