Hip hop leaped from the streets of the Bronx to suburbia years ago, so break dancing in the summer workshop at High Step Dance Academy is not breaking news.

It's still a fresh blast to watch 16 girls "krumping," "popping" and spinning on their heads at the Longview dance studio.

"On TV, I followed dance along the East Coast," said studio owner and dance teacher Daisy Case, 26. "It really opened my eyes."

Case studied at Cornish in Seattle and danced in "Chorus Line" in Miami before injuring her back and coming home to purchase the High Step business from Sandra Hemminger three years ago.

"If you can't do it, share it," she said cheerfully.

Case did say she misses the acrobatics of break dancing, with its head rolls, lunges, stomping, popping jerky movements that make a dancer look like a hinged puppet, and krumping hunched shoulders and heavy swinging arms like a gorilla.

Guys originated these moves on inner city asphalt.

In towns like ours, girl dancers in sunny studios take to the form with gusto.

Last week at High Step, a mixed-age class warmed up, doing push-ups, sit-ups and splits, stretching and twisting like Cirque de Soleil performers.

"You gotta be really athletic," Case said. "We need strong dancers, so we won't get hurt."

Next came the hip hop lesson, with teens Crystal Garrison and Porsche Yates doing the teaching.

Porsche wears baggy sweats for the hip hop look, and the rest of the dancers don athletic shoes or black facsimiles with split soles — the middle section is carved out for more flexible foot movements.

Following Case's direction, Porsche and Crystal demonstrate the choreography, building the dance through practice and repetition, like a puzzle.

"The younger ones look up to the older girls," Case said. "They learn from them."

Porsche and Crystal relish the role, showing how to drag ahe foot in a smooth slide and sharpen the edge of a shoulder pop.

"Do a little hiccup with your shoulder, like this," Porsche tells the younger dancers. "Get your shoulders high."

When the dancers leap straight up from a standing position, Case calls, "Get your knees up past your ribs! ... Push into your lift!"

Now they put the moves together. "Let's try the music you'll hear it," their teacher says.

Case is well aware of parents' worries about hip hop songs.

"We use appropriate songs, with no bad innuendo," she said. "There are lyrical hip hop songs and R and B. It's really fun."

"It makes me mad that they stereotype hip hop as vulgar and full of bad words," said Crystal.

Favorites of the dancers include "Here Comes the Boom" from "The Longest Yard," and "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas.

"You can do a lot of tricks to them," said 9-year-old Kierrla Yates. "It's fun,"

Later, the girls described how learning four or five moves at a time and doing the parts over and over helps the dance mesh with the music and become second nature.

"Muscle memory," explained Emily Gates.

Whether you check out a funky homeboy website, Wikipedia or a scholarly article on pop culture, hip hop is defined as an established subculture, with its own music, dance, look and attitude.

On that score, it's the latest in a long tradition of musical revolutions, from the Roaring '20s to swing, Elvis to the Beatles, punk to grunge.

And every new dance craze seems to drive parents and ministers crazy.

Hip hop was born in the 1970s, based on a driving 4-4 beat, talk-singing, DJs scratching records as they spinned, acrobatic moves called break dancing that got mainstreamed by Michael Jackson, sagging jeans and backward ball caps, and its own vocabulary some of it pretty nasty.

Fans, however, describe a vast array of content, including girl rappers and the to-be-expected Christian hip hop. Country singer Jake Owen even did a song with a hip hop flavor during his show at the Cowlitz County Fair last week.

In the Summer 2000 edition of the Popular Culture Review, Dr. Renford R. Reese calls hip hop "the poetry of the street," expressing "rage against the system."

Reese points out that hip hop has been embraced across class systems, all over the world, and by corporations who use it to sell products.

"Although critics of rap music and the hip hop culture seemed to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language," he writes, "... the potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial ... the hip hop culture has challenged the system in ways that have unified individuals (particularly youth) across a rich ethnic spectrum."

For kids, it's as simple as a beat.

"We don't have to listen to the words," said Crystal. "We dance to the beat.

"With hip hop, all technique goes out the window," she added. "Ballet is like, flowing, smooth and soft. This is ‘Hit it, hit-it, hit-it.' You hit your moves hard.

"If you're kind of mad or frustrated, you can feel the music release all that energy."

When the dancers form a circle called a "cypher" and volunteer for free-form moves in the center, Case encourages them to let go.

"Let's see some attitude. Show me your style!"

Emily is one of the most animated loose limbed, in a groove with the music and scrunching her face into snarly expressions.

"It's not my favorite kind of dance," said the 14-year-old Longview girl, "but I like how you can do whatever you want and it's not wrong. You can be goofy, or mad."

Said the tiny, agile Kierrla, "You have to be up and tall in almost every other" type of dance. "With this, you get to be down and loose."

Kiana Hoffman, 12, of Toutle, has been doing ballet for a long time, she said. "It's hard for me to get loose, I'm so used to being tight and upright."

After practicing hip hop at home, "I got the hang of it," Kiana said. "It's really fun. The way Daisy mixes the music, you get to feel something different in the songs. It gets out your personality in a different way.

"The attitude is not so much pretty," she said. "It's hard to explain."

Recently, Kiana said, "I started doing everything the studio has to offer. I'm putting myself out there. And I'm starting to like hip hop more than jazz."

With hip hop, she said, "There's not a right or wrong. We make something of what we have."

Follow us on twitter.com/HipHopRockzMag