There was a big stir in the dance world recently when the FootWorKingz made it to America's Best Dance Crew and Chicagoans thought that footworking had made it. Although it was true that footworking as a movement had made it to a national stage, it was far from world domination. Now, there are some hard truths that will be stated in this post that the majority of you will not take lightly. Infact, I believe many of you will lash out in defense of the culture. It's a sad fact of the situation and none of your outbursts will solve the problem at hand. The hard truth of it is that footworking alone will not allow you to dominate on a world stage. I'll say it again so that the people int he back can hear it: FOOTWORKING ALONE will not allow you to DOMINATE on a WORLD STAGE! If it wasn't evident by the quick elimination of the FootWorKingz on ABDC it should be evident by the history of footwork and what has been lost.
Originally, there were dance groups in Chicago back in the 90's that started footworking. It is said that the first footwork track was made by RP Bu but that can be disputed by earlier examples by DJ Clent (his Halsted Street track being a prime example from the 1996 HSE V2 mix by DJ Greedy and DJ Flint). Before that footworkers would dance to any track that had a staccato beat. Of the groups that featured footworking in their routines, you would have a myriad of styles during the routines and they would end the routines with their strongest dancers showcasing their footwork skills. It wasn't just footwork, footwork, footwork, footwork, rest and then more footwork. There were the poppers, the animators, the erkers and jerkers and all of it went together as a dance routine. Somehow it all got reduced to just showing off the footwork.
With the untimely death of DJ Rashad, the spotlight has been put on the footwork world and quite a few producers and dancers are coming to the forefront. It remains to be seen what they will do with this attention.
