Meet Koharu Sugawara, Our Latest Hip-Hop Idol

Every once in a while, you stumble across a choreographer or dancer on YouTube, and you’re like, Wait, how on EARTH am I just now discovering this person?! Where have they been all my life? Did I just reach dance nirvana? And then you proceed to watch every single video you can find, scouring the interwebz for one more glimpse of your new-found idol.

Don’t judge: I know you’ve all done the same thing

This week, Japanese hip-hop choreographer Koharu Sugawara is the artist responsible for blowing the DS editors’ minds. While she’s based in Japan, Sugawara frequents Urban Dance Camp, the annual international hip-hop workshop in Germany that floods YouTube with brilliant excerpts from choreographers like DS faves Keone and Mari Madrid. We have UDC to thank for facilitating our recent Sugawara binge. And we would be remiss not to share the experience with you.

Simply scroll down, and prepare to experience sheer hip-hop-nerd bliss.

The video that first caught our attention was of Sugawara’s combo to Sia’s “Elastic Heart.” (You know we already have a soft, Maddie-Ziegler-shaped spot in our hearts for this song…) The choreography shows off Sugawara’s molten, dare we say elastic style. This girl knows how to work a pair of harem pants, and her use of tension is the perfect example of how to bring the subtle sexy.

But then we learned she can hit hard and bring the stank when we watched her combo to Mary J. Blige’s “The One.”

Oh, and apparently she also has Michael-Jackson swag—and a rare ability to make the running man look cool (at 1:15)—as made evident by her clip to Ed Sheeran’s “Sing.”

While watching her video to Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be,” we saw her overwhelming love and joy for dance.

And then she did a combo to Destiny’s Child, and we pretty much lost it.

#winning