The proliferation of competitive showcase events in southern California is a good sign for both the street dance scene and the hip hop choreo scene. The biggest fusion of both cultures is the World of Dance (WOD) tour that has been held in multiple California cities as well as New York. Other events have followed in its wake, including Urban Street Jam which just happened last weekend in Costa Mesa. Why is this an important development? Well, showcases place our dance cultures in a context that builds community as well as markets them as a commodity in terms of live entertainment.
We need to have more showcases that promote emerging dance crews and freestyle dancers. The Kollaboration movement comes to mind as an inspiring model. This year is the 10th anniversary of Kollaboration, which has brought Asian-American musicians, artists, dancers, and performers to the public spotlight. What Paul Kim and his Kollaboration team have essentially done is to create a collective of artists that are their own supportive network. When you bring inspired minds together, magic is going to happen. Kollaboration provides the environment for this creative mixing to occur.
Myron Marten is doing that now with World of Dance. It’s been a more successful venture than the recent Freestyle Sessions, which is a high profile bboy competition under Cros One. It’s no secret that many bboys, poppers, and lockers are upset with the high ticket prices charged at Freestyle Session. On the contrary, World of Dance has gained positive word-of-mouth by keeping ticket prices lower and choosing venues that have been more comfortable. Also, World of Dance is fostering a collective of dancers from the choreo scene and the street scene. It’s a safe zone where dancers from different worlds can mingle, exchange ideas, compete with each other, and build relationships for future projects. It’s also a forum for turning the performing crews into live entertainers. People who are not involved in the dance communities will pay for tickets to WOD to see a show and to be entertained. From this mix, an entertainment culture is evolving.
Poreotics is a prime example of a crew that has benefited from this new development. They developed a strong following over the past two and a half years by constantly performing at competitive showcases. Their showmanship has grown with experience and now they’ve crossed over into mainstream television on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. Other crews will follow similar paths as this entertainment culture develops. Meanwhile, there are movers and shakers behind the scenes who are managing and promoting these teams. A prominent example of this is Arnel Calvario, who founded Kaba Modern and currently manages the Kaba Modern Six, the Beat Freaks, and Fanny Pak.
One end result of this culture will be more saavy and experienced performers coming out of our scenes. This can only prepare our Gen II dancers for more professional opportunities in the entertainment industry as street dance becomes more accepted by the mainstream.
One of the brightest examples of today’s “Gen II” new school generation is the cross-pollination between different dance cultures. We’re seeing street dancers broadening their horizons by joining hip hop choreo teams. Culture Shock LA and Poreotics are good examples of teams with solid street dancers. And we’re see choreo dancers learning foundation to enhance their poppin’, lockin’, and bboyin’ skills. Kaba Modern and Pac Modern are teams who have shown these influences in their routines. Finally, we’re also finding more younger dancers embracing consistent training in several styles so that they have become monsters on the dance floor.
Several factors have led to this cross-pollinating phenomenon. First, we can take a look at the rise of the hip hop choreo community since the early 1990s with Kaba Modern, Pac Modern, and Team Millenia hitting the college circuit. This culture created the growing numbers of choreo teams that practice on campuses, compete at showcases, and are surrogate families for their members. Second, the street dance culture expanded from its obscurity in the early 2000s with the “Gen I” new school arriving. They paved the way for the Gen II new school to get exposed to street styles. With the hip hop choreo scene and the street scene growing in tandem, it’s obvious to see how dancers would start to jump between both worlds. Finally, the breaking down of geographic and cultural borders between dancers has helped new schoolers to not limit themselves in learning only one style. It’s as if we’re taking on these styles without any of the cultural or social baggage they had in the 1980s and 1990s.
Our Gen II new school is also capable of multi-tasking. They live in a world with constant visual media influences that bombard them from television, film, and the online world. Perhaps this hyper-visual sensitivity has encouraged this cross-pollinating phenomenon. Today, we want to learn as many styles as possible in the shortest amount of time. Our learning curves are more accelerated than our predecessors. Primed to receive multiple stimuli from their environment, Gen II dancers are changing the way we approach training in these styles.
The idea of an all-around street dancer isn’t impossible. While there will always be specialists in particular styles, a Gen II dancer can now aspire to be a well-rounded, all styles superstar. The opportunities to train in different styles are more available. And it’s perceived that more doors could open for you if you train in multiple styles. It’s a brave new world for Gen II.
We’re seeing a sea change in generations within street dance culture. In the early 2000s, there was a wave of new schoolers in the greater LA area coming into the poppin’ and bboyin’ cultures. Many of them were in their late teens to early twenties. A decade later, these dancers are now at the head of the class for the new school. Some of them have a career as professional dancers performing on television shows and films.
Now in 2010, there’s a new generation quickly coming up. Many of these new cats were from ages 5-10 in the early 2000s. Today, they’re in their teens and early twenties. But these two generations are vastly different in their approach to our dances just like how Generation X, Generation Y, and the Millenials have differences. For the sake of this discussion, let’s call the dancers who started in the early 2000s, Gen I. For the dancers who started in the late 2000s and in this new decade, let’s call them Gen II.
Gen I grew up in an age before Youtube. The poppin’ and bboyin’ scenes were growing in the early 2000s, but they were still small in scale. Gen II has emerged along with the rise of Youtube and the street dance culture has exploded in numbers. Both generations co-exist with each other in today’s world, but Gen I dancers are at higher skill level because of time invested in their craft as well as the striving to learn from OG dancers. Gen II has a wide range of skill level because of turning to Youtube as part of their dance education and perhaps taking fewer steps to seek training from OGs. What we’re left with is a widening gap between these two groups.
Is it possible for Gen I to step up and mentor Gen II? The top new schoolers are visible in mainstream media. Gen II dancers are imitating them but they don’t understand the technique. Gen I does. As OGs grow older, it will rest on Gen I’s shoulders to guide Gen II and the generations that follow. We’re at a crucial crossroads for our culture. Without committed mentoring, Gen II will lose the heart and soul of our street styles. They can go on to evolve and create their own styles, but the original styles will lose their relevance. If Gen I nurtures Gen II as their younger brothers and sisters, our entire culture will move forward to higher levels of artistry in this new dance landscape.
The way street dancers get their reputations nowadays is a complicated mess. We know from OG’s personal testimonies that reputable dancers got their street cred from battling and from word-of-mouth within the community. You’d earn your reputation by demonstrating your skill in a cypher. When you got called out, it was hard to back down with witnesses around. Crews popped up representing neighborhoods or cities whether you were from Carson, Wilmington, Orange County or Long Beach. Bboys and poppers aggressively defended their reputations and their belongings by battling each other.
In the 2000s, OGs have said that our current street dance scene is very different from what they remembered. Today, we have more judged contests than battles in cyphers. The party, communal vibe seems to have lessened in the present day compared to the past. And the presence of the Internet forums and online video sharing have warped the way new dancers get their reputations and blow up their names. While Internet forums have been helpful in reuniting older dancers as well as bringing new schoolers into a revived scene, the negative aspects have exponentially grown. There seems to be a disturbing trend developing where inexperienced new schoolers feel a subconscious need to post videos of themselves dancing before their technique has fully matured. They may feel that they need to receive critiques from informed sources in order to improve their technique. But often, it opens the door to flame wars, negative arguments, and a desperation to “get known” by posting their latest set online.
Maybe we need to start rethinking how we post our videos online. Anyone can post a video of themselves as long as they have a computer and Internet access. But if someone else posts a video of you, the chances are higher that they admire your skills and that you’re progressing. This isn’t an automatic correlation, but we often see the most highly skilled street dancers being recorded and posted online by other sources via Youtube. An alternate strategy is that we can cut back on all the video noise that we’re contributing online. To go truly underground means becoming almost invisible and limiting your visible presence at contests and cyphers. It certainly would add an air of mystery around yourself if you decided to become nearly invisible.
Now, we’re seeing dancers gaining notoriety simply by posting footage online. There’s an undercurrent of needing to get the most views on your video in order to get famous. This is a dangerous mentality that needs to stop. The reason is that it reduces aspects of our dance culture to being interpreted by a larger audience only on online video. Outsiders make judgements on our dance without getting the full experience of seeing it live. And we all know that Youtube videos aren’t always shot with the highest quality. This feeding of our desire to be seen, to get popular through high view tallies, and to market ourselves can grow out of control and become a massive self-absorption that could destroy our culture. We have to be cautious of how we present ourselves.
It must be a strange time for an OG street dancer to witness what’s happening in today’s street dance world. Bboyin’, poppin’, and lockin’ have exploded around the globe. There seems to be no limitations to how far street dance culture can reach. The public is more aware of our world, but at the same time, there seems to be more confusion about history, technique, and the current state of affairs in local communities. This week, we’re tackling a few issues that have popped up on our dance landscape. Today, it’s all about the communication of history.
Documenting and transcribing historical events is always a complicated endeavor. We know this from our days in our nation’s education system. History is the recollection of those who write it. The only way that we can get a more balanced view is to cross-reference and corroborate one version of the story with other accounts. In the street dance world, there is plenty of heated debate on the true creators of a style, the evolution of a dance, and the contributions of individuals along the way. There has been little official documentation of our world. Most of it is passed on via oral tradition, passed on from mentor to student or within tight-knit communities.
Now, information can be produced and then instantly disseminated worldwide via the Internet. Misinformation spreads like wildfire. And minds become warped by a twisted version of the truth. In this Youtube age, the person who can produce the most videos with the most views can get a point across to a large audience. This becomes a dangerous phenomenon when this source has an ulterior motive like damaging other individuals, twisting the truth to inflate one's reputation, or to launch a war of words against competitors. Lazy minds will not cross-reference this source and accept it on face value.
If we don’t remedy this, then further division will occur in our communities. This is most apparent in the poppin’ community. There are so many different camps within poppin’ that it’s starting to get confusing. What makes this even more difficult is that few of these camps ever interact or relate to each other in person. Whether through pride or fear of losing one’s reputation; visible, loud voices in the poppin’ community choose to speak out but never listen to the other party.
We need a different model. And it has to be based in deeper relationships and organic community. The hip hop choreo scene has handled this a lot better than our poppin’ brethren. In the fifteen to twenty years that the choreo scene has sprung up in SoCal, there has been more agreed upon history through the consistent sharing and interaction among different teams and leaders. Much of this is due to the team nature of the choreo scene, while there are a lot of individual players in the poppin’ world. We all know that miscommunication is dissipated when we converse, debate, and interact in person. So let’s get off the keyboard and bring our conversations face-to-face.
For the poppin’ world, we need a balanced approach to seeking, studying, and documenting the dance’s history for a public to appreciate. Education is our best weapon against hatred bred from miscommunication within our culture. It’s not just about passing on information to a younger generation. A striving for education allows these younger dancers to critically think for themselves and to evaluate the history that precedes them. They need this in order to grow to become the best dancers they were meant to be. That is the greatest gift an older generation can give them in this age of potential misinformation.
