ENTITY · GROUP / CREW / BAND
Ravers Clavers
Probable
Ravers Clavers is the dance crew associated with Ding Dong, central to the spread of named 2000s and 2010s dancehall moves through parties, music videos, tutorial culture and international workshops.
Emerged alongside Ghetto Legacy in the mid-2000s as part of a documented shift in which male dancehall performers took on a bodily spectacle and sartorial flamboyance — dyed hair, tight-fitting clothes — that had previously centred on women, seizing the genre's visual stage from their female counterparts.
At a glance
- Confidence
- Probable
- Sources
- Adom Heron, "An Aesthetics of Play: Dancehall Style and the Flamboyant Fashioning of Men in Jamaica.".
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Debate & reception
What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →
Male dancers and the effeminacy charge
One side
Acrobatic, stylish male dancing as valid masculine creative artistry
The other
Suspicion that expressive/effeminate movement signals homosexuality
The rise of male dance stars and crews in the 2000s (in the lineage of Bogle/Gerald Levy and the Black Roses Crew, then Ding Dong's Ravers Clavers) sharpened a gender argument: elaborate, fluid, fashion-forward male moves and 'out and bad' styling were read by some in a homophobic dancehall context as effeminate or 'gay', while dancers and scholars argued the moves were a legitimate, hyper-visible form of masculine artistry and inner-city creativity (Jamaica Observer, 'Masculinity and dancehall', 2011; academic work by Patrick Helber). The tension coexisted with dancehall's broader documented homophobia and the international 'Stop Murder Music' controversies.
Read the argument →Who owns a dance move?
One side
Community authorship
The other
Individual credit
Dancehall moves often circulate faster than formal credit or royalties.
Read the argument →Who owns the move? Dancers as uncredited creative labour
One side
Dancers as originators owed credit and pay for moves that drive songs
The other
A system where recording artists and promoters reap the returns
As street-dance videos and DVDs made dancers briefly famous in the 2000s, commentary questioned the economics of the dance-song feedback loop: dancers invented moves (Bogle, Willie Bounce, Dutty Wine, Nuh Linga and others) that fuelled hit records and riddims, yet often went uncredited and unpaid while artists and promoters captured the value. The Jamaica Gleaner's 'Dancehall's dancers go hungry' (28 Apr 2013) documented dancers' complaints that the collapse of street dances under the Noise Abatement crackdown left them without income.
Read the argument →Share this record
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