Blast from the present.

As with most dance, hip hop deserves better than it's getting on film. Still, dancers and fans will find a few good instructional tapes and guilty viewing pleasures out there this season.

Groovin' With the Groovaloos, volumes 1 & 2

Running times: 75 and 90 mins. DVDs include music CDs, dance segments, and interviews, $14.98 each.

Subtitled "Learn the Hip-Hop Grooves, Not Just the Moves," these tapes are reasonably easy to follow and emphasize the importance of improv in the evolution of hip hop and its purveyors. Director Bradley "Shooz" Rapier and his fresh-faced crew (whose collective credits include performances with Michael and Janet Jackson and Missy Elliott) guide viewers through basic elements of hip hop: uprock, downrock, points, waves, pops, and locks, demonstrating physical details that make the difference. The way points shoot out from raised arms and elbows, releasing with a snap, or how swiveling hips and a lowered center of gravity can transform a basic Charleston into a b-boying maneuver. The dancers break down the movement clearly and from several angles so that viewers can pick up combinations without multiple stops. In presenting the steps, Rapier gives much-deserved props to their originators, including Don Campbell and the Electric Boogaloos.

You Got Served: Take It to the Streets 

Director/producer Billy Pollina; choreographer Dave Scott. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. Running time: 53 minutes. Instructional dvd also includes interviews and dance segments featuring Marques Houston and Omari Grandberry, $19.95.

Scott's combinations are more dazzling than Rapier's but they're also more difficult. (Scott acknowledges this midway through a combination when he declares, "If I lost you somewhere in there, just rewind and you can catch up.") Beginners will find this DVD daunting, but more experienced dancers will enjoy the variety of standing movement and floorwork. Scott stages the steps facing rewind and away from viewers, noting directional changes, opposing arm and leg movements, facial expressions, and movement imagery. Guest dancers demonstrate and explain ticking, waving, and freezing. A subway station segment with dancer Shane Sparks presents different dance styles, including the aggressive, in-your-face form known as krumping.

Honey

Cast: Jessica Alba, Lonette McKee, Lil' Romeo, Mekhi Phifer. Directed by Billie Woodruff; choreography by Laurie Ann Gibson. Universal Studios Home Video and DVD. Running time: 94 minutes. Rating: PG 13. DVD features music videos, deleted scenes and outtakes, $19.95.

Honey, the tale of an aspiring New York hip-hop dancer-choreographer (Alba), rehashes Fame, Flashdance, Footloose, and those 1940s Andy Hardy musicals in which the protagonists overcome middling authoritarian resistance to achieve their dancing dreams. But if you're willing to overlook the hijacked plot elements, an insipid script, and mediocre acting, the dance sequences may be reward enough. In her feature debut, Woodruff, who has directed music videos for Usher and Britney Spears, captures the excitement of dance by presenting whole moving bodies instead of MTV-ish cut-and-paste editing. Gibson contributes vibrant club showdowns and back-alley breakdance, slinky video sequences, and a hip-hop recital with fast-paced ensemble work. Missy Elliott makes a priceless comic cameo, but the rest of the movie is hopelessly predictable: A sleazy director spies Honey, air inner-city dance teacher, in a club and offers her video work, despite her mother's advice to seek a career in the more stable and lucrative world of ballet(!). When Honey resists the director's inevitable sexual advances and he blacklists her from video auditions citywide, she raises money to open her own dance school by putting on a show, supported by her best friend, her boyfriend, and a band of adorable dancing urchins.