Denied right to freak dance, kids check out ‘jam skating’

Busting hip-hop and break dance moves on roller skates might be the next big dance craze if roller rink owner Colleen Bernstein’s theory pans out.

Since sexually explicit freak dancing is out at some area high schools, “these kids can learn a new style of dance,” said Bernstein, who owns Roller Valley Skate Center.

She’s hoping the technique, dubbed “jam skating,” catches on. The form was made popular by “Roll Bounce,” a popular summer movie.

To pique adolescents’ interest, Bernstein invited Quad Express, a nationally recognized skate dancing threesome, to Roller Valley on Friday to perform. The group dances on four-wheel skates to songs such as Gwen Stefani’s “Ain’t No Holla Back Girls.”

More than 300 Centennial Middle School students at the rink for their Halloween celebration hooted and hollered as the group performed.

“Get out of the way,” one teen yelled to another as he tried to watch the jam skating moves.

The two men and a woman did dance steps in unison and spun in circles while holding onto one another’s shoulders. One skater did a backbend that ended with his head skidding backward along the skate rink – intentionally.

“I thought it was awesome,” Kyle Thomen, 12, said. “If I could find a place where they taught it, I’d go learn it.”

Quad Express members Genny Harmon, 30, Mo Sanders, 34, and Woody Wood, 22, have been performing together for a few months, but skating goes way back in their lives. Adding dance moves adds creativity to the sport.

“It’s an evolution of skating,” said Sanders, who has been skating most of his life.

“I’m a dancer, so skating and dancing at the same time is really cool,” Darby Moore, 13, said.

The eighth-grader has followed the news stories about Central Valley High School banning mixers because of freak dancing.

“Sometimes it is inappropriate, other times kids are just messing around with friends,” Moore said. “But it does get out of control.”

She disagrees with the school administrators’ conclusion that teens do the provocative moves because they don’t know how to dance.

“Freak dancing is a type of dance, so obviously they know how to dance,” she said.

“If you take away dancing, you have to give them something else to do,” Harmon said. Plus, “freak dancing is hard to do on skates.”

Wood agreed. “You put your booty in someone else’s pelvis, they’re going to roll away,” he said. “That’s just science.”