Lyrical Hip Hop 2
Lyrical hip hop is quite technical in that a high degree of body control is necessary in order to pull it off - it is often practised by professional dancers.
As the focus is on telling the story and on performance qualities, it becomes quite refined into creating a believable stage performance so previous training and skills are necessary beforehand.
You cannot concentrate on bringing out the full emotion of the song if you cannot yet do the moves to a satisfactory standard and with good control.
Lyrical hip hop will test just how much control you have over those moves you know and can take the moves into any direction. It can be useful for hip-hop dancers to learn this style as it can make them a better dancer overall.
Not every hip hop dancer can do lyrical hip-hop or is even necessarily interested in learning it. Lyrical hip-hop and normal hip-hop look very different in style.
As it is a farily new style, it is most commonly taught at specialist professional facilities that are on the cutting edge of choreography such as Millenium Dance Complex in LA.
You are probably most likely to find it in the USA and in particular dance cities like LA at this particular time, but as with any style it is making its way around the world and could soon be commonly seen in other countries also.
There is usually more freedom with the movements in lyrical hip-hop, there can be very large sweeping movements that flow through space and last a long time.
As the movements last longer it is necessary to control the movements all the way through which is why body control improves if you practise the style regularly.
In this style the movements are there to tell the story so you need to think about why you are doing the moves and what part they play in the story.
Often the choreographer and dancers they select can give you the best insight. For if the dancers perform it right, they will be able to tap into the story and the emotions the choreographer felt when they came up with the piece and transmit these to the audience.