Young Tibetan dancers blend tradition with hip-hop

Four young dancers from Lhasa recently brought a Tibetan drum and traditional rhythms and movements to an international street dance competition in Beijing, where they used hip-hop to share their culture as they discovered a wider world of dance.

The children, from We Did Dance Studio in the Xizang autonomous region's capital, performed alongside teams and solo dancers from China and abroad. Their routine combined street dance with movements from the relpa and gorshey dances, accompanied by a relpa drum.

Among them was 10-year-old Tenzin Kunzang, who has studied street dance for three years. "I was really happy to exchange dance skills in Beijing," she said. "I saw children from many parts of China and learned more about street dance culture and history."

Tenzin said she was particularly impressed by the body control, isolation, and overall frame of the dancers from other countries. She hoped the performance would allow more people to see "something fresh and new from Xizang".

Dechung, a Tibetan dancer who co-founded the studio in Lhasa in 2021, hopes to bring some children to bigger stages while giving others opportunities to learn, compete, and grow closer to home.

The studio integrates traditional music and movement. The uptempo rhythms in traditional Tibetan music can resemble house beats, while relpa spins and the footwork of other Tibetan dances are conducive to hip-hop, according to Dechung. "It is a very cool and different form of expression," he said. "It allows people outside Xizang to see Tibetan culture presented in a new way."