Where Will The New Ideas Come From?

We seem to be at another crossroads in LA's street dance culture. The media maelstrom for dance has subsided. It's no longer the hot new trend on TV to feature street dancers. Now we must take personal responsibility to move street dance culture to the next level through our independent projects. We can't rely on Hollywood to invest in our future. So now, dance crews and event promoters are racking their brains to bring our artform to the next level. In this time of reflection and reinvention, where are the new ideas coming from?

Perhaps we have to start thinking more globally. There are dance communities thriving all over the world, partly inspired by the spread of viral dance videos online. More teachers are traveling internationally. And crews in other countries are putting their best resources together to promote themselves. Take the Australian crew Who Are These Robots. With high production value, they have been talked about online and within inner circles in LA's poppin' community simply by a few short Youtube videos.

Check out this video from Who Are These Robots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Fnt7fKe2c

For these four guys, they've done something that no other recent LA crew has done. They've established a recognizable name for themselves by an online video introduction. It's no secret that there's a lack of organization among LA street dancers. We're not the most professional in the way we handle our culture. So can we step it up? Otherwise, we risk being the ones following trends rather than setting them ourselves.

While LA continues to innovate within its street dance community, we have to humbly recognize that other great ideas are originating elsewhere. And these new ideas can inspire us to take the game to a higher level. Event promoters have been stuck in a creative plateau for years doing local events. Most jams seem the same year after year. But we're starting to see a crop of new promoters coming up in 2010 locally. We need them to keep innovating and moving the whole community experience forward.

Great ideas can come from anywhere. So why not learn from them? They can inspire us to go in new directions and set higher standards for everyone else. With faster online communication, the rate at which we get exposed to ideas is only going to exponentially grow. We have to keep up with the pace. The challenge will be to maintain a desire to explore greater depth and substance in our artform with the faster rate of broadcasting our ideas to the rest of the world.