Don’t give us that look. Yup, you heard us correctly.
Besides, you can’t be too surprised considered how much we at Groove Therapy harp on about practical life skills…right?
Nah but in all seriousness, we’ve heard your cry for more instructionals and we’ve delivered.
This instructional is called the Reject but it’s going to do the complete opposite for you once you master it we promise. This move falls under the street style Jerkin’ which is a footwork-based dance move.
Dancing is so awkward to explain via text so let’s just give you the back story of the move instead.
The movement started making waves on the West Coast around 2009 before spreading to the East and thanks to the internet. The Reject was one of the first ‘internet’ dances to go viral. Think of the Reject as the old school version of the ‘dab’ and ‘floss’. (Shit…are we now calling 2009, old school. Yikes!)
If you want to get technical, the dance was popularised by Californian hip-hop groups the New Boyz and Audio Push. They wrote Jerk specific songs like “Teach my how to Jerk” and “You’re a Jerk”. With every culture, once the songs come then does the fashion. These dudes would rock bright coloured tees with skinny jeans and those pants with the weird drop crotches in a rebellion to baggy pants. Ah see it all coming together now?
According to Oktane from Audio Push, jerkin’ culture came from gang members trying to rebel at parties. “Like, it was a dance that gang members did. Like, the anti-dance. If you were in the party and everyone was dancing, [the gang members] would be doing the jerk.”
To any hip hop nerds out here, the song we’ve edited this video to is not typical jerkin’ music. It’s actually a house track but we were just keen something fun and Goldlink is on repeat at the office, so yeah.
We could keep trying to describe all the intricacies by typing out the instructions but let’s not get to that point. Also if you’re at home having a brain melt over these videos please remember that these instructionals serve as a recap on some of the stuff we’ve learnt in class, not as entire and detailed explanations of a move. If you want that then you gotta holla and come to class. Not quite ready for a dancing in public? We’ve also got online courses too. Basically these instructionals but WAY more comprehensive and broken down. Until then let’s just sit back and watch.
So without further a-do. Here is our Sydney Therapist, Amy Zhang, showing you how it’s done.
Like what you see? Yo, come to class and join us in the studio or in your own time in our online school! Book in and we’ll see ya there!