Want to put your finger on the pulse of dance today? Take a hip-hop class. You’ll be in good company.

At dance studios across this city, hip-hop classes are packed with everyone from 8-year-old girls to 28-year-old disc jockeys, from students of modern dance to company members of American Ballet Theatre.

Hip-hop, which has so permeated our popular culture, has become an integral part of every level of the dance world. It’s a must-have at studios for amateurs. It’s a recommended part of professional curriculums. It’s also becoming the hot export for American companies when they go abroad.

The popularity of this dance style has almost everything to do with the music. Shelley Grantham, of Peridance Center, says the demand for classes has grown steadily along with the growth of the genre.

“The more popular the music videos, the more popular hip-hop gets,” she said. “Think about the first rap videos. Then you saw MC Hammer, then the Backstreet Boys. In the last five years, it’s become more popular because of those teen bands.”

Robin Dunn, a dance teacher and choreographer who was among the first in the city to offer a hip-hop class (in 1989), says adults are seeking out hip-hop because they want to be of the moment.

“You see it in videos, then you go to the clubs and you can be fly,” she said.

And as a dance form, it can be attractive to adults who don’t have a dance background: “It’s a bit more attainable to a beginner dancer. You’re going to be a bit more at ease, and it gives you a cardio workout.”

As popular as it is with adults, the kiddies are wild for it. “Our 8-year-olds eat it up. They come in their hip-hop gear and their cool clothes,” said Ms. Grantham. “I get moms of 3- and 4-year-olds asking if their kids can take hip-hop.”

One feature for kids at Peridance is the hip-hop birthday, which Ms. Grantham organizes. In one upcoming event, a 7-year-old girl is celebrating her birthday by inviting 20 friends for one hour of instruction with two teachers – followed by a pizza party.

But hip-hop is much more than an afternoon of fun for those working toward a stage career. Students in the professional program at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s school are now required to take two hip-hop classes a year.

“Mr. Ailey wanted to add ‘street’ when he was alive, but there weren’t teachers yet,” said Yvette Campbell, director of the Ailey Extension, which offers hip-hop and other classes to the public. “He saw the merit. He saw that it was ‘today.'”

And it’s certainly not just modern dancers who benefit from hip-hop classes. Valentina Kozlova teaches classical ballet technique in the Vaganova style at her school, the Dance Conservatory of New York, yet she strongly recommends that her students take hip-hop class, too.

“All sorts of dance forms will help a classical training,” said this former member of the Bolshoi and the New York City Ballet. “You become more in control of your body. You become more accessible to as many forms as possible.”

American Ballet Theatre’s Danny Tidwell, one of the company’s rising stars, agrees. While growing up in Virginia Beach, he studied hip-hop and jazz, as well as ballet. He still takes hip-hop classes occasionally, and finds that it helps his ballet technique.

“In hip-hop, you can’t go halfway,” he said, explaining that the intensity of a hip-hop work out can make you realize that you should be working harder in a ballet class. “The texture and detail that’s in ballet is also in hip-hop. It’s just more in your face.”

When ABT traveled to Bermuda this winter, the company conducted classes as part of a fund-raiser. Mr. Tidwell taught a hip-hop class, and found the students hungry for it. “They didn’t know exactly what they were going to get. It helped their ballet the next day,” he said.

In his view, too, the popularity of the dance form is about the music. “You recognize Jennifer Lopez and Jay Z and it makes you want to dance,” he said. “That’s what you dance to in your room.”

On a recent trip to the Middle East, the Battery Dance Company also encountered an intense eagerness for hip-hop classes while teaching workshop classes in Amman, Jordan. “It was an Arthur Murray studio, but it was the hip-hop and MTV-style dance that completely captivated these students,” said artistic director Jonathan Hollander.

The desire for exposure to the style became clear to dancer John Byrne, who taught one of the classes. After a week of teaching and performing at various venues, the exhausted company was heading off for a weekend trip to Petra. But Mr. Byrne’s students came by his hotel and pleaded with him to stay in town. They wanted to perform the five-minute routine he taught them at a local nightclub – and they wanted his help to prepare. (And yes, he obliged.)

“I realized that it could have been risky in this part of the world where husbands are not used to seeing their wives dance with other male partners,” Mr. Byrne said, via e-mail, adding that it turned out to be an entirely positive evening – and that he has received several e-mails from students asking when he’s coming back.

The international interest in this American form is most certainly related to music videos and images of recording artists that are available around the world. And because of those videos, it’s entirely feasible now to aspire to be a professional hip-hop dancer. “Dancers can build careers by being in music videos and becoming teachers,” said Ms. Dunn.

And for those folks, the center of the universe is the West Coast.

“If you’re a hip-hop dancer you live in L.A. That’s where all the videos are shot. That’s where all the musical agents are,” said Ms. Grantham.

Even so, there’s plenty going on in studios right here.

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The Mark Morris Dance Group takes the stage tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. On the program, which runs though April 23, are four works, including the New York premiere of “Rock of Ages,” set to a piano trio by Franz Schubert.

The other three works are revivals from the 1990s. The earliest is “Somebody’s Coming to See Me Tonight” (1995), which uses a suite of Stephen Foster songs. A commissioned score by Lou Harrison and a dynamic painted backdrop by Howard Hodgkin are part of “Rhymes With Silver” (1997). “Silhouettes” (1999) is a duet danced to five piano pieces by Richard Cunningham.