Community: Step Up 3D

It's rare to find a dancer who excels simply on their own. You could say that every great dancer has an equally stellar community that has backed them and nurtured them. It's true in almost every artform and discipline. This week, we're looking at different forms of community that have sprung up in the street dance culture. Today's focus is on the collective of dancers involved in the upcoming Step Up 3D film directed by Jon M. Chu.

MTV's America's Best Dance Crew may have reason to be anxious. It seems that in the past couple months, Jon M. Chu's tribe of dancers and incredible athletes have captured the public's imagination. They stole the show with their appearance on the recent season of So You Think You Can Dance. They debuted to a larger global audience at the Oscars ceremony. Buzz is building for the LXD online series. ABDC was probably at its peak during the third season with the rivalry between Quest and the Beat Freaks. Since then, the show hasn't captured the public's imagination with anything new although the ratings are strong for the fifth season. Meanwhile, the LXD dancers have teased the general public with their performances and whetted appetites, promising something we've never seen before with its unique cast.

They've formed a tight-knit community of professional dancers from various scenes. And it's going to be compelling to see the work they produce over the next few years. For young viewers, these dancers will be their role models because of their media exposure. While Youtube provides a window for anyone to search for specific dancers, the folks in Step Up 3D will be immortalized because of their contributions to the film. History will likely repeat itself in the way that the Rock Steady Crew made a deep impression on youth culture in the 1980s through their appearance in Flashdance. Even You Got Served continues to stick in people's minds, especially the solo from abstract dancer Elsewhere in the final competition.

This group of dancers in Step Up 3D seems to have evolved from the ACDC vs M&M Cru online battles in spring 2008 to the LXD project to the upcoming film. It's time for many of these talented dancers to get their chance to shine in the spotlight. There's definitely a generational sea change that has happened since 2003's You Got Served. Many of Step Up 3D's dancers were in their teens and early twenties in 2003. They were getting started in their styles, and now they're front and center before the film cameras. We're hoping this professional tribe of dancers will have opportunities to interact with a wider fan and audience base, now that social networking technology is so accessible. Perhaps this will further the spread of our dance culture beyond anything we've imagined.