At 4:15 p.m. on a Tuesday, the mirrored ballroom at Encore Studio on Duke Street belongs to 14-year-old Jalen Whitfield. He counts down from eight, sneakers squeaking against the sprung floor, while seven younger students mirror his steps through a routine built on crip walks and popping locks. Three years ago, this room hosted beginner ballet. Today, hip hop fills every slot from 3:30 to 8:00 p.m.
"Back then, we'd get one maybe two kids asking about hip hop," says Maria Chen, who has owned Encore Studio for 18 years. "Now it's half our enrollment. I had to hire three new instructors just to keep up."
From Pliés to Popping
Chen's experience tracks with what has happened across St. Mary's City. At three of the city's largest dance studios—Encore, Bay Street Movement Studio, and St. Mary's Dance Academy—hip hop enrollment has at least doubled since 2019, according to the owners. All three now employ full-time hip hop instructors. Two have expanded into larger spaces.
It has not been a seamless transition. Chen still remembers the pushback when she replaced a Tuesday evening tap class with hip hop fundamentals in 2018. "I had parents calling who'd been with me for a decade," she says. "They said it wasn't real dance. I told them to come watch one showcase." She pauses. "Most of them signed their kids up anyway."
That tension—between studio tradition and street-born innovation—continues to shape how hip hop is taught locally. Derek Okonkwo, who teaches advanced hip hop at Bay Street Movement Studio, grew up training in Atlanta and says he pushes back against what he calls "competition-ized hip hop," the sanitized style common to studio recitals.
"We're not just teaching choreography," Okonkwo says. "We're teaching history, culture, the freestyle mindset. I cypher with my students every Friday. Some studio owners hate that—no set routine, no clean ending. But that's the point."
Who Shows Up—and Why
The demographic shift has been stark. Chen says her beginner hip hop classes now draw students from twelve different ZIP codes across St. Mary's County. Her ballet programs, by contrast, remain heavily concentrated within city limits.
For many families, the appeal is accessibility. Hip hop classes typically require no specialized shoes, no prior training, and no rigid dress code. For others, it's representation.
"My son came home from school and said he wanted to learn the dances from TikTok," says Keisha Monroe, whose 11-year-old, Devon, has trained with Okonkwo for two years. "I called every studio in the county. Only Bay Street had a class where he didn't feel like the only Black kid in the room. That matters."
The studios have responded by building community infrastructure around the classes. All three major studios now host quarterly cyphers open to the public. Bay Street runs a summer battle series at the city's farmers market. Encore partners with the public library to offer free introductory workshops for teens.
Beyond the Studio Walls
The economic and cultural footprint is now large enough to show up in city life. St. Mary's City's annual Dance in the Streets festival added a dedicated hip hop stage in 2022. This year's lineup included nine local crews and two regional headliners, drawing what organizers estimate was the festival's largest single-day crowd.
Business owners have taken notice. Revolver Coffee on Duke Street redesigned its logo last year with graffiti-inspired typography after surveying customers about neighborhood identity. Owner Samira Patel says the feedback was unambiguous. "People kept writing 'hip hop' when we asked what the area felt like now. That wasn't true five years ago."
The visual evidence is harder to miss. A mural commissioned by the Downtown St. Mary's City Partnership now spans the brick wall behind the Bay Street studio, painted by Baltimore artist Toni Graves with portraits of local dancers—including three of Okonkwo's students—in poses sampled from classic hip hop photography.
What Comes Next
The expansion shows no signs of slowing. Chen is renovating a second-floor space above Encore to launch a dedicated hip hop academy by fall 2025, with classes in breaking, freestyling, and music production. Okonkwo is developing a certification program to train more instructors from within the community. St. Mary's Dance Academy recently added an adult beginner class after a parent waitlist reached 40 names.
On a recent Wednesday, Jalen Whitfield stayed late after his own class ended, helping Okonkwo clean up discarded water bottles and fold sweat towels. He has been invited to co-teach the youngest age group next semester.
"I started here because my cousin danced here," Jalen says, tying his sneakers. "Now I want to run my own studio someday. Maybe right here."
*Christina Marsh is a freelance writer covering arts
