Dance Da Taiwan─Dating Back to Late 1980s to Discover The Historical and Social Development of Street Dance In Taiwan
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Shih, Yu-Chu
Abstract
Hip Hop culture is raging on. Born in South Bronx, New York in the 1970s, it has spread all over the world and brought great influence due to the development of technology. Afrika Bambaataa, one of the most influential person in Hip hop culture, established The Zulu Nation which combined DJs, breaking dancers, graffiti artists, and rappers, hoping to direct young people’s anger and passion into music, dance and graffiti instead of focusing on gang activities. As a form of dance, street dance embodies the gene of Hip Hop, full of flexibility and attractions, enabling people to express “I am who I am ” with their body movement. From a symbol representing the inner spirits of African Americans, Hip Hop, with the development of eras, has become a way to express inner self for everyone all over the universe.
Shift to the dance scene in Taiwan. Back in the middle of 1980s, the development of street dance in Taiwan was better than that in Japan; NHK, Japan''s national public broadcasting organization, even came to Taiwan to film young people dancing on the street. However, because of the social backgrounds and viewpoints at that time, the first generation of Taiwan street dancers stopped it right after completing military services without passing down any dance skills or moves.
Kidd Tseng, the member of Taiwan’s oldest dance crew Popcorn, said it was pity that his former generations quit dancing. As a result, the whole system started to build up from his generation (around the year of 1988). Without any information left by former street dancers, they searched everything by themselves under the circumstances which the Internet was not that popular as now, the information was less in Taiwan. All they had was the passion of dance, “I dance because I want to, so simple”, and they didn’t even think about one day that they would become top dancers in Taiwan, or even open dance studios to teach with a view to earning a living. They started dancing owing to the love of music, and continued it till now to make street dance grow up and blossom.
However, even street dance is getting popular nowadays, I wonder how many people really know the development and history of that in Taiwan, and the ways dancers have strived for in the past 20 years. Within the 20-year development, street dancers possessing complete and massive subcultural capitals have established a system to continue the cultural inheritance of street dance. As a result, I will start the in-depth report back in the 1990s in order to let people understand how street dance was like as it first came into Taiwan and also the social and cultural conditions at that time. Then I will focus on in the Golden Age, 1990s, how street dance developed and changed with the face of the rapid advancement of technology in media.
Because dance itself is full of energy and vivid, I hope to use the form of documentary to let people know how those dancers find their own self-identities, how much efforts they make, and how they love with great passion, insistence and love.
Subjects
Hip Hop Culture
Street Dance
Media Sources
Subculture
Subcultural Capital
Self-identity
Type
thesis
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