Meet Bugz, the Popping Teacher at Kryptonite

Kgothatso Lebeko teaches popping at Kryptonite Dance Academy in Centurion. Students call him Bugz. If you watch one of his classes, the first thing you notice is how little seems to happen: a room of dancers hitting the same beat, again, for twenty minutes.

That is the point.

What popping is

Popping is built on the hit. You tense a muscle group on the beat and release it, and the release is what the eye reads as a pop. Everything else in the body has to stay still while that happens, which is where most beginners fall apart.

The style came out of the West Coast of the United States in the 1970s and grew sub-styles: robot, waving, tutting, animation. All of them rest on the same control.

Why the drills come first

A dancer can learn a routine in a week and still not be able to hit cleanly. The hit is a timing skill, and timing is trained slowly.

Bugz teaches foundations in the order he learned them: isolation first, then hits, then movement between hits. Students spend weeks on shoulders, chest, neck and arms before they are given a combination that uses all of them.

It is not the fastest way to look good in a video. It is the way that holds up when someone watches closely, which is what a stage does.

What a class feels like

Warm-up and isolations. Then drills on the beat, usually to a slowed track before it goes to tempo. Then the material: a short sequence built from the drills, danced until the group can do it without counting.

New students are not expected to keep up in week one. They are expected to keep showing up for the drill that is not working yet.

Where popping sits at Kryptonite

Popping is one of the five styles in the curriculum, alongside hip hop, house, breaking and amapiano. Students meet it inside the 13+ levels and the Kidz programme rather than in a class of its own.

If you want to train it properly, start in the Saturday Beginner 13+ class at 09:00 or join the Friday session from 17:00. Kidz dancers meet it inside their weekly class.

Message 082 572 9407 if you want to know which class suits you, or see the classes page for the timetable.