On an evening in early November 2012, 10 male dancers broke into their routine as music filled the TBC, or The Best Crew, Dance Center on Taipei’s Nanjing West Road, adding to the energy of the practice session. As the performance continued, fast-tempo movements and constantly changing formations held the audience’s attention, but soon solos by individual team members proved even more riveting. One impressed with a one-handed headstand. Another performed a scissors movement on the floor as if on a pommel horse. Yet another twirled on his head and shoulder like a spinning top. “Each dancer has his forte to blow you away,” says Gino Huang (黃柏青), TBC operator and the leader of Formosa, the all-male team founded in 2007. “But the performers are not just doing acrobatics. They also must learn how to dance. The better they do in other street dance styles like popping [in which the dancer quickly contracts and releases muscles to make part of the body appear to pop], the greater the whole presentation.”
Formosa is one of the top dance crews in Taiwan in breaking, or breakdancing as it is often called in the media, a major street dance style featuring handstands, headstands, slides and spins. Many of the team’s breakers, also called b-boys, own dance centers themselves. In September 2012 Formosa was chosen to represent Taiwan in the finals of the Braun Battle of the Year, or BOTY, a world-class b-boying contest held in southern France in mid-November that year. The team tied for fifth place out of 19 groups from 18 countries.
BOTY originated in Germany in 1990, with Taiwanese entrants first competing in 2004, when the TBC’s own crew competed and ended up taking eighth place in the event. In 2008, the Formosa crew won third place, the highest ranking so far achieved by a Taiwanese team at the contest. Three years later, the win was equaled by TPEC, a crew so named because most of its members were from Taipei Physical Education College.
A South Korean breaker at the 2012 New Taipei City International Street Dance Competition (Photo Courtesy of New Taipei City Government)
Street dancing has made its mark on Taiwan only gradually. Part of hip-hop culture, which emerged in the United States in the 1970s, street dance began in Taiwan in the 1980s and gained visibility through TV performances by a number of local stars. Lin Chien-chi (林倩綺), commissioner of the Cultural Affairs Department of New Taipei City Government (NTCG), believes that it was music group LA Boyz that really started the local craze for the dance style. Comprising three boys of Taiwanese descent who were raised in Los Angeles, LA Boyz made their debut in Taiwan in 1992 and soon captivated local fans with performances that were rich in hip-hop elements from rapping to street dance. They officially disbanded in 1997, but left behind a legacy that continued to influence Taiwan’s pop culture.
No One to Learn From
“A video of an LA Boyz performance was the only teaching material I could get for the first two years,” says 22-year-old Lai Wei-ning (賴威寧), better known as Taower in the street dance circle. Lai got his start in street dance about 10 years ago, when he still lived in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan. Now a breaking instructor at HRC, another street dance school in Taipei, Lai was on the Taiwanese team at 2011’s BOTY and won that year’s top prize in the 2-on-2 battle, in which teams of two dancers compete.
Around the same time that LA Boyz faded from the scene, TBC was established as the first dance school in Taiwan focused on street dance. “The channels through which you could learn street dance were quite limited at the time. So we relied a lot on teachers invited from abroad to demonstrate the dance steps for street dance lovers including me,” says Huang, who was among the backup dancers for a number of pop singers before opening TBC with several fellow breakers.
An American crew member wows the audience as rivals from a Japanese team look on at the 2012 contest in New Taipei City. The event has grown in scale and status as more world-class street dancers are invited to attend. (Photo Courtesy of New Taipei City Government)
Since then it has become easier for street dance to spread in Taiwan. The growing number of dance schools like TBC and HRC means interested people can learn from pros specializing in different dance styles in a systematic manner—there are more than 10 such studios in Taipei City and New Taipei City alone. Lai also teaches breaking at a number of high school and college campuses in northern Taiwan, adding that “nearly all [secondary and tertiary] schools have established street dance clubs.” Those who prefer to stay home can learn online through video-sharing websites such as YouTube, although Lai says that dancing skills are best learned in person.
“Street dance is really cool. At first, I learned it in order to impress girls,” says Hsu Wei-chieh (徐偉傑), 28, who started street dancing when he was 15. Now, however, the Formosa member loves it as a means of expression and has become eager to learn everything about it from its history to new dance moves. For Chang Chi-yau (張智堯), an HRC student, street dance is a way to release the pressure of work. “It’s fun. And it’s truly capable of exercising your body and making you sweat,” says the 21-year-old, who works in a hotel restaurant. Like the vast majority of female street dancers in Taiwan, Chang shuns breaking in favor of styles like popping.
Society’s attitude toward street dance has changed as the genre has developed in Taiwan, says Chiu Fang-zheng (邱方正), the operator of DOD—Dance or Die. “Outsiders tended to look at us like we were juvenile delinquents, which made it quite difficult to promote on campus,” Chiu says, recalling the reaction of the general public in the late 1990s. Founded in 2000 and now the largest street dance school in central Taiwan, Taichung-based DOD has done much to promote the dance style. Since 2005, for example, DOD has organized an annual show incorporating street dance performances by its instructors and students. By September 2012, the event had become a two-hour show, with 600 dancers and an audience of more than 1,000.
Lin Chien-chi, commissioner of the Cultural Affairs Department of New Taipei City Government (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Support from the public sector has also played a role in developing street dance in Taiwan. The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp. (TRTC), which is 74 percent owned by the Taipei City Government, has co-organized the Metro Street Dance Competition since 2005. Fifty-one teams vied for the top honors and total prize money of NT$117,000 (US$3,600) at the inaugural event. Foreign nationals have been invited to take part since 2010. In 2012, the preliminaries saw 244 teams competing for 12 places in the finals, which were held in August at the outdoor plaza of Jiannan Road Station on Taipei’s mass rapid transit system. Prize money had risen to NT$440,000 (US$15,000) for the contest.
“Street dance is more than a leisure activity that lets young people blow off steam. It’s also about self-actualization for teenagers undergoing a key period of their life as they search for identity,” says NTCG’s Lin, herself a street dance aficionado. “By comparing notes on dancing skills, they build a network of support among peers as well.”
Banqiao District Office in New Taipei City held its first street dance contest in 2008, an event that was upgraded greatly in 2012 with sponsorship from the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. For the most recent iteration of the New Taipei City International Street Dance Competition, the organizers held preliminaries in Banqiao, Taichung and southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City. Along with the street dance competition, other components of hip-hop culture were added, including contests in rapping and street art.
Four world-class teams from France, Japan, South Korea and the United States were invited to compete in the 5-on-5 breaking battle category as seeded participants, a move aimed at expanding the horizons of local audiences and adding to the competition’s appeal. It turned out that all four of the international teams qualified as semifinalists, with US team Bboyworld clinching the top prize, leaving a large audience whooping in delight.
Young people practice street dance, which has gained widespread popularity since it emerged in Taiwan in the 1980s. (Photo Courtesy of New Taipei City Government)
“A great city must develop both its old and new cultures,” Lin says, adding that as a highly urbanized place, Banqiao is seeking a representation of its new culture. For the official, street dance has great potential to fill that role, with the NTCG planning to promote the street dance competition as one of just two or three international cultural events in New Taipei City.
Finding Room to Move
That effort encountered a hurdle when the new Banqiao Station, a popular practice venue for street dancers, forbade the use of its public spaces for such rehearsals in 2011 as the number of passengers and visitors to the station grew. The city government stepped in to negotiate with the station administration and an agreement was reached in February 2012 to designate specific areas in the building for dance practice.
The corporate sector is also getting up to speed on the dance trend. “It’s more common to see street dance performances at activities organized by enterprises. Organizers of album launch parties also tend to look to us to spice up the atmosphere,” Chiu says. Shin Kong Financial Holding Co., one of Taiwan’s largest banking, insurance and securities conglomerates, has organized an annual street dance competition since 2004. The event takes place during the summer vacation and attracted 91 teams consisting of four to eight dancers in 2012. Cathay United Bank has co-organized the TRTC competition since its inception.
Street dance lovers take a class at HRC, a well-known dance school in Taiwan. (Photo Courtesy of HRC)
In recent years, street dance movies have boosted interest in the trend in Taiwan, notably the four-installment Step Up series from the United States starting from 2006 and the 2010 film StreetDance 3D from Britain. In 2010, Hip-Hop Storm, a locally produced documentary about two generations of hip-hop dancers in Taiwan, won the prize for best documentary at the island’s Golden Horse Awards, the top movie honors in the Mandarin-speaking world.
“The learning environment is much better than it was 10 years ago,” Lai says. “Ask around and you’ll find someone who can guide you in street dance. Or you can pay to learn it from professionals at a dance studio.” At the same time, Hsu observes that breakers are starting at a younger age than before and today there are even classes for preschoolers. Both Lai and Hsu are full-time breaking instructors.
Interestingly, while the name “street dance” implies that it is something learned and performed mainly in outdoor spaces, many people in Taiwan today first study it in a dance studio. A number of fitness centers have also opened classes in street dance, although Chiu of DOD says what is taught in such classes usually bears only a superficial resemblance to “authentic” street dance moves. “Learn at a dance school for just a couple of years and you’ll probably qualify to teach it in a fitness center,” he says.
The 2012 Metro Street Dance Competition in Taipei City. The number of participating teams has grown from 51 when the contest started in 2005 to 244 last year. (Photo Courtesy of Taipei Rapid Transit Corp.)
Still, whether it is learned in a dance studio, campus club or on the street, street dance has become a cultural phenomenon in Taiwan. Although they might have a long way to go, top Taiwanese dancers are making progress and continue to put the nation on the world breaking map. “We saw the gap between Taiwan and the real world powers in b-boying this time,” Huang says modestly of his team’s experience at the 2012 BOTY in southern France. Yet the team leader is undeterred. “We’ll improve by continuing to compete against top crews,” he says.
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw