Dallas residents participate in hip-hop yoga during the Crow Collection After Dark event Friday, Sept. 16, 2011, at the Crow Collection of Asian Art Museum in Dallas, Texas. (Katharina Marino/The Daily Campus)
Friday evening’s rain may have kept some at home, but not the McKnight girls. Jacquline McKnight gladly welcomed the warm showers and brought both her daughters out to join in on a little hip-hop yoga during national yoga month.
As McKnight’s daughter, Katheryn, 13, focused on attempting her first yoga class, those on neighboring mats fussed over her 8-month-old sister, Lilah, who used her mother as an ad-lib jungle gym.
The event on Friday, Sept. 16 was a part of the “Crow Collection After Dark,” which is hosted by the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art on the third Friday of each month.
Although the rain caused for some improvisation on the night’s scheduling, attendees didn’t mind moving inside since many of the events were planned for an outside street stage between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Crow Collection Museum in downtown Dallas.
Long- time yogis Jennifer Chitwood and Anne Lenhart came to see exactly how hip-hop could be incorporated into the exercise.
“I am really hoping we get to do some actual dancing,” Lenhart said as Chitwood chimed in with a teasing reference to the Snoop Dogg hit song “Drop it like it’s hot.”
Kasumi Chow, marketing intern for the Crow, explained that the purpose behind the event is to bring people into the museum for a fun family affair, stating that the museum doesn’t always have to be a prim and proper place.
“The museum can be informal,” Chow said as she slid battery-operated candles across the gallery floor between pillows preparing for the meditation part of the evening.
In addition to meditation and hip-hop yoga, the event integrated many other activities into the museum including a screening of Vishnu’s “OHMazing Journeys” video.
The DVD is the second volume from Yogiños: Yoga For Youth, an interdisciplinary program partnered with the Crow that implements yoga and other aspects of art to encourage physical and mental wellness for youth.
For those who wanted to do more observing than doing, the entire museum was open allowing visitors to view the extensive collection of Asian art housed in the galleries. Guests could also enjoy a live show by MC Yogi, an artist whose style is meant to intertwine hip-hop music and yoga giving a modern twist to the work out.
Sara Horsfall waited in line patiently before the performance and didn’t know what she and her husband should expect.
“[We’d] never heard of it but thought we’d come feel it out and see what it’s all about,” she said.
Along with various stations for arts and crafts and a granola bar packed full of healthy goodies, the night finished out with a round of karaoke and meditation.
