Angelo Martinus

The State of Hip Hop Dance: The Netherlands Leads the World but Remains Invisible at Home

Dutch Hip Hop dancers dominate global stages, yet their culture remains outside the walls of the official art world and its funding systems.

By Angelo Martinus

Last week, The State of Dance was published.
Beautiful words about urgency, innovation, and social impact in the Dutch dance world.
There’s some attention for Hip Hop dance, but mostly the kind that ends up in theatres.
Once again, the battle and the cypher are overlooked even though they are the very heart of Hip Hop dance. And ironically, those are the very spaces where Dutch dancers have been dominating the global stage for years. It’s time we start recognizing that.

World-Class, from Maastricht to Los Angeles

Take Jaïra Joy Luhulima, who just won the Red Bull Dance Your Style world championship.
In a sold-out LA Clippers arena in Los Angeles, performing for 10,000 live spectators and millions online. Coached by Jennifer Romen, herself an icon in the scene.

And this wasn’t a coincidence. The Netherlands has been producing top performers in the international Hip Hop scene for years. Menno van Gorp has now won Red Bull BC One, the toughest solo competition in the world, four times!
Last year, he took the men’s title in Rio de Janeiro, while India Sardjoe claimed her second world title in the women’s category. Shinshan made history by winning the very first Dance Your Style. And this year, The Ruggeds were crowned world champions at Battle of the Year.
On top of that, three Dutch dancers performed at the Olympic Games.

To put that in perspective: these events are the Champions Leagues of our dance community.
There’s no higher level. And this is only a fraction of the success stories.
For a small country. and for dancers who receive no public arts funding for battling, 
we are doing great.

The Cypher Is the Heart

If you make a performance for the stage, you can apply for funding.
If you create modern or contemporary dance, you can count on support from funds, theatres, and institutions. And that’s ok. And if a Hip Hop dancer has the ambition to take that route they should go for it!

But the reality is that many Hip Hop dancers feel forced to fit into what the system already knows. They perform in spaces that aren’t truly theirs and for audiences that aren’t really their own. They must adapt to the frameworks of modern or theatre dance to be taken seriously or to be eligible for funding at all.

It’s fine that there’s money for modern and theatre dance. But let’s also create space for the cypher and the battle because that’s where Hip Hop lives, evolves, and renews itself.
That’s where everything begins: improvisation, interaction, community, and the moment itself.

The Power of Places and People

When Jaïra won the Dutch qualifier and prepared for Los Angeles she received €1,500 from one arts fund. All other applications were rejected. The rest came through crowdfunding, selling food, and the unwavering support of her parents, friends, and crew.

Not because her talent was invisible, but because our system was never built for this form of dance. After her victory, the dutch media were all over her. That’s great. But her struggle to refill her savings account starts the very next day.

Her journey began years earlier, in a warm home base: Oxygen Dance Academy in Maastricht, where she could grow, fail, and learn. There were events like IBE Heerlen and Summer Dance Forever where she could test herself against the best in the world.
And most importantly: she was part of an inclusive community where she was always welcomed and even became a mentor and inspiration for the next generation at a young age.

These are the places that form the real infrastructure of our dance culture. Not institutions with policy departments or communication teams, but communities where knowledge, experience is passed on from generation to generation. Where students become mentors, and mentors become students again. Where intrinsic motivation is the engine, not subsidies.

Hip Hop doesn’t fit neatly into systems or structures because it grows from connection, not from policy. From creative energy, not from formats.

Who Sets the Rules?

Hip Hop is often embraced by the established cultural landscape for the wrong reasons. Not out of genuine interest, but to tick boxes like diversity, inclusion, and innovation. And when Hip Hop is allowed to join, it’s immediately confined within the boundaries of what’s already familiar. The more it resembles what they already know, the better.

At times, it feels as if the doors open merely to safeguard their own relevance, not to truly create space. And that’s exactly why real integration rarely happens.
The frameworks are still defined by the established order. And the spaces we all pay for, the theaters, museums, and music venues, belong to all of us.
But the rules to enter them are not written by us.

The World Is Our Stage

In The State of Dance, there’s advice suggesting that the Hip Hop community should train its own journalists and critics.That’s another comment from someone who hasn’t taken the time to understand our culture.

Our community doesn’t read or need theatre reviews in newspapers.
We communicate through events, jams, studios, and online platforms.
For years, the Hip Hop community has built a global network with millions of followers and livestreamed battles. The conversations happen in comments, blogs, podcasts, and within the cyphers.

Dancers write books, produce documentaries, develop Olympic judging systems,
and archive achievements online. But you have to want to see that.
You have to look beyond your usual frames and measure a dancer’s impact not by ticket sales or critic reviews but by their contribution to the culture.

The Hip Hop dance community is also challenged to train its own critics. We don’t need to train them, our whole community is the critic, judging from the floor, in the cypher, from the audience and in the comments.

Just look at the numbers.
The three biggest dance companies in the Netherlands, NDT, the Dutch National Ballet, and Scapino Ballet together have around 500,000 followers. Pretty good for dance companies.
Meanwhile, the Maastricht sisters Norah, Sarah, and Rosa (Let it Happen) have over 1.1 million followers on their own. And not just more followers, but far higher views, engagement, and reach. Compare the main traditional dance festival, The Dutch Dance Days, with Summer Dance Forever,and you’ll see a difference of over 250,000 followers in favour of the latter.

I’m not here to pass a judgment on quality, but it says a lot about how the cultural sector perceives visibility and reach. Our system doesn’t deal in newspaper articles or reviews, posters on the street, or glossy magazines on tables. Our world lives online, at events, and in the spaces where people meet.

And even though these numbers barely count in the eyes of the cultural sector or funding bodies, they matter deeply to us.
They represent connection, engagement, and visibility.

Heroism in the Face of Tragedy

At IBE, I spoke with Niilante Ogunsola-Ribeiro, managing director at Dance Adjudication Netweork, who said it beautifully:

“Hip Hop is heroism in the face of tragedy. It’s the ability to create something out of nothing.
A child who has nothing can step into a cypher and, for that moment, be a hero.”

That moment is the essence of Hip Hop: the power to create, to express, and to be seen,
surrounded by peers who understand.

That strength, born out of struggle and resilience, is not just about dance or music.
It’s a way of seeing the world.

What if we applied that same principle to our policies?
What if the Hip Hop mentality, to create something from nothing, became the blueprint for innovation, resilience, and collaboration?

The Mirror of Hip Hop

In my research on the value of Hip Hop for culture and policy, I keep seeing how this culture functions as a living ecosystem. Not top-down, but bottom-up. Not based on control, but on trust, expression, and community.

Maybe that’s exactly what policy should reflect. Hip Hop shows that the power of art doesn’t lie in structures or rules, but in space, reciprocity, and ownership. A culture born from exclusion and struggle has evolved into a global network of collaboration, pride, and resilience.

The values that policymakers are searching for, inclusion, innovation, sustainability,
have been practiced within Hip Hop for decades. Not on paper, but in people, movement, and community.

Time for a New Perspective

If we’re going to talk about the state of dance we must also talk about the state of Hip Hop dance. Because here, it’s not just about performance. It’s about learning, creating, connecting, and passing it on.

It’s time for the cultural system to stop trying to “understand” Hip Hop and start letting itself be transformed by it. Hip Hop is not the side program of the arts, it is the frontline of a new way of thinking, organizing, and living together.

Let’s finally recognize that, not just with applause but with space, trust, and equal support.

Because the state of Hip Hop dance? It’s alive, loud, loving, and globally visible.
Maybe it’s time for the cultural sector to start moving with us. And if not, no worry.
We’ll keep doing what we do.

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About the Author
Angelo Martinus is a cultural entrepreneur and community leader with over 25 years of experience building creative ecosystems.
He researches how Hip Hop — as a culture and as a way of organizing — can inspire the future of policy, education, and leadership.