Serouj Aprahamian (Dance) is a 2025–2026 HRI Faculty Fellow.
His current research project, “‘Showtime!’: Dancing in the New York City UnderGround,” investigates community-based hip-hop dance forms in everyday spaces, including the New York City subway, and the complex relationships between place, performance, and power.
Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a year of dedicated research and writing in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.
What is unique about your research on this topic?
My research focuses on community-based hip-hop dance forms. Rather than look at their manifestation in traditional institutional spaces such as studios or concert stages, I tend to look at their development in everyday arenas such as community centers, house parties, clubs, and, in the case of my most recent research, the New York City subways. I also situate these forms in historical context and put them in conversation with other forms of expression, as my initial work focused on the development of breaking in the Bronx during the advent of hip-hop culture.
What drives your interest in this research?
I have been involved in community-based hip-hop dance forms—such as breaking, popping, and freestyling—since the late 1990s, so my interest is rooted in my own practice and involvement with these dances. There is often an emphasis on history and cultural awareness within the community of practitioners of these forms, yet little in the way of scholarly research that has been done on these topics. Given the profound impact hip-hop dance continues to have around the world, however, there is no shortage of interesting and important issues to research.
My most recent work explores the emergence of hip-hop dance within the moving train cars of New York City’s subway system, a phenomenon that emerged in the late 2000s and gained a great deal of media attention in the mid-2010s, when the New York City Police Department and Metro Transit Authority began cracking down on it. Subway dancers have redefined the landscape of the train car with hitherto unimaginable ways of moving within it, gaining both support and consternation from passengers, and raising important questions regarding the norms governing performance in public space.
How has the fellowship seminar shaped the way you’re approaching your research?
The Humanities Research Institute Fellows Seminar, with this year’s theme of “Story & Place,” has proven invaluable for me as I navigate the complex moving parts within my research. The in-depth, interdisciplinary, critical discussions we have had—both when focused on my research and that of others—has helped clarify my own thinking on the interplay between context and culture in the development of subway dancing in New York, and how various ways of knowing and articulating identity shape how we experience space. My colleagues in the seminar have generously offered insights, references, suggestions, questions, theoretical frameworks, and numerous other forms of feedback that have stimulated and grounded me as I move forward with the next steps of my project.