True To The Game

When Hip Hop hit the West Coast in the early 1980’s, Lonnie Green evolved into “PopTart”, a professional choreographer and Hip Hop dancer who was also began serving as cultural ambassador for San Francisco when he became the first dancer to leave Fillmore and share Strutting culture internationally, first in Canada and later throughout Europe and Asia.
Lonnie Green successfully adapted to the music industry’s trends and also set the tone for professional dancers in the Hip Hop music industry by keeping his native Strutting roots unchanged from the teachings of his elders.
His work has always been his way of giving back to the city and culture that raised him.
“Hip Hop” has since become a term universally associated with the emergence of urban creative expression in the 1970’s, a narrative that is now studied in colleges and universities around the world.
Most scholars recognize Hip Hop as a New York narrative.
Far-less understood in academia and industry yet equally relevant is the under-written story of the Fillmore, the largest example of failed urban renewal on the West Coast.
Just like the South Bronx, this also created inner-city Black dance cultural expressions that would inform and influence entire generations across the globe.