Trend of Street Dancing

Street dance refers to a dancing style, which was born at the street, following the hip hop culture in 1970s. It is basically improvisational, street dancers do not need a studio to dance, they can express at any available open spaces such as streets, dance parties, parks or school yards. It was once considered as inappropriate stuff for youngsters by adults because it is not a formal kind of dancing style. But lately, it is getting popular and accepted by majority of the adults and it has become a trend.This is because street dance is a media for people to be social in nature, encouraging interaction and sharing with other dancers regardless of country of origin.

This is very important in this smart phone era, which is most youngster nowadays are overly focusing on sweeping their fingers on their smart phone and neglect the importance of socialize. The trend of street dance is growing rapidly on all over the world. It has given a huge impact to various areas like entertainments and fashion.Street dance culture is practiced by a lot of youngsters in every corner in the world, but there are some differences in them according to cultural differences of countries. For example, Europe countries and Asian countries have a big contrast on it. Street dance was originally found in Europe country, United States.

Hence the street dance influences in Europe countries are more original and down to earth. Dancers dance and make friends at the street, share their dance move with each other regardless status and experience.For outfit, they wear the big sized clothes which are left from their brothers for practicing. On the contrary, Asian dancers are more commercialized. Dancing at the street is not as popular as in Europe countries.

They do have their dance studio, and if you want to go learning street dance, you have to pay for the service of instructors as well as the studio rental. They wear the newest clothes to dance to show their styles and they call it “swag” in urban words.This culture has caused the development of market of street fashion, which produces the street wear for the dancers or people who love street culture. The products mentioned are included of baggy (shirt or pants which come in big sized and loose), caps or hats, watches and the most important ones for dancers, sneakers. Some brands which mainly sell street wear is getting known by people as street dance becomes a trend such as Echo Park, Biggest & Baddest and so on.

Some brands are not really produce street wear usually, but they are loved by street dancers because of their qualities. For example, dancers like to dance with wearing G-Shock watch because it is sporty and suitable for sport people, and Dickies work pants since it is uneasy to break while street dancers are doing exaggerate moves. Sneakers are essential for street dancers too, they are considered as wings of them. Adidas, Nike, Puma, Vans, Converse and DC are always the first choices for them because of their classic outlook and comfortable wearing them.

For countries like Korea and Taiwan, their street dance culture is strongly supported by government of their countries. This can be seen when Taiwan government has implemented the course of street dance in university and college. In year 2011, Taipei Physical Education College (TPEC) has formed a bboy crew under the college’s name to take part in Battle of the Year and got the third place in international level. Their hardworking is appreciated by government by given a certificate of appreciation on the achievement.Entertainment companies have produced some movies as this trend is getting popular in this world, the most popular ones are: Step Up series, Stomp the Yard series, Street Dance and so on and so forth.

Next, television shows like street dancing competition are organized by various channels. The biggest competitive dance reality television series was America’s Best Dance Crew also known as ABDC. The participants got well known after that, for example, Quest Crew, the champion of ABDC season 2, has taken part in music video shooting of “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO and it earned more than 500 million views on YouTube.One of the reasons why those movies could attracted the attention of youngsters and widely supported by every dancer is because internationally well known dancers and participants of the dancing shows mentioned above are given opportunities in movie casting to help boosting it up. There is a new movie which is “Battle of the Year” is going to be released soon and I believe that it can also get good responses by people like those previous ones did.

In Malaysia, we do have the same competitive dance reality television series as well, such as: Battleground on Astro and Showdown on 8tv. The participants have been hired by certain local companies to take part in advertisement video shooting. They are trying to bring out the message that people can be energetic after using their products and no doubt, street dance is a very suitable media for doing the visual communication for advertisement! All in all, street dance is a healthy activity like other sports, it is worth being happy that it has become a trend because the trend influences can definitely help the development of youngsters.I hope that the government of our country Malaysia can pay attention to the growth of this trend, treasure the talented street dancers and give support to them, so that they can get the opportunities to be exposed to international street dance events and let foreigners know more about our country.

I am positive that this trend has a bright future and should be practiced by teenagers. Therefore, what are you waiting for, young people? Let’s move on!