Browse the whole archive

Dance-community term for the street-dance style that followed the 1990s 'old school' Bogle era, credited in scene oral history to dancer John Hype as part of the video-light generation's transition into 2000s Kingston street-dance culture.

Elephant Man's early-2000s cuts "Egyptian Dance" and "Egyptian (Version)" rode producer Don Corleon's Egyptian riddim, part of a run of uptempo, horn-sampling rhythms that made Corleon one of dancehall's most in-demand producers of the 2000s.

'Electric Boogie', written by Bunny Wailer and first recorded by Marcia Griffiths in 1983, became a US Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1989-90 after a Washington DC radio DJ revived it; the remixed version on her album Carousel sparked the 'Electric Slide' line dance and remains the best-selling single by a female reggae artist.

Late-1950s Kingston sound system remembered as the set where Percival "Sir Lord Comic" Wauchope worked first as a star dancer and then, from about 1959, as a toaster in the style pioneered by Count Machuki.

St Mary-born, UK-based dancer who won the 21st-anniversary staging of the International Dancehall Queen competition in Montego Bay in 2023.

Anita Mahfood, known professionally as Marguerita, was a Jamaican rhumba dancer of Lebanese-Jamaican descent, schooled at Alpha Academy, who became Kingston's leading exotic dancer of the late 1950s. In 1959 she insisted that Count Ossie's Rastafarian drummers back her show at the Ward Theatre over promoter Vere Johns's objections, giving Count Ossie's ensemble its first performance before a mainstream audience and helping legitimise Rastafarian music in Jamaican popular entertainment. She died in 1965.

Jamaican 'edutainment' performing-arts company founded in 1993 by Paulette Bellamy and Joseph Robinson, blending dance, drumming, drama and song for youth empowerment and cultural education at home and abroad.

Badman Forward is a named dancehall move associated with Ding Dong and the Ravers Clavers-era vocabulary, circulating through dance songs, street events and video clips as part of 2000s dancehall's call-and-response movement culture.

Badman Pull Up is a named dancehall move commonly paired with "Badman Forward," part of the same movement vocabulary in which a song title, command and choreography can become one shared street-dance phrase.

The 'batty rider', the very short women's shorts that became an iconic, contested item of early-1990s dancehall fashion, especially among dancehall queens, a recurring focus of respectability debates and of Carolyn Cooper's scholarship on the dancehall body. Treated here as a documented fashion term.

Very short women's shorts that became a signature of the early-1990s dancehall-queen wardrobe, documented as part of the assertive, self-styled female dancehall aesthetic of the Carlene era. Neutral archival framing.

Late-1990s Kingston dance crew (founded c.1998; members Chris, Marlon, Migz, German Bling and TwoLife) credited with moves such as Tek Weh Yuself (popularised by Mr Vegas), Eva Fresh Eva Clean, Red Carpet and My Space; toured as far as Japan and reunited in 2025.

Term for the mid-2000s dancehall aesthetic of conspicuous jewellery, designer and customised fashion, and displayed wealth performed at street dances and captured on video light, exemplified by acts whose names invoked the look directly, such as Black Blingaz.

A Jamaican dance or move associated with the street era. Starter record pending editorial verification.

A dancehall dance move popularised by deejay Chi Ching Ching through his 2016 song 'Roast or Fry (Breadfruit)' (Wicked Wicked Riddim), whose lyrics and choreography mime preparing breadfruit.