ways to dance
HARDCORE
Ways to dance Hardcore
Hardcore isn't just music: it's a way of moving. From the illegal raves of the 90s in the Netherlands to the parties in Madrid, every scene has created its own language with the feet. Here are the 12 styles that define hardcore dancing today, with a video of each one so you can see the differences in 30 seconds.
They all share one rule: the kick is the boss. What changes is how you hit it.
| Old School Hakken | Heel, short and precise steps | Early hardcore |
| New School Hakken | Arms, spins and backwards hakken | Millennium · Uptempo |
| Australian Hakken | Toes, jumps and explosive arms | Hardcore |
| Italian Freestyle | Fluid footwork and caps as props | Millennium hardcore |
| Jumpstyle | Jumps and front kicks on the kick | Hardstyle · Jumpstyle |
| Streetfight | High kicks and the floor as an instrument | Hardcore · Uptempo |
| Newstyle | Jumps, spins and total freedom over the beeps | Newstyle |
| Shuffle (AUS) | Running Man and T-Step in a line, non-stop | Hardstyle |
| Klaplong | Stomps that shake the floor | Raw · Xtra raw |
| Kickrolls | Arms that answer every kick drum | Raw · Xtra raw |
| Hardtekk | Hypnotic, marathon cadence | Hardtekk · Tekno |
| Hardtechno Flow | Hips, torso and continuous groove | Hardtechno · Schranz |
Old School Hakken
It's where it all started. It was born in the Netherlands in the 90s and became the symbol of gabber culture. If you want to understand the other styles, start here.
Its technique is short, fast steps that strike the floor with the heel, always on top of the kick. The torso stays relaxed on purpose: all the focus is on the precision and speed of the feet. The most experienced dancers throw in the odd high kick, but without ever breaking that control.
It looks simple to watch and is exhausting to dance: it's pure cardio. If you're starting out, practise with early hardcore at different tempos until the heel drops on its own.
👉 Go deeper into what is Hakken.
New School Hakken
The modern version of hakken: same base, much more show. Here the arms and the whole body join in, synced to the kick.
Claps, taps on the trainer, spins and, above all, the reverse hakken: hakken backwards, its signature and what makes it so eye-catching. It is danced to what came after early hardcore, mainly millennium and uptempo, where the speed leaves room for many more flourishes.
The path is clear: first you master old school and then you add layers. The hard part isn't the arms, it's coordinating them with feet that never stop.
Australian Hakken
You recognise it straight away. The Australians took Dutch hakken and turned the volume up: exploding arms and many more jumps.
The technical detail that changes everything: instead of landing on the heel, they step on the ball of the foot. Hence that bouncy, elastic feel, much more vertical than the original style.
Behind it there's a philosophy: expressing, with no filter, what the music makes you feel. It demands strong legs and good stamina, because the jumping never stops.
Italian Freestyle
The most elegant of all and probably the hardest. It is danced to millennium hardcore and its star is footwork so fluid that often the feet don't even fully touch the floor.
Add to that clean spins and highly refined arm and hand work. The Italians also play with caps and jackets as part of the choreography: they stop being clothes and become props.
Everything is locked to the kick with pinpoint precision. It's the style that takes the most hours, but also the one that turns the most heads.
Jumpstyle
It was born in the late 90s in Belgium and the Netherlands, in the hardstyle and hardcore scene, and it's the style many of the others draw from. Its name says it all: jumping. One leg drives the jump while the other throws a kick forward, always nailed to the kick.
The base is the single kick (one kick per beat); once you master it, along comes the double kick, which doubles the speed. Today two strands coexist: Oldschool, true to the beat and the clean kick, and Hardjump, the newschool version: more BPM, a lower stance and more explosive combinations.
It demands legs and cardio in equal measure. It's the perfect step before streetfight: they share the kick and the drive.
👉 More about what Jumpstyle is and our Jumpstyle workshops.
Streetfight
The Spanish style. It starts from the foundations of jumpstyle and takes them somewhere much more aggressive: sky-high kicks, explosive spins and huge jumps.
Its trademark is that it uses the surroundings as part of the dance: dancers hit the floor or the wall with their hands. And they add body percussion, tapping the toe or the knees like claps, usually before starting or in the middle of a sequence.
Visually it's reminiscent of jumpstyle, but with a different intensity. It requires flexibility for the kicks and explosive strength to keep up the pace.
👉 More about what Streetfight is.
Newstyle
The wilder sibling of streetfight. It shares the kicks and the energy, but here there is no fixed structure: jumps, spins, arms up and steps that change on the fly depending on what the track asks for. Every dancer takes it their own way and nobody dances it the same way twice.
The name works two ways: newstyle is a music genre, just as newstyle dance is a dance style, the one danced to that music. And the music is very easy to recognise: its high-pitched, repetitive melodies are what everyone on the dance floor calls pitidos, pitiditos or pitos (“beeps”). When they kick in, it is time to dance newstyle.
Its great temple is Masia, the legendary club in Valencia. It was born right in the middle of the Ruta del Bakalao, the club route that made Valencia’s nightlife famous, and over the years it has become the benchmark for newstyle: people there dance for hours on end without stopping.
It takes cardio, legs and plenty of attitude. If you already dance streetfight, here you let go of the structure and let the beeps carry you.
Shuffle (Hardstyle Shuffle)
Shuffle was born in Melbourne, but it has a version made for hardstyle: AUS style, also called Hardstyle Shuffle, Hard Shuffle or Newschool. It's the evolution of the Melbourne Shuffle and is mostly danced to hardstyle.
Its technique is travelling from one point to another without ever stopping, chaining the T-Step and Running Man along a straight line, almost in 2D. Compact steps, slides, spins and kicks in a continuous, sliding movement that makes it look like you're floating on the kick.
If you come from hakken or jumpstyle, this is a mindset switch: less hitting the floor and more sliding. What they share is the usual thing: timing.
👉 Check out all the Shuffle styles and our Shuffle workshops.
Klaplong
This isn't about moving fast, it's about hitting hard. Klaplong is all about heavy stomps on the kick drum: the floor shakes and the crowd feels it.
The trick is in the whole body. The torso drops at the moment of the stomp, as if absorbing the hit, and comes back up with the arm or the next jump. The arms follow every drop so the stomp looks even wilder.
Everything depends on timing: each foot has to land exactly on the attack of the kick. Train landings and plyometrics, because your knees take the impact.
Kickrolls
The most technical style on the list and the only one that lives from the waist up. A kickroll is that burst of back-to-back kick drums in raw and xtra raw, and the dancer answers it with very marked arm movements.
Stretches, quick contractions, chest hits, pushing the air: a kind of body percussion where the focus is on the arm and torso, not the jump. It was largely popularised by Radical Redemption and his album Annihilate.
The tricky part is the ear: you have to anticipate the roll before it hits. And as the track goes on, the patterns speed up and get packed with fills. Strong core and quick reflexes.
Hardtekk
It comes from Germany and the free tekno and free party scene, mixing hard techno and hardcore. It's more machine than show.
The moves are fast, repetitive and almost hypnotic: constant steps on the spot or travelling, an active torso, wide arms, all locked to a kick drum that never lets up. There are jumps, but what rules is continuity.
It's the most endurance-based style of all: here you don't win with a spectacular jump, you win by riding the rising energy. More marathon than sprint.
Hardtechno Flow (Rave Flow)
It's not hardcore, but it's family: it's hard dance and it has earned its place on the list. It was born on the dark floors of today's hardtechno clubs and festivals, and it has become the visual signature of the new rave generation. It shares the punch of the kick drum with hardcore, but here the movement isn't after the impact of the jump: it's after flow and continuous cadence.
Its technique combines low, constant footwork (the techno stomp) with a wave-like movement of the hips and torso that absorbs the rhythm.
It's the most aesthetic style of all, with roots in club and queer culture: black clothes, leather, harnesses and a hypnotic movement designed to dance for hours without burning out. Here it's not whoever jumps highest who wins, it's whoever never loses the groove.
Music: hardtechno, schranz and industrial techno.
Where do I start?
Whatever style you choose, the first thing is your ear. Listen to lots of hardcore, learn to tell the kicks and breaks apart, and your body will follow. Then train consistently and don't lock yourself into one style; the more you try, the more vocabulary you'll have.
And remember the most important thing: the best dancers in the scene aren't always the most technical, but the ones who make you feel it. Hardcore dance keeps evolving, and whatever you do is part of that story too.
Sources: kickshowinfo and Adrenaline.
