You Can Now Watch A Documentary About The Chicago Footwork Subculture In Singapore

SG FOOTWERKING is an online documentary series featuring key interviews with juke DJs and dancers in the local community (Credit: Screenshots from SG FOOTWERKING)

By now, you should know that the tininess of a city doesn’t impede the bloom of diversity within its music scene. Prior to the pandemic, the metropolis was bustling with all sorts of sounds and subcultures – reggae, jungle, hip-hop, Afrobeat, you name it. Another esoteric genre that intriguingly built its niche cranny was Chicago footwork (or juke), a sprightly category of music you’d never think would pop up in Singapore. Characterised by speedy tempos, syncopated rhythms and glitchy vocal samples, footwork is a subset of bass music with a culture that dates back to the ’90s.

A core part of this footwork culture lies in its distinctive choreography, much like what breakdancing is to hip-hop. Footwork dance moves reflect the frenzied nature of the music it follows, often with an emphasis on feet-focused techniques – like the Dribble and Erk & Jerk – executed with precision and speed. Finding a dance community that practises this agile artform in Singapore is just as rare as finding footwork DJs and punters, further upping its obscurity in the city. Fortunately, there are those out there who wish to shed light on this small but active presence.

Directed and produced by Clemens Chua, who also happens to be a dancer, SG FOOTWERKING is a new documentary series that admirably tells the story of the Chicago footwork movement in Singapore. With several episodes now available on YouTube, the series features insightful interviews with key figures in the community. These include a chat with Skimy, the founder of the SG Footwerkerz crew, who shares the growing appeal of the dance amongst local circles. Part of the documentary even features a freestyle dance video, marked as a special edition of the Reclaim The Streets series, that exhibits the local footwork dance community in their element.

Local DJs well-versed in the genre – including Iyer, A/K/A Sounds, B10N and Scatta – also get screentime, revealing anecdotes of how they fell into the genre and their various endeavours in pushing it. A highlight of the series showcases all four of them engaged a casual yet enlightening discussion session, sharing the connections and commonalities of their respective journeys.

SG FOOTWERKING is an ambitious effort of love of Clemens, who self-funded the whole project and took four months to put it all together. There are few people out there who’d go out of their way to document the music scene like this, let alone an extremely niche segment of it. You can truly sense the passion that pumps through this DIY undertaking, and it is one that all footwork fans – or any fan of the music scene, really – should watch.

You can watch the whole documentary series on this YouTube channel.