Why the Cypher Is the Real Classroom

There are two ways to learn dance from the Brooklyn drill scene. The first is to take a class with one of the choreographers who teaches them — typically in a Bed-Stuy studio, two evenings a week, at a price that is reasonable for the city. The class is competent. The class teaches steps. The steps, after a few months, give the student a vocabulary that is recognizable inside the scene. The second is the cypher. A cypher is what happens when a circle forms around a speaker on a sidewalk, in a park, in a hall, at a function. The music plays and dancers step in for thirty or sixty seconds at a time, one at a time, and the rest of the circle watches. Most of the watching is silent. The applause, when it comes, comes from the body language of the watchers — small nods, the dropped chin, the half-smile that says the move landed. The cypher teaches what the class cannot teach. The class teaches the move. The cypher teaches what to do when the move runs out and you are still in the circle. The improvisation under pressure is the actual skill. A dancer who can execute the memorized choreography flawlessly is, in cypher terms, still a beginner. A dancer who can stitch moves together unprepared, under the watchful silence of a circle that has seen everyone else go first, is operating at the actual level the scene cares about. The cypher is also the place where reputation is made. A new dancer who has been training for six months and is technically competent will still have to go through several cyphers before the older dancers know their name. The recognition is earned in the circle. The studio is preparation. The cypher is the test. There are, accordingly, fewer published cyphers than published class videos. The cypher does not translate well to short-form video. The cypher's energy depends on the circle's mutual attention, which the camera cannot capture. The cypher, when filmed for a phone clip, loses its texture. What the viewer sees is a sequence of solos. What the dancers experienced was a collective event in which the watching was as much of the substance as the dancing. This is part of why scene veterans push new dancers toward the cyphers and away from the social-media performance loop. The cyphers produce skill. The social media performance produces audience. Both have value. They are not the same activity, and the scene tends to credit the first more than the second. If you are new to the scene and want to learn, the path is: take a class to get the vocabulary, then find a cypher and step in. The first cypher will be hard. The fifth will be easier. The twentieth will be the moment you discover what you actually dance like, which is a different thing from what you trained to dance like.