A New York City native who has represented women in hip-hop dance professionally over the past three decades, “Rockafella” Garcia co-founded Full Circle Prod Inc, New York City’s only nonprofit hip-hop dance theatre company, with her husband, Kwikstep, generating theatre pieces, dance training programs, and New York City-based dance events. She directed a documentary highlighting the Bgirl lifestyle, entitled “All The Ladies Say,” with support from Third World Newsreel and Bronx Council of the Arts. She is hired internationally to judge break-dance competitions and to offer her unique workshops aimed at evolving and preserving its technique and cultural aspects. She has worked within the New York City public-school system and various City-based community centers, setting up programs that help expose young students to the possibility of a career in dance. In May 2017, she launched “ShiRoka”— a T shirt fashion line with Shiro, a Japanese grafitti artist. She has been featured in pivotal rap music videos, tours, film, fashion shows, and commercials, including the NetFlix Series The Get Down. “Rokafella” has choreographed for diverse festivals/concerts, such as The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s Firebird in 2022, The Kennedy Center, Momma’s Hip-hop Kitchen, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Branching out of her dance lane, she has also recorded original songs/poetry and performed at NJPAC’s Alternate Routes in Newark and Lincoln Center Out of Doors. She received the Joyce award to collaborate with True Skool in Milwaukee and received the American Dance Festival’s National Dance Teacher Award. Presently, she is an adjunct professor at The New School and a content creator for Bronx Net TV, producing her own TV series, entitled Kwik2Rok. “Rokafella” is a multi-faceted, Afro Latin hip-hop artist who references Nuyorican culture as her foundation. SLC, 2024–
Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025
Dance
Hip-Hop
Component—Spring
DNCE 5542
This studio practice course introduces students to hip-hop culture through the classic hip-hop styles of dance. Cumulative technical dance training brings to light the ethos of the street-dance culture and how it counteracts and sometimes adopts mainstream media misconceptions. Through the study of classic hip-hop dance styles, students expand their awareness of connections between various dance forms that pre-date hip-hop while exploring the dilemma of belonging, yet standing apart. Through dialogue, students will begin learning about the history of the original dance styles in their communities and then discuss mainstream factors that either helped or harmed the evolution of the community. Occasional guest teachers will offer a class in a club or street style that will help students get a feel for the New York City dance scene of the 1980s, which influenced today’s trends. Students will watch Internet footage to aid them in understanding the similarities and differences between previous trends and today’s social exchanges in dance. Students will receive dance training at a beginner level done to hip-hop music from past to present. If there are intermediate-level dancers, they will be taught at respective levels in order to make advancements in their grasp of vocabulary.