Breaking new ground
Many Chinese youths see in breakdancing a new medium to express emotions, such as love and anger. |
But many youth such as 20-year-old Liu Xing embrace it as a new medium for expressing emotions, such as love and anger. "I feel sound and secure every time I go breakdancing," said Liu, the son of working class parents in Beijing.
"Actually, I almost believed I was a loser, because my cranky father called me one often after I failed the college entrance exams two years in a row. I now feel that I have found myself after I learned breakdancing."
Today, the New York-born dance form is growing in popularity among Chinese youths - more and more of whom call themselves "b-boys" or "b-girls". And the popularity of breakdancing exploded in China this month when the documentary Planet B-Boy was screened on the opening night of the Tribeca 798 Film Festival Beijing from July 10-11. As far as art districts go, 798 is to Beijing what Tribeca is to New York.
"The festival and the film is expected to open another window for Chinese youth and encourage the development of youth culture in China," says Hong Huang, CEO of China Interactive Media Group, which organized the festival.
Xiao Xu was one of hundreds of breakdancers from China and abroad who flooded the festival to meet peers, watch the film and showcase their talents. "I want to battle with b-boys from all over the world, " Xiao yelled from the stage.
Clad in baggy, scarlet shirts and flashy, canvas shoes, Xiao and his X-Power breakdancing teammates were invited to dance onstage. Their performance dazzled the excited crowd, who whistled applause.
No longer scorned by mainstream society, a team of breakdancers at a jiewu competition last year in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province. |
Benson Lee says he wants to show the world breakdancing is actually all about the free expression of one's true feelings. There are no rules, and everyone is free to express how they feel in the way they like.
Lee believes breakdancing is developing rapidly and will continue to grow in popularity among Chinese youth, because dance is a universal language.
Breakdancing is known as jiewu, which literally translates to "street dance" in Chinese. Along with emceeing, graffiti creation and deejaying, b-boying is part of hip-hop culture, which has infiltrated China sporadically since the 1980s.
Back then, it was regarded among Chinese as a vicious dance form representative of the vicious lives of Western youth, and those who breakdanced were scorned by mainstream society.
Today, breakdancing is developing into a highly sophisticated and acrobatic dance form, following the growth of Korean pop culture's influence since the late 1990s. And some State-run dance schools even offer breakdancing as a part of their modern dance curriculum.
Despite its growing popularity, hip-hop never became part of mainstream Chinese youth culture, because many parents and educators could not accept b-boys' negative image.
"Wearing baggy pants and metal ornaments makes kids look like gang members," Ms Cui, a middle-aged mother, tells her son when discouraging him from breakdancing.
Never too young to start, a 6-year-old takes part in a breakdancing contest held last year in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. |
Xiao spent five years trying to get his parents to understand him and did not gain their full support until he and his X-Power buddies won the Beijing M-Zone breakdancing contest last year.
"To me, breakdancing is like a career, and you have to prove that you have the potential and you can do all of the tricks really well," Xiao says. He started learning breakdancing five years ago so that he could compete in The Battle of the Year and go toe-to-toe with the top b-boys of the world.
Jue Sun, a sociology doctorate candidate from Hong Kong University, believes that breakdancing in China conveys a different meaning than the breakdancing of the West.
"Dancing is really about your thinking and your soul," she says. "In other words, dancing is about how to transform the macro world into your dance moves and then express it explicitly."
She noticed Chinese b-boys and b-girls enjoy demonstrating their sophisticated tricks. She believes this shows that "they are just skillful dancers battling more for fame than for a better society."
But apart from the pursuit of the world championship, young people mostly regard breakdancing as a hobby, through which they can express their feelings however they want.
"Breakdancing is a way of life," says amateur breakdancer Xu Ke. "It requires glamorous and passionate movements. I use it to express how I feel about myself and about society. Sometimes I express happiness and sometimes anger, confusion or even disillusionment."
This Western-born dance form seems to be on the brink of going mainstream in China - if it hasn't already.
Typing "China the Battle of the Year" into Google's search engine brings up 2,170,000 results.
Now, even classical dance forms are incorporating breakdancing elements.
In 2003, the Pantomime Notre Dame De Paris danced hip-hop style in the Great Hall of the People, and afterwards, the genre swept through the nation.
And the young performers are not alone. While teenagers across the country are spinning on their backs to do "windmills" and are training their bodies to "pop and lock", breakdancing is also coming into vogue among elderly citizens.
"It feels so good!" says 69-year-old Wu Ying, recalling the first time she danced on TV. It took a long time for Wu to gain her family's support. Her daughter once teased her, saying she would become an idler just like the breakdancers in the streets.
But Wu persisted. Speaking of her daughter now, Wu chuckles: "You know what? She became a leading member in my team, and we often PK with each other now."
Wu founded a granny breakdancing team, which now has more than 200 members with an average age of 60. In 2004, Wu led her team to dance in the Great Hall of the People for the New Year TV gala.
(China Daily 07/17/2007 page18)
