Taiwan might have been latecomers to street dance, which did not take off locally until the 1990s pop-rap group LA Boyz from California — brothers Jeff (黃立成) and Stanley Huang (黃立行) and their cousin Steven Lin (林智文) — made it appear doable to young Taiwanese, but in the past two decades it has steadily grown in popularity.
Studios, like that run by The Best Crew (TBC) Dance Studio (TBC舞蹈休閒館), have sprung up around the nation, while school dance clubs and teams can be seen on any given day practicing on the walkways around the capital’s National Theater and National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
Teams from Taiwan have also fared fairly well in international competitions. As an article in the February 2013 issue of Taiwan Review, a TBC team won the Southeast Asia Braun Battle of the Year (BOTY) regional competition and entry into the World Final in Germany, while the Formosa Crew won the bronze medal at the BOTY semifinals in 2008 and TPEC did the same in 2011. Formosa represented Taiwan in the BOTY finals the following year, and placed fifth.
Photo courtesy of The Best Crew Dance Studio
However, breakers continue to have an uphill battle when it comes to respectability and credit, even more so when trying to convince parents and teachers that there is a career path in it.
In a nation where parents are more willing to send their children to cram schools to get them into college than to a dance class, and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) remains the pinnacle for an aspiring dancer, focusing on being a b-boy or girl is often still seen as just a few steps away from being a juvenile delinquent.
The TBC Studio was the first dance school in the nation to focus on street dance, so it is no surprise that it is the moving force behind Dreamer (夢舞街), a massive, multi-milllion New Taiwan dollar production that opens at the Taipei City Government Family Theater tomorrow night.
Photo courtesy of The Best Crew Dance Studio
The culmination of several years of work, Dreamer, directed by Hsieh Shu-ching (謝淑靖) — whose credits include 2009’s A Love Story About Shanghai and Taipei (上海台北雙城戀曲) — pulls together performers from across Taiwan’s hip-hop community.
The choreography is by Gino (Huang Po-ching, 黃柏青), TBC’s long-time lead dancer; Win Chou (周允斌), manager of the TBC studio; Brotha Wu (吳維章); Toy (Gregory Huang, 黃柏翰) and Dimples (Hsieh Hsin-hui, 謝馨慧), while composer and harpist Lee Che-yi (李哲藝), winner of the won the 23rd Golden Melody Awards Best Composer award, was drafted to create the score.
The 90-minute show, with more than 20 dancers, is billed as a kind of hip-hop version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with young performers dreaming of breaking loose from cram-school land to make it big popping, locking, breaking and spinning their ways to new heights, individually and collectively.
The aim is to show that street dancing can be a wholesome sport, a valid outlet for youngsters and an art that can take them places far beyond their dreams — with a lot of fun and camaraderie along the way.
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