It's Hard to Adapt

While street dancers may adapt to changing environmental circumstances that determine how they live their lifestyle, it's often harder to adapt to generational differences. Our culture is over thirty-something years and our society has changed its landscape many times over. Even the ethnic demographics are different today compared to the dancers of the 70s and 80s. More than ever, it's hard to adapt. We face different needs, expectations, and ways of communicating within and outside our current culture than our predecessors twenty to thirty years ago.

Often, the first conceived solution is to recreate the past. Bring it back to the old school. Create the circumstances for a virtual time capsule that our current generation can step in to. But that's challenging. And it could be considered unimaginative. The challenge is for us to dream and re-invent the way we gather, interact, and share our dancing. Can we capture the soul of our dance culture while putting it in new clothes? Sometimes, asking a current generation to replay what was done in the past is insulting to them because it doesn't capture their uniqueness.

The tug-of-war that goes on between OGs and the new school will always be there. We can't ask either camp to change who they are. But what we can encourage is better understanding and greater interpersonal communication. Both sides can learn from each other. The OGs bring a history and wealth of experience to new minds. And the new school bring clever ways of approaching our culture with faster technology and changing demographics. And as street dance culture continues, more generations will be added to the mix. There just won't be one old school and one new school. We'll need to differentiate the eras and create a platform for more communication.

It's a fascinating social experience. Street dance is a young culture compared to other dance forms which have been around for decades or centuries. But we're currently one of the most vibrant. And we possess plenty of room to evolve rather than staying stagnant. So where do we go from here? How do we adapt?