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The Hip Op-eration Crew is the world’s oldest dance group (Guinness World Records).

The mega crew hip hop dance troupe consists of 22 senior citizens aged 68 to 96 years old. The average age is 80 and 13 members are in their 80's and 90's. They are all neighbours and live on Waiheke Island; a small island off the East coast of New Zealand in the South Pacific.

They performed at the World Hip-Hop Championship in Las Vegas, USA (2013), competed in the New Zealand National Hip Hop Championships twice (2013 & 2014) and performed in the Taipei Arena, Taiwan to an audience of 15,000 (2014). They have also performed at Ted Talks in 2015 (manager Billie Jordan did an inspirational speech about why and how she set up the group and how it has changed her life and the lives of her dancers. This speech was followed by a performance by the dance crew). The Ted Talk will be out on the global Ted Talk channel by July 2015.

They have also featured in the news media all over the world from the front page of the Wall Street Journal to the BBC News in Europe to Chinese, American, Japanese, Taiwanese and Australian prime-time television. The Film They are also the subject of an international 95 minute feature documentary film called Hip Hoperation. The film crew followed the crew from their first inception as a hip hop dance group to their performance at the World Hip Hop Championships in Las Vegas eight months later.

The film has received Best Documentary, Best Director and Best Cinematographer awards at the NZ Film Awards (2014) and was the 4th most popular film (out of 300 other films) at the prestigious International Film Festival in Amsterdam in 2014, and won the Audience Choice Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in Feb 2015. The film is now being released in cinemas all over the globe from Israel to the Czech Republic to Sweden to Marthas Vineyard in the USA. It played in the Cannes Film Festival market screenings in June 2015 and came second in the World Human Rights documentary festival in 2015. The Members The Hip Op-eration Crew members include four people who use mobility aids, 13 members in their 80s and 90s, many people who are deaf, and one member who is legally blind. The average age is 80 years old and there are five men and 16 women in the Crew.

The Manager We are managed by 45 year old Billie Jordan who is their founder, choreographer, dance teacher, manager, publicist, marketeer, social media and website manager, charity chairperson, events manager, carer and friend. All her time is voluntary (which she fits around a normal paid job).

History The group was founded by Billie Jordan in 2012. They started off as a Flash Mob in August 2012 doing surprise dance performances around Auckland, New Zealand. They were called 'The World's Oldest Flash Mob'. The video of their debut performance on 9th August 2012 has over 740,000 hits on YouTube. Then in January 2013 Manager Billie Jordan set the group up as an official Hip Hop dance group called ‘The Hip Op-eration Crew’.

Beliefs "Ageism is a real issue in western society. A lot of people automatically presume just because you're a senior citizen you must be old fashioned, feeble, no longer able to contribute to society, can't learn new things, aren't engaged in technology, and don't like doing any activity that is supposedly outside of their comfort zone. Part of our aim is to also address those mis-perceptions and prejudices whilst forming a stronger connection with youth," says Manager Billie Jordan.

The text of this website is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation Licence (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). The creator, Billie Jordan, gives Wikipedia and all media full use of the website's content.

http://www.hipop-eration.com/info-for-news-media/