Comix Barrella, John

Street Dance Educator, Choreographer, Performer, Consultant & Company Director

John Barrella’s work is based around street dance culture. His work utilizes a range of arts influences with techniques based in locking, popping, b-boy, and hip hop. As a performer, John works as a solo artist and in collaboration with members of the hip hop community. He has been a featured dancer in music videos “HSKT” by Tenin and “Get Away” By Alissia. Other works include a presentation fot Tedx: Chaos, Halftime shows for the NY Knicks, NYC Breakers’ Battle of the Boroughs reunion and much more. As a choreographer, John’s work has been presented internationally. His unique approach to movement has been placed on dancers in countless schools in and out of the United States.

At the age of 14, John was accepted into the “School of the Arts” in East Brunswick where he spent four years learning modern dance and ballet from a variety of instructors and master teachers. Aside from traditional dance classes, he attended annual courses in human anatomy, improvisational techniques, childhood education, choreography techniques, musical theatre, and theatre. In college, John studied small business management to round out the important aspects of his dance career training. From his early teens, John has studied under various hip hop artists and was recruited into WildStyle dance company where he learned his core hip hop techniques. He gained appreciation for street styles with glimpses into technique for house dance, waacking and dancehall. Furthering his training, John still regularly attends classes and events with master and pioneering hip hop artists. Notable influences on his work include Tom Mckie, Spex, Brian Green, Bev Brown, Jazzy J, Sekou, Pavan Thimmiah and more.

John is director of “The Redef Movement: Artists of Street Dance,” a dance company he founded in 2007. He and his company present work both in a range of hip hop and professional dance atmospheres, most frequently presented throughout NJ, NY, and Philadelphia. Their comedy-based work “Stupid Humans” is a satire on the performing arts, often utilizing live shows or dance films to create humorous takes on common elements of the dance and performance world. In addition to his duties as a company director, John is an adjunct professor for hip hop at Rider University.

In recent years, John has developed a curriculum and program that trains teachers in hip hop terminology and technique, applying it to class structure. This program, “Essentials for Dance Education” has been implemented in classrooms around the world and has offered countless teachers a look into his own method of instruction. John’s classes and events are designed to teach aspiring dancers the fundamentals of street & hip hop dance as a freestyle art and techniques to master choreography. His goals are to inspire people to be artists and push themselves creatively and positively both in and outside of dance.