Why It's So Hard To See Outside Of Our Perspective

Why is it so hard to see beyond our own perspective? One of the greatest tragedies in human civilization is our narrow-sightedness. Often, we can't or choose not to look beyond what we see with our own eyes. We develop a myopia that limits our field of vision. As a result, our future becomes limited. In the Western world, it's even harder to step out of your own POV sometimes and see things from another person's lens. We celebrate the individual in U.S. culture. It's no secret. But often, we need a stronger sense of how other people see the same things in order to survive. After all, that's how a community grows.

Street dancing is like any other tribe. We have traditions, rituals, habits, language, and expectations of each other. We gather. We fight. We celebrate. But the classic anthropologist will see how self-limiting we are. Many of us retreat into the dance scene in order to escape our daily lives and responsibilities. Our dance peers become our confidantes and surrogate families. This is all fine. But what's alarming is when we close ourselves off to the rest of the world. We can easily develop a mentality that the rest of the world just doesn't understand us. We can tell ourselves they never will empathize with our situation. It becomes an "us vs. them" mentality.

We're losing this battle. A new generation of street dancers have emerged and their only role models are the ones around them at practice sessions and cyphers. They have no mentors who are showing them the beauty of growing in their artform while experiencing life outside our culture. These young people need that kind of balanced guidance. In the end, you have to ask yourself - does dancing solve all of your problems? That kind of question will elicit thousands of responses. But it's an important one to ask and to evaluate your answer to it.

It's frustrating. Very, very frustrating. It takes a certain madness to see beyond what you can with your own eyes. After all, it's easy to stay within your comfort zone. That's what we know and sometimes that's enough for most people. But if we're ever going to see radical change in our community, we need dreamers who dare to risk. If you are part of the street dance world, can you imagine a future when we are not still complaining about the same issues that plague us today? Can you imagine proactive men and women tackling these issues instead of standing by on the sidelines? We are in desperate need of people who have vision and act on it.

High Hopes for The LXD, Season 2

Yesterday, the second season of The LXD premiered on Hulu. More so than the first season, it's increasingly important for fans to support this series right now. This is a crucial time for the LXD because they have an opportunity to expand on what they started during their first season. Will they take us into uncharted territory as storytellers? We have high hopes that they will do so.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled online regarding Jon M. Chu's superhero-oriented dance series, especially since there was a huge buildup towards it with Step Up 3D and the previous LXD performances on TV. The reviews have been mixed on the series. Some critics have panned the episodes, describing the acting performances as subpar and the series concept as preposterous. Others have lauded the premise and found the dancing and cinematography to be inspiring. The LXD has clearly polarized audiences. So the LXD team has to make some smart moves to persevere against this wave of criticism.

One smart move was to broadcast interviews with several of the dancers on Hulu. We got to see and hear the voices of several key performers including Steelo, Jrock, Madd Chadd, Lil C, and more. Few dancers are ever given the opportunity to speak up and share their passion. Somewhere across the globe, there are young dancers who are being inspired by what these performers have to say. The interviews put a human face on the series. And we hope that we'll see more for the upcoming villains in season 2.

Also, the LXD has stayed fresh in the public eye by continuing their live performances. Recently, several cast members performed at the Youtube Live Play event at the NYC Guggenheim Museum. These kind of live performances are what captured the audience's imagination before the series premiered online as seen in their first performance on Fox's So You Think You Can Dance. Hopefully, we'll get to see more varied, live performances from the group to keep things fresh. Is there an audience for a LXD tour across the U.S?

This is a perfect time for the LXD cast to nurture and expand connections with their fanbase via the multiple, available social networking options. They've already done so through Twitter and their Facebook page. What's admirable about The LXD is that it's never felt like something that was processed through a Hollywood studio system. It has that homegrown feel which comes from a collective band of creative minds working together with the resources they've been given to make something unique. We love that about the LXD.

When all is said and done, the LXD team will have created something that has not been done by any preceding generation coming from the street dance culture. They've made an impact. They saw an opportunity and seized it, carrying the idea to its execution with they momentum they had through public performances and online buzz. That in itself is truly amazing. But what's even more at stake is that these dancers - many of whom are from the street scene - are laying groundwork for future generations of street dancers.

It's heartbreaking to see the harsh critics lambast the series when you realize that these dancers and filmmakers worked incredibly hard with the usual film production challenges to create something. It's such a hard process to give birth to something that started as just an idea. We have to expect criticism though. It comes with the territory when you put yourself out there.

But what makes the LXD so special is that they're putting their true selves out there in a unique form. If you admire that kind of resolve, please support them. Watch their episodes on Hulu. Rate them. Share them with your friends. And celebrate what these men and women have done from their hearts. After all, it is heart that distinguishes them. Heart to bounce back from failure, to keep on going when all feels lost, to persevere when it seems unreasonable, and to face your frailties. Heart gives us strength to play, to win with humility, to lose with grace, and to know our true selves. When these men and women dance, they truly are exposing more than just their bodies.

Fighting The Thread of Negativity

Unfortunately, there are constant threads of negativity ailing our street dance culture, which have been exacerbated by online feuds. We see this in many communities. When you have differing opinions, a conflict can erupt into something more than just a spirited discussion. It can be laced with hatred and miscommunication. Here's the tragic effect on the younger generation of dancers: a culture of fear is brewed among them. As a result, this fear can prevent the free exchange of creative ideas. One way that it can manifest is the unwillingness for young dancers to share videos of themselves online for public viewing or in their fear of being filmed at any event or session. We become paranoid of the ever-present digital camera because we worry about what other people will think of us.

It is a natural human quality to consider what others think of us. We love it when we are lauded and are hurt when we're brutally criticized. But fear is a terrible enemy to creativity. It drives people away from sharing. It paralyzes the heart and mind. Fear of being torn apart by online critics makes the young dancer, who's sensitive to public opinion, feel at the mercy of critics whom he never sees or meets in real life. That's the double-edged sword of anonymous online communication. When we use screen names and handles, every typed opinion suddenly can take the air of merit. It can democratize the value of everyone's opinion if we're not discerning. You see the madness on Youtube comment pages. You see it on endless threads in forums. When the online feuding and criticism gets out of hand, very little is ever resolved. The controversy drives speculation and gossip within our culture. And it leaves the young generation in a state of fearful anxiety.

What we fail to recognize is that our greatest enemy isn't the online critics. It's the fear that can be instilled in our hearts. There must be ways to combat this. Ask yourself: when you receive criticism, is it constructive? Are critics giving you valid reasons and detailed, reasonable explanations for their suggestions? Aesthetic issues are always prone to multiple interpretations. So it's perfectly fine for you to defend your artistic creation and to also be open to hearing another's opinion. The ideal scenario is when we know how to extract the most useful bits of criticism and use it to further our craft. Critics should receive equal treatment: can their analysis be criticized and debated? Of course, they can. If a critic has a strong opinion, can he back it up with a compelling argument? Anyone who has ever done debate team in high school or has had a liberal arts education will be familiar with these scenarios. So young dancers shouldn't be afraid. They should be ready to discuss and debate in order to fight these threads of negativity in our culture.

It's important for young dancers to know that they're not powerless in this increasingly online-influenced street dance culture. Being an artist sometimes requires an acute ability to articulate about your artform. That's why it matters to be able to write, express, and debate your thoughts. You can even understand your craft at a deeper level because you have mulled over it and translated it into a line of logical thinking. Sometimes the greatest weapons against fear is powerful self-knowledge and a curious, willing mind to seek the truth.

The Progressive DIY Movement in Street Dance

There's a movement afoot in the street dance world and it's all about "doing it yourself." DIY is nothing new in the larger scheme of this world. From the most visible to the quietest revolutions, DIY has always been an aesthetic that allowed people to take things into their own hands and make their voices heard. It's a form of social disobedience that rallies against the status quo. It allows us to envision how our world could be different. Like creative problem solvers, we re-evaluate the way we do things, we take it apart, and then restructure it into something more amenable to our goals.

Ever heard of Etsy.com? Thousands of artists and craftspeople are showcasing and selling their homemade creations on that site. As an online community, the Etsy folks could be declaring their independence from the commercial consumer culture surrounding us. Isn't it strange that a lot of our decisions are affected by the products available to us? Did you ever question that there could be alternatives to your defining your lifestyle besides the clothing, health products, accessories, and even entertainment that you find in your local mall? The T-shirt design business is another reaction to this consumer consumption lifestyle. There are plenty of online T-shirt design communities who crowdsource design ideas and sell them to a devoted niche audience. Many of us choose that path instead of going to the Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch.

So how does DIY relate to street dancing now? We're reaching a saturation point for street dance in mainstream media. There are signs that the mainstream public is tired of seeing the way dance is portrayed in formulaic Hollywood dance films or reality TV shows. So dancers are doing it for themselves. They're making their own Youtube channels. They're creating their own platforms for generating and nurturing their fanbase through Twitter. And they're grabbing affordable digital cameras and editing software to harness the available technology to represent themselves through shared media online.

DIY is crucial to our growth because we need to constantly evaluate the health of our culture. If we leave it in the hands of others who don't have our best interests, then we are easily exploited. No, we don't necessarily need to make millions or gain celebrity in the public sphere through our do-it-yourself operations. But what we can strive for is integrity. A self-realization that what we have accomplished is relevant and true to aesthetic and community goals we have for each other.

That's the healthiest thing we can do when we do it ourselves. We're learning along the way and making a statement by challenging others to see another way of life. We don't have to be defined by what consumer culture feeds us. It's this challenge to change perspectives which can keep our culture fresh and inventive.

Why We Need More Than Just Dancers In Our Community

For the young dancer in our street dance community, it can be confusing to figure out where you belong. With the way we run our scene, there's an underlying subtext that you only matter if you compete in contests and participate in cyphers. Yes, this is where much of our street dance culture was born, evolves, and now thrives. But it's a crowded space that narrowly defines the roles we think we can play. Like any competitive culture, there are only a few advanced dancers who win contests and compete regularly at a high level. The rest vie for a chance to make it past prelims or quietly train in the corner, hoping to get their skills to a point where they can freestyle in front of a crowd. Or are they trying to build up their self-confidence?

What's troubling is that young dancers may start to question their self-worth if they don't make it past prelims in a contest or participate in cyphers. You may ask, "if I don't hit certain milestones in my dance career, does that mean this was a waste of time?" That's an unfortunate question to ask. Young dancers should never feel like they have to fit certain roles in order to matter. But that's what happens. Without any wise guidance from mentors, the underlying subtext in our culture can sometimes warp our minds if we're not discerning about it.

Deep down inside, you have to ask yourself if you're dancing to win other people's approval. Do you get a little boost when you dance and others applaud? Are you craving that affirmation which really doesn't last in the long run? We're all searching for our significance. Some of us look for it in achieving something with our dancing. Others find it in school, jobs, relationships, career choices, material wealth, or some other social-cultural status. These questions have driven human behavior since the beginning of time. We dig ourselves into a hole when we think that the only roles we can play in our dance community is as a dancer.

A community is made of different people with various gifts, talents, flaws, and strengths. And in order for our community to function, we need more than dancers. That is, if we define "dancer" as someone who just dances to the music. We need leaders. We need communicators, administrators, visionaries, storytellers, problem-solvers, trendsetters, trendspotters, teachers, translators, team builders, and folks who are good at something that contributes to the greater good. The list goes on and on. If we were all just dancers with no other attributes, we would be in big trouble. Who wants to be in a community of people focusing on their similarities rather than celebrating and growing because of their differences? You know what's troubling our community. There's a lack of organization. There's a lack of awareness of our culture among the mainstream public. And there's few people who are taking responsibility to champion causes in our world. We need more than just dancers to solve these problems.

So if you're a young dancer facing an identity crisis, know that you're not alone. It's encouraging to realize that you can have gifts that will benefit the dance community and it may be more than just your dance ability. Think about it this way: if you have an ability to manage organizations and large teams, you might be a wonderful candidate to produce dance jams. These jams would be opportunities for dancers to find community. Even the high level dancers need jams to showcase their talent to a public audience. They can't create their art without you. Pretty amazing, isn't it? Maybe it's time we started not limiting ourselves to being just dancers. We can ask ourselves what can we bring to the table that no one else can. That's one way to start thinking outside the box.

Losing Our History In the Digital Noise

Not surprisingly, we're oversaturated with multimedia these days. If you live in a large urban city, you're inundated every second of every day with information. It invades your personal space, your phone, computer, car, home, public transportation, workspace, and school. With this much chatter going on, there's too much digital noise. And after Web 2.0 became a reality circa 2006-2007, user-generated content has exponentially grown online. If we look at Youtube, we're exasperated by the number of videos that are uploaded daily. Now we have too many videos online and we don't know where to start.

Even a Google-powered search engine on Youtube is only a partial solution. After all, how accurate are the meta tags that users place on their videos? Especially when some content creators will game the system by placing popular buzzwords as tags to direct viewers to their videos. For street dancers, Youtube is a double-edged sword when we consider it as a cultural resource. The same for Facebook. We used to turn to public forums to gather information on history from mentors and knowledgeable sources who were willing to share. But most forums have now become venues for digital shouting matches marked by hatred and bitterness. So the communication and sharing of history migrated to Youtube comment pages and exchanges on Facebook.

However, it's very hard to pinpoint this communication when we don't have tools to zero in on these Youtube comments and Facebook conversations. You have to be presently engaged in an ongoing dialogue on these two platforms if you want to benefit. Otherwise, if someone, who wasn't involved in the original conversation, decides to look up the dialogue a year from now, they might find it hard to locate the desired content. Google's search engine won't access Youtube comments like it does with websites. And Facebook's personal pages aren't reachable by search engines.

As a result, these conversations about street dance history become localized conversations limited to the present participants. There's no central organization that's pooling this information together in a public archive for future generations. That level of management has rarely been implemented in our culture. For street dancers in LA, we may have easier access to OGs through personal relationships and immediate community. But for dancers without immediate dance community, they can only turn to what they find online or in movies and TV. Not surprisingly, high profile media like Hollywood films and TV shows become visual references and cultural landmarks for our vaguely-documented scene. How many people are still talking about Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo as references for street dancing? There has to be more effort put into managing and organizing cultural milestones for street dancing.

The popular opinion is that the Internet and online video sharing has opened up street dance culture to the world. Yes, to some degree they have. But these forces have also drowned our senses with too much content and it can be hard to discern what's useful and what isn't. The tragedy that awaits is that the pockets of sharing history that's happening right now online in limited circles may be lost to the greater masses once again. Fifty years from now, will the public be better educated on our scene if there's no central organization aiding their process of understanding our culture? We might be going in circles.

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?