How to dance hip hop instead of reciting the foundations
Hip Hop Foundations is a 6-lesson training that gets the bounce, rock and roll into your dancing, without repeating them one by one for hours.
Dance without checking yourself mid-round. The bounce, rock and roll run in the background, so your attention goes to the music instead of “am I doing this right?”
Focus on one anchor instead of juggling the bounce, rock, roll and groove at once. Keep the bounce going and layer the rock and roll on top. No switching your brain between moves.
Make the foundations look like you, not like the class. Find how the bounce looks best on your body, so you stop reciting and start dancing as yourself.
Play with the music in your own way. Know how you connect with what you hear, and use it to pace your round like a good story, so it holds attention all the way through.
Get Hip Hop Foundations
This training is for you if:
You already know the bounce, rock and roll, and you’re ready to go deeper into them, so they become second nature and part of your own hip hop style.
You hesitate when you dance because you’re not sure what hip hop should look like, or if you’re doing it right.
You’ve learned plenty of moves, but your dancing still doesn’t look like you.
You’d rather go deeper into the basics than collect more steps.
It’s not for you if you’re looking for choreography or a list of new moves.
Get Hip Hop Foundations
“I know I did everything right, but I feel nothing.”
I remember the day like it was yesterday.
I was teaching at a dance school in Manchester. The subject was one of my favourites, how to identify your organic and technical side.
Halfway through, one of the dancers stopped. He looked at me and said, “I like this exercise, Nickel, and I understand it. But I don’t know who I am as a dancer anymore. I feel completely lost after gathering so much information these past three years.”
Then it was his turn to dance. Thirty seconds in, he stopped. “I can’t, Nickel.”
I told him to finish. He did. And he did it correctly, every part of it.
Then he said the thing I still think about.
I know I did everything right, but I feel nothing.
He wasn’t a beginner. Three years of classes. He could execute anything I asked him for.
He just couldn’t say anything with it.
Get Hip Hop Foundations
Hip Hop Foundations: Stop reciting them. Start dancing with them.
Most dancers know the foundations. Very few can actually dance with them and make them part of their style. This training closes that gap.
Lesson 1: The language
Why knowing the bounce, the rock and the roll is not the same as dancing with them, and the shift that turns your foundations into the thing that makes everything else in your freestyle easier.
Lesson 2: Layering, part 1
Why the foundations still feel like separate moves in your freestyle, even after you’ve drilled them for years, and how to get them running without ever thinking about them.
Lesson 3: Layering, part 2
The order you stack your foundations in. Get it wrong and they fight each other. Get it right and everything you add on top just clicks.
Lesson 4: Full body
The bounce is not a move. It’s a principle. Once you see that, you stop forcing the foundations into your body and find the version that looks like you.
Lesson 5: In or on
How to keep the music as your priority while the foundations run underneath, so you stop dancing in your head and start dancing to the song.
Lesson 6: Pacing
Why matching every beat can make your round predictable, and how to pace a song so your delivery rises and falls and keeps people watching.
Here’s everything you get
6 video lessons, yours for life
Instant access. Watch them in order, or go straight to the lesson you need right now.
A step-by-step roadmap
One simple thing to focus on at a time, so you get clear on how to bring the foundations into your natural way of moving.
Exercises for your level
No one-size-fits-all. Key exercises come in different levels, so you can apply them wherever you are right now.
Learn and practise at your own pace
Everything is laid out step by step, so you always know what comes next.
Hip Hop Foundations
£47
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
30-day money-back guarantee
Watch the lessons. Practise them. If it’s not for you, email me within 30 days and you get your £47 back. No form, no explanation needed.
Your foundations shouldn’t be something you think about every time you dance.
They should be the reason your freestyle feels effortless.
The problem? A few common beliefs are quietly holding your dancing back:
“I just need to practise more” (hours of repeating the same movement)
But memorising a movement and executing it well are two different things. Freestyle doesn’t work that way, and it shows the moment you step into a cypher, a preselection or a battle.
Proving you’re doing hip hop (“Look, I’m doing the bounce. Look, I’m doing the rock.”)
Good hip hop dancers don’t need to prove it. The foundations are there to support your style, not to overshadow who you are as a dancer.
Blaming the result (“The judges didn’t get my dance.” “It wasn’t fair.”)
Sometimes that’s true. But often, what’s missing is a deeper understanding of the foundations and how to use them.
None of this shows you how to make the foundations work for you.
And the longer you train this way, the more the foundations stay something you do, instead of something you dance with.
Hip Hop Foundations gives you the rules of the game, and shows you how to use them. So you can add your own, and still play the game well.
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
Nobody’s ever been moved by grammar.
Dance is a language. Your movements are the words. The bounce, rock and roll are the grammar, the structure that makes the words make sense.
Grammar matters. But when you talk, you don’t think about it. You know it, so it works in the background, and all your attention goes to what you want to say.
The best hip hop dancers use the foundations the same way. They’re not at the front of the dance. They’re doing the work in the back, so the music and the dancer can come through.
That’s the shift this training is built on. From a dancer who does the foundations, to a dancer who dances with them.
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
Nickel Yudat
I was born in Haiti and moved to Paris at thirteen. I took my first hip hop class over twenty years ago and I didn’t like practising the foundations. I wanted to play with the music and dance and have fun, not do the same step over and over again.
It took me a long time, and one expensive detour, to understand what they were actually for.
I’m the founder of Beyond The Moves. I teach around the world, so I’m lucky enough to talk with a lot of dancers in a lot of different places. And there’s a misunderstanding about the hip hop foundations that keeps coming up.
Some dancers swear by them. They’ll look for the foundations in every single move you make, and if they can’t see them, to them it isn’t hip hop.
Others go the other way. They’ll tell you that if you only do that, you end up looking like every other hip hop dancer. So they disregard the foundations almost completely and say, I’m doing hip hop, but my way. I’m doing me.
Here’s what I understand after all this time.
Understanding the style and respecting the style is essential. Knowing the foundations and practising them is essential. And none of that has to come at the expense of you as a dancer.
So this training isn’t about learning and reciting all the basics. It’s about understanding some principles first. Your natural way of moving. Your natural way of playing with the music. So that you can fully embrace the foundations and integrate them into your dance, and you’re the one doing hip hop, instead of the style doing you.
My goal is to give you more clarity on this, by starting with understanding you as a dancer, rather than memorising more steps.
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
Before you decide
Is this for beginners?
I’ve been dancing for years. Will this be new for me?
Is it a video training?
Do I have to follow it in order?
How long do I have access?
Is this only for hip hop dancers?
What if it’s not for me?
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
You’ve probably been fighting it. Because somebody told you it wasn’t technical enough, or wasn’t clean enough, or wasn’t hip hop enough, and they probably meant well.
The foundations aren’t there to replace how you move. They’re there to go inside it.
So the next time the music comes on, you’re not checking your bounce. You’re listening to the song, and dancing like yourself.
This training shows you how, in six lessons.
Get Hip Hop Foundations, £47
30-day money-back guarantee