Welcome to the Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archive (RHASDA), a project of Rennie Harris Puremovement – the longest running Street Dance theater company in American history.
About RHASDA
The American Street Dance Archive (RHASDA) is a leading collaborative digital archive committed to preserving, documenting, and sharing the rich histories of Hip-Hop and Street dance. Created by and for a global community of practitioners—including legends, pioneers, scholars, educators, cultural leaders, and emerging artists—RHASDA serves as a living resource that honors the people, places, movements, and creative practices that have shaped these traditions over time. Through community-centered archival work, storytelling, research, and cultural documentation, RHASDA traces the roots, evolution, and ongoing influence of Street dance forms while ensuring that the voices and experiences of those who built and continue to sustain the culture remain at the center. Our mission is to increase the visibility and accessibility of these histories, strengthen academic and public records through authentic partnerships, and celebrate the lasting legacy, innovation, and global impact of Hip-Hop and Street dance culture.
Summer Events
The four elements of Hip-hop are Deejay, Emcee, Graffiti, and Dance. The fifth element – Knowledge – grounds the other four, as an intrinsic value to the dissemination and preservation of the culture. While innovation at home and abroad is vital, it can also result in appropriation, misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Visit the 5E Knowledge / Rennie Harris Library for first person, oral and embodied narratives which are VITAL to public understanding of the enduring American art forms of Hip-hop and Street Dance.
MC / DJ / GRAFFITI / BREAKIN
The Mother of rap sits down w/ Jazzie Belle to discuss the inception of hip hop and how she became the 1st female mc to rock the mic w/ the funky four + 1. She also tells us about their iconic performance on SNL and what it was like being
Filmed at Street Science in 2009, Kool Herc discusses his thoughts on the current state of b-boying and hip-hop, thoroughly intimidates us and drops some eye-opening surprises.
I had the honor of speaking with a legend of our culture: Darryl CORNBREAD McCray. This exclusive interview reveals his early graffiti in 1965 in Philadelphia and highlights the significant moments of his journey that led him to paint his name on the Jackson 5's jet, dozens of police cars,
Hear from one of the leading ladies of breaking. Rokafella has a serious story to tell.
WE'RE ON THE GRAM
Hello everyone, I`m an associate professor of critical dance studies at Columbia College Chicago, a member of the core faculty for Rennie Harris University, and I am honored to serve as a resident scholar, editor, researcher, and consultant with the Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archive. As a scholar, choreographer, and educator, my work explores the historical continuums of Black social dance and the ways those traditions evolve, persist, and find expression through American street dance and Hip-Hop culture. Much of my scholarship asks what happens when Black social dance traditions are continually treated as peripheral rather than foundational to our understanding of dance history.
Rather than viewing these traditions as informal, vernacular, or outside the canon, I examine them as culturally codified practices with their own techniques, genealogies, systems of knowledge, and embodied histories. That`s what drew me to Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archive. For me, this archive is about more than preserving dance.
It`s about preserving the historical continuums through which African diasporic movement traditions live on in Black social dance and its many expressions, including American street dance and Hip-Hop culture. It is an opportunity to document these traditions on their own terms through the voices, lived experiences, and knowledge systems of the continuum that created them. And my work is ultimately about connecting the past with the present, making visible the continuums through which Black social dance has always evolved, persisted, and generated new knowledge across generations.
I`m excited to contribute to Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archive`s mission and to help ensure these histories continue to inform artists, educators, researchers, and future generations. I hope my contribution to this archive inspires your own. Together, let us continue making visible the living continuum of Black social dance, one that Hip-Hop reminds us can`t stop, won`t stop.
– Dr Ayo Walker ayowalker.com
আমার ভাতিজি সেজেগুজে ঢং করছে 🥰🥰🥰#viralvideos #followers #reelvideo #rhasda #reelsvideo
Here’s a caption for your **”कलाकार To कलाकार”** reel:
🎤 **Question for Dancers** 🕺🔥
How would YOU answer this? 👀
In **Episode 3** of **कलाकार To कलाकार**, Deepo sits down with **Groovy** for a fun dance conversation filled with real opinions, laughs, and quick questions.
💬 Drop your answer in the comments and tag your dance partner!
🎙️ **Hosted by Deepo**
Follow for more episodes featuring dancers from across the community.
#LockingDance #DonCampbell #FunkStyles #StreetDanceHistory #danceeducation DanceEducation DanceCulture Locking DanceCommunity LearnDance GrooveOUniverse
Dr Ayo Walker – SERC, Scholar Editor Researcher Consultant for RHASDA. 🔗ayowalker.com
Thank you Dr Ayo 🙌🏾
@americanstreetdancearchive @rhpm.1992 @rhuniversity @rennieharris
@columbiachi @dancecenterpresents
@ theorists, young scholars n news addicts 🔗 in bio
🙏 interns and researchers
Hi! My name is Emily McClung, and I interned with the Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archives in Spring of 2024. I’m from Lexington, Virginia and graduated with Honors from Swarthmore College this May with a B.A. in Dance and a B.A. in Environmental Studies. I love exchanging energy with others through movement – whether through my work as a performer, choreographer, or teacher of dance – and I believe in dance’s power to imagine and embody a thriving future. While at Swarthmore and while attending American Dance Festival (2023 and 2024), I got the chance to see RHPM perform and take class with some of the Hip-hop and Street Dance legends that I was researching for the archive! This work combined my love of dance, appreciation and awe for the Street Dance community, and involvement in community archival and storytelling work through my environmental studies major. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have contributed to the RHASDA with support from Swarthmore College’s Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. I’m also telling everyone I know about this truly incredible archive because it exists through the collective efforts of so many people: archivists, dancers, artists, and of course the Street Dance legends themselves. Enjoy!
@emily_m_48 @rhpm.1992 @americanstreetdancearchive
@thelangcenter @swarthmorecollege @amerdancefest
Summer Internships – RHPM Archival Division @rhpm.1992 @americanstreetdancearchive @rennieharris Still looking for your summer internship? We have openings 🙌🎉To express interest, send resume or cv and note about yourself to rhasdainfo@gmail.com
– archival work 💿📼
– social media 📲
– grant writing 📝
– administrative 💻
– assistant to Executive Director @rhpm.1992
– research 👀
– events and news 📅 📰
– editing 🎥
– academic papers 📚
– web design 🕸️
Logos by @spaghetto
Hi I’m Zack and I’m the project assistant for Rennie Harris American Street Dance Archive. I’ve been working with RHASDA for 1.5 years now and have loved helping to bring the archive to life! I come to this work through my interest in working with community archives, or archives run by the communities whose history they document, instead of big institutions. In our current world where critical histories that challenge structures of power are being silenced, community archives have a vital role to play in preserving and sharing those histories. After learning about RHASDA I was instantly drawn to its mission of elevating histories of street dance that are usually ignored by historical institutions, and I knew I wanted to help out however I could. The team’s focus on working closely with Hip-hop and street dance legends across the country to share the stories of their communities embodies the kind of community archival practices we need more of in the archival world. I came to RHASDA with knowledge about community archives, but much less about dance, so this has been an incredible journey learning about the real history of Hip-hop and street dance from the legends I’ve gotten to meet and work with. I am so inspired by all the work we’ve done at RHASDA so far and I can’t wait for all the stuff we have coming up soon!
