Circumstances For A Creative Breakthrough

Creative breakthroughs are a compelling phenomena. In Western culture, we celebrate the lone genius who unleashes a game-changing invention. At times, this adulation reaches a point where it seems that the innovation was solely created by the individual without any other notable influences. But that's rarely the case, right? Most creative breakthroughs are borne out of a hotbed of circumstances and influences. Often, there are several people who are working along similar paths leading to the same possible breakthrough. One person may receive the public's praise and recognition for the invention, but it's possible there was even a team of collaborators working with that individual to realize the breakthrough.

In the social networking arena circa 2010, Facebook reigns supreme. It has dominated online relationships after its predecessors - Friendster, Myspace, and a score of others - debuted. While a movie like The Social Network seemingly celebrates a lone creative figure like its fictional Mark Zuckerberg, the reality is that there were a number of college-specific social networks in place before thefacebook.com went online. And for Zuckerberg, even he acknowledges that it was his team of collaborators who made the operation feasible, not his lone efforts, as documented in the book The Facebook Effect, which is not surprisingly sanctioned by his company (as opposed to Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires upon which the film The Social Network is based on). So creative breakthroughs can be understood as the cumulative efforts of many.

But it often takes a leader to tie it all together, especially when you're working with a creative team. It takes someone with a unique perspective to unite the loose threads that have been floating around in the creative ether. Someone who sees an opportunity and acts on it. So the question for street dancers is: will we see a major new street style emerging in the next few years? As we train, we learn foundation from our teachers. We are inspired by the artistic exploration of our peers. And we are influenced, for better or for worse, by the plethora of online dance videos that are part of our daily digital consumption. Could there be someone out there who is cooking these ingredients into something new?

It can be argued that there's been more evolution in bboyin' and poppin' than lockin' in Los Angeles in the last five years. Krumping is still going strong. Strangely enough, there's little mention of jerking in mainstream media news these days. Meanwhile, in the collegiate choreography world, countless young dancers are fusing ideas that they're borrowing from various styles and melding something that's uniquely their own. It's hard to say if any of this creative exploration is going anywhere. Yes, it might make for a few interesting Youtube videos. But will be it become an artistic movement that spreads around the globe and inspires new generations?

The thing about creative breakthroughs is that it can't be harnessed or quantified. It's like catching lightning in a bottle. When was the last time you did that? What's feasible though is that as a community, we can continue to encourage proactive exploration among our peers. We can support our fellow dancers who are trying to do something different even if they make a lot of mistakes along the way. We can debate, criticize, analyze, and rethink the way things are done while valuing the simple wisdom behind established foundation. But most of us aren't having that kind of conversation. To be honest, our debates are rarely balanced and we're not usually thinking about taking a chance at seeing things from another person's perspective. It's too bad that this short-sightedness could be one detrimental factor that's choking our collective creativity. How do we break free from this status quo?

Why We Need A Culture of Action, Not Words

The Internet has made written and visual communication easier to execute. But how much of that translates into proactive action? It's faster to type in 140 characters into a text message or tweet than it is to pick yourself up and do something concrete in your community. We wage war with our words on forums. We congratulate, we praise, we deride, and we question. All with our words. Sometimes with video clips and still images. One of the most detrimental effects the Internet has had on our dance culture is that it can enable laziness. Everything is easier when it's just a mouse click away. Now, the Internet has had positive effects as well, including bringing our dance communities closer to globalization through forums, video sharing, and social networking. But why haven't our communities experienced greater change in the 21st century? Shouldn't we expect more from the tools we've been given to really evolve the way we grow our culture?

We're not a culture of action. As much as we love the image of the gung ho revolutionary, we play it safe most of our lives. It's not easy taking risks. In our information economy, the fastest transactions are the ones that can be digitized. Words, pictures, videos are all capable of being reduced to 1's and 0's. But not action - the real kind which brings change in relationships and troubled communities. That takes committed leaders who are a bit crazy. It seems like you need a little obsession if you feel compelled to realize a transformative change. Ask yourself - is it easier to be content with the status quo or to risk losing everything that you hold dear to make a difference? You have to be crazy to want to change things. It rocks the boat. And not everyone likes to have their world disturbed.

The street dance world is no different than any other community when it comes to the fallacies of human behavior and conflict. We argue, we struggle to forgive, we attack and we defend. It could be on any topic, especially when someone feels wronged or disrespected. Even apathy can kill our love of the dance. We could resign to the belief that nothing will ever change. And that none of this matters. After all, if we allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed by negativity, isn't it true that art isn't a human necessity? Not like food, shelter, and clothing, right? Oh no, but many of us would disagree with this statement. Art keeps us alive. It feeds something deep in our soul. It taps into our need to express ourselves, to create. An argument ensues. But then, what can we do about it in terms of concrete action?

Coming from that argument, do we choose to empower others with our artform? Are we teaching younger dancers the knowledge that we've accumulated over years of training? Are we giving them tools to make their own decisions and to critically think about why they should embrace the artist's journey as part of their daily lives? After all, we live in a country where arts education has been devalued in public schools. These programs are the first to go with budget cuts. And so a culture develops where creativity is not valued and is not thought of as essential. It doesn't pay the bills.

Let's fight this. We all can have an impact even if we start with just one person. Maybe it's someone sitting next to you right now. They might need a little boost, a tinge of encouragement to help them embrace creative expression through art. If we were made to be creative beings, then these deep soulful longings inside of us can't be contained. In fact, it would be somewhat suicidal to keep them bottled up and buried. Is there something that you can do right now to act on your instincts to change the status quo? Believe it, you have something to offer to another person. Share something today.

Will Waacking Overtake Lockin' in LA?

On Oct 29-31, 2010; Debbie Reynolds Studio & One Fitness in North Hollywood will be hosting the LA International Waacking/Punking Festival. Javier Ninja (House of Ninja) and other instructors will be teaching workshops. Also, there will be a variety of battles on Oct 30th. What's going on here? It seems like waacking is everywhere these days. Dare we say that it's gaining more ground than lockin' in our local scene? Or is it too early to say? What's clear is that waacking is being championed by proactive supporters in what appears to be a local homegrown movement.

Let's rewind the clock and return to July 17, 2010. This was the day of the annual Homeland Jam in Wilmington, not far from Homeland's actual community center in Long Beach. OG BBoy Iceman, who started this event in 2005, approved the first Homeland waacking contest when it was reported that there would be a good turnout by waackers. Traditionally, we've only seen poppin' and lockin' at the Homeland Jam, which was started to give these street dancers an opportunity to shine in a scene packed with bboy jams. So on July 17, close to 40 waackers showed up at the Homeland Jam. Even girls from Osaka's Studio Myster showed up to enter as their group was visiting LA that week. In the finals, it was Ibuki from Studio Myster vs Raquel Cabrera (The Waackers) with Raquel taking the win. If you were there at the Homeland Jam, you knew this was the hottest contest at the event.

Even before the Homeland Jam 2010, waacking has been growing in popularity across Los Angeles and Orange County, especially among the new school generation of women rockin' in our scene. Kumari Suraj's group The Waackers have made themselves known at industry events, contests, and dance studios through consistent appearances and promotion in person and online. Based on the Facebook page for the upcoming Oct 29-31 LA International Waacking/Punking Festival, the Waackers and their close friends appear to be behind this event. At the weekly Homeland sessions, Tiffany "Jimini" Bong has taught waacking (along with lockin') classes, promoted by her affiliation with Culture Shock Los Angeles. Angel Ceja has also visited the open session at Homeland to teach what he describes as the punking style. In the collegiate choreography scene, dancers like Kaba Modern's Hikari Murakami are well known to include waacking-inspired elements in their routines, as seen in Boogiezone-sponsored classes and showcase performances.

So why is waacking enjoying this resurgence among a new generation of dancers? Poppin', lockin' and bboyin' have usually been male-dominated although we've seen a growth in the bgirl population from 2000-2010. Many of the new school waackers are female and are establishing their own presence and identities. The dramatic presentation, fashion, flavor, and effusive emotion behind waacking is different from what we see in other street styles. Waacking is offering something that poppin', lockin', and bboyin' haven't brought to the table. Maybe it's a unique fierceness that only waackers can understand. And because it has been championed by groups like The Waackers, this dance style can only expect to experience more growth in the future.

Can waacking grow faster than lockin' among the new school in LA? Anything is possible. Right now, we aren't seeing a consistent organization promoting lockin' in our scene. When was the last time you saw a jam that was solely devoted to lockers? We hope that these lockin'-only events are out there, but they've been hard to find. Lockin' is usually presented as a secondary contest to poppin' or bboy jams. There haven't been an influx of lockin' teachers from Europe or Asia coming to teach locally. And the most visible concentration of lockin' education has probably been Greg Campbellock Jr's lockin' camp held in Las Vegas during the summer. But with Greg's recent passing earlier this year, who will take on the lockin' cause?

This is where we could be seeing a shifting in the sands for our local street dance scene. Bboyin' remains the dominant street style and will continue to expand. Poppin' has exploded in recent years and is going strong with various promoters and top-notch crews representing. Waacking is now rapidly catching on. But lockin' remains at a status quo.

We hope that a solution is executed soon. Lockers, take notice. Who among you will champion your cause and community?

Why Online Social Identities Shouldn't Matter for Dancers

If there are over 500 million users on Facebook, that's just a small fraction of the world's close to 6 billion population. There may be other online platforms used by different countries, but digital connectivity for the individual is still a luxury for many. As much as the techno-minded prophets proclaim digital globalization, there are still stretches of the world that remain unplugged. Do you remember what that was like? Not having constant tweets, status updates, and visual information streaming into your daily radar? Those of us who lead online lives make the biggest noise in the digital sphere, but we are a small fraction of the world. Social identities online have been on the cultural map for most of the first decade of the twentieth century as our personas became more personalized, enhanced, and remixed. A street dancer who lives in this alternate online universe can't help but feel tempted to have some kind of footprint on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. But what if we took all of that away?

What if tomorrow, those social networks we relied upon were wiped out by some cataclysmic event? The repercussions would be huge for global communication. It would likely be a temporary state since most of these companies would seek to get us all back online as soon as possible. But what if it was permanent? What if we became digitally regressed and returned to lives networked by in-person and face-to-face relationships in our immediate neighborhoods and tribes? For a street dancer, this might mean returning to a lifestyle informed only by your immediate friends and peers in the same city, and maybe only the same neighborhood.

Our human nature desires to find out why we matter. We want to be validated. We want someone else to listen to what we're saying, to acknowledge our presence. In theory, there's a higher chance of this when you put yourself online. The more friends you have on Facebook, the more likely someone will "like" your latest status update. They may even leave a comment that brightens your day. So many of us in the street dance culture are chasing a temporal celebrity and recognition by becoming "known" for our dance videos online. Our youngest generation, probably those who started around 2007-2008 and onward, face the biggest internal struggles. What if they never get acknowledged for their dance skills online? Does it make their talent less worthwhile than the dancer who has millions of Twitter followers?

Social identities online should never be allowed to pollute the heart of a dancer. We can't allow it to mold the core of who we are. The need to be recognized would still exist even without the Internet, but it probably wouldn't cry out as loud inside our heads in those quiet moments of reflection. It's fine if street dancers want to use these technologies to promote themselves and to bring in business for teaching classes, performances, booking gigs, etc. But for those who are addicted to the need to be recognized, imagine a world that was not as rapidly connected as ours today. What would you do with your time? How would you see yourself?

To those susceptible to this addiction, know that you are not alone. You shouldn't be ashamed of who you are or who you want to become. Those are natural human desires. But let's take steps, at least small ones, towards moving to a healthier place. Your dance doesn't need technology. It needs you to be fully present in the now, to give your whole heart to the passion that brought you to move to the music in the first place.

Can An Expert Googler Grasp Street Dance?

As we near the end of 2010, we have to wonder how this first year of the second decade in the 21st century is shaping our street dance culture. In some ways, things haven't changed. There are still the same debates that rage on in our inner circles - on the historical facts of where certain dance styles originated, who stole key ideas from whom, and how the young generation of dancers is missing something that our elders possessed. We're all human, after all. None of us can ever hope to be perfect although we may find ourselves categorizing each other in order to make sense of the chaos which can be life itself.

There's a lot of noise online. And if there was ever a cultural cinematic milestone reflecting our social loneliness, it is David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network, which debuted earlier this month. The film creates a mythical story for the public about the early years of Facebook's founding and somewhere along the way, we're staring into the mirror wondering if our own isolation is reflected in the story of a fictional Mark Zuckerberg, whom the film features as its anti-hero protagonist and co-founder of Facebook. Street dancers are like any other humans online. We have come to live part of our lives in digital bits whether it's sharing our pictures, 140 character witty status updates, or practice session videos with a sometimes faceless audience in a digital alternate universe. We're not alone. But sometimes, it really feels that way. And we need to feel like we're not alone by posting something online that makes us feel better about ourselves - as if making a digital fingerprint will make us feel like we matter.

The online world is a mess. And thousands of entrepreneurs are trying to make sense of it, trying to organize it in ways that we can enjoy it as part of our conscious lives. Social networking, search engines, online video and picture sharing are extensions of our constantly forming identities. What was once private activities that we formulated in journals or inner circles is now shared on a larger platform. For dancers, this is a confusing environment. In the past decade, Google has shaped our cultural perceptions of each other by placing value upon search items ranked by relevance via their PageRank system. So when a newcomer to street dance culture searches for a dance tutorial or a historical document on a street dance style, how can they be sure that they are finding the most well-informed and balanced source? Perhaps in other cultures this would be an adequate route. But we know that within street dance culture, very little has been documented or even organized in an accessible format for the general public. Street culture in general exists within the vibrant inner circles that are most directly experienced by stepping into those communities. Rarely do the dancers themselves make it a priority to provide a Wikipedia entry that explains their history, aesthetic approach, or reasons for their craft. Why should they? It's not immediately relevant or seems as necessary in terms of living daily within that culture.

So the newcomer who may not know their street dance foundation but has expert Googling skills is left without an informed direction. They will need to figure it out for themselves. And they'll form their own conclusions based on what appears in Wikipedia, which search results are the most highly ranked from Google's search engine, and which Youtube videos have the greatest number of views. Relevance is then measured in terms of hard numbers determined by the metrics of these online platforms. Cultural information online gets crowdsourced, but is it well-informed?

How can we bring a significant change to this scenario? We need champions. We need individuals and organized groups who are relationally connected to street dance communities. These champions can take a stand and start organizing, narrating, and presenting aspects of our street dance community online to a public who is dying to be well-informed. The champions can enter the crowdsourcing movement and help inform what is relevant. That's how Wikipedia works, after all. Anyone can offer an entry into its database, but there are still a handful of quality control authors who measure its authenticity based on their criteria. This isn't a perfect solution. But it's a start. Otherwise what's the alternative?

Is it possible that street dance culture in its most authentic form can be overshadowed or lost in this hyperactive, digital noise that's filtering into our laptops, smartphones, and information streams everyday? If we look at the 1980s and conclude that an overexposure and miscommunication of street dance culture in mainstream media drove millions away, will we experience something similar in the lack of informed information sharing online in our current times? Someone has to take responsibility for this. Is this you? Do you feel a burden to make an impact on a younger generation who needs your leadership in their education and artistic journey?

Why Street Dancers Need Other Artists

We're not alone. Although sometimes we act that way. As street dancers in America, we live surprisingly isolated lives. Yes, we make connections with dancers around the world through Youtube and other friends. But, in terms of aesthetic collaboration, we haven't made bold strides in working with artists from other genres. In Los Angeles, there are plenty of filmmakers, fashion designers, visual artists, musicians, and creative minds of all kinds. Why is it so hard for us to collaborate with those beyond our comfort zone?

Collaboration is a tricky business. It's a wily animal. Managing creative risk-taking between a group of people is an art form that is rarely studied. There can be too many agendas, a lack of strong vision, or an absence of convincing leadership. More often than not, we think that people we recruit buy into our vision when they really buy into our character first. Leadership isn't a natural thing for us street dancers. We focus on individual expression, creative freedom, and walk a thin line between preserving the past history while striving to innovate on our own.

By nature, we're lone rangers. We form crews to represent, to form a tribe that will walk the journey with us. But outside of those borders, we rarely choose to venture. Much has been said in the past year about Jon M. Chu working with his LXD dancers through stage shows to their online Hulu series to Step Up 3D. But since these ventures have premiered, the dialogue has suddenly gone silent. Was it the lack of financial boxoffice success for Step Up 3D or the harsh critical reviews from the general public for The LXD that led to this muted conversation? Whatever the reason, we need more artists outside of dance who can collaborate with us. One primary reason that the hip hop elements sprung out of the Brooklyn and Bronx epicenter in the early 1980s was due to journalists and art scene enthusiasts creating venues for the Rock Steady Crew bboys and graff writers to perform for new crowds. In 2005, David LaChapelle invited the mainstream media into the world of clown dancing and krumping in his documentary film Rize.

So we need filmmakers to help us tell our stories. Or a few of us need to become filmmakers. Photographers are necessary to capture those fleeting moments that define the spontaneity of our culture. Fashion designers could help us explore new visual ideas for our bodies in motion. And musicians provide the life blood for our dance. Working with other artists is crucial to preserving our dance culture as well as exploring opportunities for evolution. If only, we were more open to collaboration.

This isn't an impossible dream. The saavy dancers will look out for filmmakers, photographers, graphic designers, and other creative minds to cook up something special. The rest of us will be blown away by the results. We have to remember that our intrinsic need to create is a powerful force in our lives. And creating is rarely done well alone. We need each other to realize our artistic visions.

Freestyle Hip Hop: Coast to Coast

What's the state of hip hop freestyle today? On the West Coast, street styles like poppin', lockin', and bboyin' have thriving communities. These cultures have been revived by the formation of new communities through Internet forums in the early 2000s to today's social networks. But outside of these street styles, there seems to be confusion about what would be considered hip hop freestyle. Lots of terms like new jack swing, old school hip hop, 90's hip hop, urban freestyle, and urban dance have been thrown around. It's confusing. Go into any studio whether it's Focus in Irvine, Debbie Reynolds in North Hollywood or the Edge. Who is actually teaching hip hop freestyle at these venues? Especially the freestyle drawing from the music and feel of the early 90's.

Meanwhile, a new generation of teens and twentysomethings are building their own scene in Orange County, springing from the college choreography scene. Now, this college scene has roots in the early 90's but the focus has been on choreography not individual freestyle. So the feel and nature of the dance is different. Musicality is stressed but it's focused on creating photogenic pictures of large groups of moving bodies on stage. This scene's development is also complicating the discussion of what we call hip hop freestyle. When we see these teams perform showcases at VIBE or World of Dance, are they hip hop freestyle, hip hop choreography, or something else? Now, a few dancers from this scene are becoming the face of "hip hop dance" to a young America that is in love with Youtube, America's Best Dance Crew, and So You Think You Can Dance. Is Hollywood media distorting our views of hip hop again?

On the East Coast, especially in New York, there's still a strong foundation for teachers like Elite Force who teach regularly at studios like Peridance, PMT, and Broadway Dance Center. Dance teachers from other scenes like house and vogue are readily available to teach like Brian Greene, Archie Burnett, and Benny Ninja. When you travel through the studios and sessions in NY, it doesn't seem to be as confusing understanding what hip hop freestyle looks like as compared to the various shades of grey in Los Angeles.

The West Coast has a lot of creative energy that comes from so many different voices coming together. But maybe it's time that we take a moment and break away from our Youtube habits. We should do our research and expose ourselves to who are considered hip hop freestylers from informed peers. There's something lacking in the soul of our young hip hop generation today. There's a freedom that's missing. The question is why?