Groove to the music

A few stragglers run through the door, their footfalls unintentionally pounding out the beat of the music that blasts from the speakers.\n"How you guys doing tonight?" yells junior Diana Ballas above the music to the group assembled before her, all while her hips keep time. Her question is answered with cheers, whoops and claps, signaling the beginning of class.\nBallas is one of the four Group X leaders who instruct a hip-hop dancing class at the SRSC. \n"Hip hop -- I like it, but it isn't really my favorite musical choice, which is what people would probably normally think," she says. "But I really, really like to dance to it. I like to fool around with it."\nThe class members behind her are just beginning to sweat as they bounce and grind their way through song after song. \n"How far down can you go?" Ballas asks, moving her hips toward the floor. As she watches a woman with a bright green shirt hover inches above the floor and struggle to get back up, Ballas answers her own question. "Not that far down," she laughs. \nHip hop has pervaded American culture with more than just the music that blasts daily from MTV. Both in the SRSC classroom and out on the club scene, students are learning to get down on the dance floor.\nSRSC wellness programs coordinator William Thornton was surrounded by all aspects of hip-hop culture as a child in Norfolk, Va.\n"As for me, (hip hop) is something that I grew up with, and lived with and was all around me," he says.\nThornton began teaching a hip-hop class in 1998 and says hip hop has become a common facet of American society.\n"It's just a part of daily life," he says. "I wouldn't say it's a specific community. It's not just the music that you listen to or the dance. It's also how you dress. How you communicate with each other is different as well. It's kind of a whole culture of how you live."\nIndividualism is a key part of hip-hop dancing simply because hip hop is a means through which dancers express themselves and their feelings. \n"There is a lot of individuality," Thornton says, "because you allow yourself to just express. Sometimes it takes a little time to let go."\nDancing is the main focus at Axis, a local Bloomington nightclub that advertises the best dance and hip-hop music.\nKen Nickos, general manager for Axis, says a main goal for the club is to get the crowd dancing and feeling comfortable. Nickos hires dancers (mostly students) to break the ice and start the dancing. Nickos says his dancers are outgoing and fun. \n"You can't train personality," Nickos says. "We need people who aren't afraid to dance on a box. We find people out of the crowd and ask them to dance." \nThe four current dancers, two men and two women, wear wild clothing and pull club goers up onto the small stages to dance with them. Ballas was once pulled up to dance with the Axis dancers. \n"I have had people come up to me and say, 'Wow, you're such a good dancer.' Sometimes some of the girls that are hired to dance there will let me come up and dance with them," she says.\nThough her talents have been acknowledged, Ballas doesn't dance at Axis or any other club often. \n"I really don't like it when guys try to dance on me," Ballas says. "That's part of the reason that I really don't go to a lot of clubs because I like to dance by myself. If I ever do go to a club I try to get up on one of those platforms where I can be left alone and just dance."\nFellow Group X leader and junior Sarah Liakos, like Ballas, doesn't frequent clubs that often. \n"I've probably been to a club six times in my life," she says, laughing, preferring instead to dance the night away inside the SRSC classrooms, a good starting point for those who don't quite feel comfortable shaking their groove thing on the dance floor.\nBallas comes across many students who are skeptical of the class and their dancing ability.\n"A lot of the people that come don't think they can dance," Ballas says. "Obviously there are people that are better than others, but that's why it's based on putting your own style to it."\nAt the club, in the class, on the street or simply in front of the mirror, hip-hop dancing is about having fun and enjoying the expression and the movement.\n"I think dancing is one of the greatest things in the world. I think music is one of the greatest things in the world," Liakos says. "Dancing is my way of sharing my excitement for music. I get overwhelmed when I dance. I love it so much"