How Do I Let Go
Alice Hur
How Do I Let Go brings together waackers from the Bay Area street dance community to engage in a concert-length theater production highlighting artists' creative liberation and self-expression through movement. Through a mix of curated choreographed pieces, onstage exchanges, and improvised solos, How Do I Let Go examines what it means for waacking to exist outside of traditional environments - battles, clubs, practice sessions - and reframes the format through community-centered performance that features waackers, DJs, and street dance artists from across the Bay Area. This project aims to creates new spaces for the freestyle community to gather and engage with waacking, its history, struggles, triumph, and share in their collective freedom of expression.
Alice
Hur
she/hers
Alice Hur is a practitioner of the street dance style called waacking, an evolution of the art form “punking", which was created out of underground Los Angeles LGBTQ clubs by queer BIPOC men during the 1970's. For over a decade, Alice has been performing, competing, and teaching within the art form, including winning multiple Bay Area waacking titles and placing in all-styles battles in San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, and Toronto. As a long-time grassroots community organizer, she has taught and led workshops throughout NorCal, Honolulu, Detroit, Nashville, and Chicago, and is the founder of Bay Area event series, Waack, Crackle, Lock! In 2022, she created San Jose Waacking – a free, accessible, safe space for movers in the community to collectively learn and grow in the style of waacking through open outdoor sessions. Alice was awarded a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2023 and is currently serving as a 2024 Creative Ambassador for the City of San Jose.
Photo by Ryan Sarakul, I Am Exclusv Media Company
Headshot of Alice Hur against a black background. Alice is wearing a black mesh top with gold earrings and a chain necklace. Her hands are posed under her chin, framing her face with fanned fingers.
Video Credit: Ryan Sarakul (I Am Exclusv Media Company)
A recap of the 2022 edition of the Waack, Crackle, Lock! event series organized by Alice Hur, which highlights the joy, creativity, and talent of the freestyle street dance community.
Video Credit: Peter Nguyen
A freestyle concept waacking video by Alice Hur, shot from behind and set to the song “Escalate” by Tsar B, that shows the power of waacking through the musculature of her bare back.
Video Credit: Kevin Saicheur
A freestyle waacking solo by Alice Hur to the song “Burn” by Jorja Smith, which showcases a softer, more vulnerable exploration of waacking outside a battle context.
Gardens of Alchemy
7000COILS: B Dukes, Lalin St. Juste, KKINGBOO, Madre Guía
Gardens of Alchemy is a series of monthly gatherings envisioned by Black and Trans artists working at the intersection of sound, dance, healing, and ecology taking place at BlaQyard, a Black Queer and Trans-led land project in Chochenyo Ohlone Territory (Fruitvale area of Oakland). Over three months, 7000COILS will host community activations that facilitate ritual movement experiences outside of nightlife club spaces and into outdoor nature spaces. Through this work, they seek to strengthen webs of relationships in their communities, center Black Trans art and land-projects, develop experimental soundscapes, and share healing movement practices. Each Gardens of Alchemy event is a participatory experience exploring creative processes that connect us to land and each other. Starting with a sound bath led by 7000COILS members using field recordings from the land, the gatherings will envelop a series of creative land/body activation workshops facilitated by a rotation of Oakland-based artists and herbalists, and close with a celebratory dance party.
7000COILS
7000COILS is a record label and holistic wellness movement rooted in the diaspora's ritualistic sound alchemy, with a focus on black and queer ownership. United the artists envision a radicalized dance floor outside of institutionalized spaces that honors the land and its generous role in holding the weight of our physical and emotional bodies in movement. They focus on amplifying the voices of black and queer artists, carving new pathways and sound portals to bridge the past and present. 7000COILS is committed to illuminating the way for fresh beginnings, as they defy & rebel within the industrial complex of oppression.
Logo of 7000COILS by @verscollab
B Dukes, Lalin St. Juste, KKINGBOO, Madre Guía
AfroRooted Vol. III
Karla “Karlita” Flores
AfroRooted is a community dance festival focused on the parallels of black and brown street style art forms to urban and traditional movements of the African diaspora. In February 2020 at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, AfroRooted Vol. II brought together over 250 participants and spectators for a first time dance battle occurring in this space. For the third installment, AfroRooted will continue this work to explore Hip Hop’s African diasporic roots through community dialogue, cultural exchanges/ battles and a series of dance workshops that highlight one street style and one traditional African art form.
Karla "Karlita"
Flores
Karla Flores, also known as Karlita to her family and dance community, is a multi-disciplined artist and dancer. Breakin' became her first entry into the street dance world, which eventually led her to other club dance styles, such as waacking. For the past 15 plus years, she’s battled, judged, and performed throughout the Bay Area and beyond. She’s been a mentor and volunteer for All The Way Live Foundation’s residencies in Nicaragua and Taiwan along with being a guest performer for Dancing Earth. Using dance as a portal into other creative outlets, she’s been able to travel and teach internationally, and has thrown groundbreaking community jams such as AfroRooted, which was also featured in KQED Arts. Fusing all the influences of her Bay Area and Central American roots, she views creativity as an ultimate superpower empowering communities and as a form of medicine. Her credits include Embodiment Project, All The Way Live Foundation: Nicaragua and Taiwan, Next Level, AfroRooted, Dancing Earth, BADECollective, Dance Afrique Experimental Flow, BaeRooted, Forever We Rock, and Be Movement Collective.
Photo by Shelley Mae Alingas
ID: Karla smiling at the camera tucking her hair behind her right ear. She has her hair down and is wearing a light blue denim jacket.
she/they
