Season 2 Episode 7 | 3m 6s | Video has closed captioning. | Video has audio description
Jookin, born out of the Memphis rap music scene in the ’90s, is often referred to as "urban ballet". The dance, performed in sneakers as opposed to pointe shoes, is all about footwork: graceful slides, dizzying toe spins and impossible-looking ankle breaks.
Aired: 05/07/19
[Terrance] Body control, patience, learning how to get through the movements smoothly without looking like I'm trying.
Memphis jookin is called urban ballet for a reason.
Memphis jookin can be done to any genre of music.
It's mostly a footwork style dance: push toe, point toe.
[Draem] Spinnin', Gangsta Walking, ankle breaking.
[Bryann] It's a dance of feeling-strong, tense, of sadness, anger.
[Terrance] If you've never been to Memphis before, you have to understand that it's not exactly the richest, wealthiest place to come up.
[Bryann] If I didn't have dance, I'd probably be on the streets selling drugs or probably doing something unproductive.
I dance at home, at work, wherever I go.
In a parking lot, even on church ground.
Sometimes I'd be ready to bump, call one of my friends up, be like "Hey, you wanna dance?"
[Terrance] We don't have a lot of platforms, so it's like we got to build this one from the ground up.
The new generation is bringing originality and just crazy moves, like they have ability out of this world.
[Draem] My dad took me to jookin sessions.
The more that I saw Memphis jookin, the more that I wanted to become a part of Memphis culture.
I just want to express the style, be on stage in front of thousands of people doing what I love.
[Bryann] We have other cities and states wanting to learn about our culture and do what we do.
[Draem] In Memphis, talent is everywhere.
If we just support each other, we can be big.
Way bigger than we are now.
[Terrance] It just taught me how to grind and work towards anything that I was trying to do.
Being able to travel, go to all these different countries and places and meet new people- that's when it started to change for me.
[Bryann] Just being positive, staying away from negativity.
So I'm hoping that I can just dance until the day I die.
