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So you think they can break-dance?

Forget the Bronx and South Central. If you want to find the best hip-hop dancers in the world look farther east, to South Korea.

By Jeff Chang

June 26, 2008 | This summer, the United States is reaching new heights of dance fever as TV shows like Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" and MTV's "Randy Jackson Presents: America's Top Dance Crew" have returned to the airwaves. MTV's runaway hit is considered especially cutting edge, showcasing hip-hop dance groups from across America. But if MTV really wants the best dance crew, it should be looking in South Korea.

"Of the top six or seven crews in the world, I'd say half of them are from Korea," says Christopher "Cros One" Wright, 33, an American dance promoter and b-boy who was recently in Suwon, South Korea, to judge the second annual global invitational hip-hop dance competition, called R16, that was held at the end of May.

The development of South Koreans' hip-hop dancing could be seen a cultural parallel to their sharp global ascendance in electronics and automaking. A decade ago, Koreans were struggling to imitate the Bronx-style b-boy and West Coast funk styles that are the backbone of the genre. Now, a handful of these crews are the safest bets to win any competition anywhere.

Certainly no country takes its hip-hop dance more seriously. The Korean government -- through its tourism board and the city of Suwon -- invested nearly $2 million in this year's competition. Two of the most successful teams, Gamblers and Rivers, have been designated official ambassadors of Korean culture. Once considered outcasts, the b-boys now seem to embody precisely the kind of dynamic, dexterous and youthful excellence that the government wants to project.

Although hip-hop dance goes back at least 35 years, the top Korean b-boys trace their histories back just 11 years, to 1997, the Year Zero of Korean breaking. By 2001, the first year that a Korean crew entered the Battle of the Year -- the world's biggest b-boy contest -- they won "best show" honors and a fourth-place trophy. Every year since, a Korean crew has placed first or second. Says Battle of the Year founder Thomas Hergenrother, "Korea is on a different planet at the moment."

The R16 competition, held at the Olympic Sports Complex, is broadcast live in prime time in South Korea and dozens of other countries. The government expects to gross $35 million from advertising and TV rights this year. And it isn't the only one profiting: Gamblers Crew, formed in 2001, may now be one of the most world's most lucrative hip-hop dance groups. The members regularly tour Asia, have endorsement deals with Fila, Kookmin Bank and Enerzen energy drinks, and will star opposite American teen idol Omarion in the $25 million movie "Hype Nation," the latest in the Hollywood dance-ploitation genre, set to open next year.

While some fans on the message boards for "America's Best Dance Crew" still don't know what a "b-boy" is, the word in South Korea has become synonymous with national pride. B-boy contests around the world attract mostly young males, but the R16 Sports Complex is full of grandparents, high school couples and teenage girls in their school uniforms. When one holds up a sign that reads "I (Heart) Physics!" she isn't referring to her college-prep curriculum, but to the 24-year-old, Bogart-faced, elbow-spinning star of the Rivers crew, Kim "Physicx" Hyo-Geun.

In South Korea, b-boying rules. The question even Americans are asking is, "How did this happen?"
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During the 1970s, an array of dances practiced by black and Latino kids sprang up in the inner cities of New York and California. The styles had a dizzying list of names: "uprock" in Brooklyn, "locking" in Los Angeles, "boogaloo" and "popping" in Fresno, and "strutting" in San Francisco and Oakland. When these dances gained notice in the mid-'80s outside of their geographic contexts, the diverse styles were lumped together under the tag "break dancing."

The most physically demanding style -- the Bronx dance called "breaking" or "b-boying"/"b-girling" -- fueled a global fascination. In the mid-'80s, b-boys could be found spinning at the Olympics or at President Reagan's inauguration and promoting consumer products. But after the explosion, the dancers were cast off, the detritus of an exhausted fad.

Still, the dances took root around the world. While South Koreans have often been hostile to American imports, from Hollywood films to Washington beef (massive street protests against the government's lifting of the ban on U.S. beef broke out in Seoul the day before R16), hip-hop dance has been welcomed.

That may be partly because of South Korea's history of cultural repression of youth countercultures. During the 1970s, young Koreans in Seoul were being exposed to "Soul Train" and funk music via the U.S. Armed Forces Korea Network. A club scene arose in Itaewon to service American G.I.s. But as early as the summer of 1971, U.S.-backed dictator Park Chung-hee ordered his police to round up longhaired Korean men and cut their hair.

As the decade wore on, he escalated his "social purification" campaign, detaining artists, intellectuals and church leaders. In the first six months of 1976 alone, police reported checking over 600,000 men on hair length and possession of "obscene" T-shirts. Park's censorship committee blocked hundreds of American songs, from "We Shall Overcome" to "Me and Mrs. Jones."

"Black music was considered illegal because it was not good for the youth. The only music allowed was folk music," said Lee "MC Meta" Jae-hyun of the influential Korean rap group Garion, through a translator. "The music scene itself died. Influential music makers left the country." When he and his peers became enthralled with images of b-boys at the 1984 Olympics, they had no outlet for their creativity.

It was not until opposition leader Kim Young-sam became South Korea's first civilian leader in 1992 that youth culture seemed to flower again. At first, dance-friendly pop imports like Bobby Brown and MC Hammer spawned a host of Korean copies. "Up until then, it was all ballads," said Choi "DJ Wrecks" Jae-hwa, a pioneering Korean DJ who now spins for the Rivers crew, through a translator. But, Lee added, "the curiosity began and people became hungry for the real thing." In just five years, Koreans would have their own thing.

Volgende Pagina: How the Seoul B-Boys found their groove