Essay: Who Can Dance?

Bob Burt purefunk.com.au

It was mentioned to me on the weekend that someone might ‘not feel right’ about doing a dance style if they were not a part of the culture that dance style originated from.  This was in respect of K-Pop and poses an interesting question. 

Can you feel ‘right’ doing a dance style that originated in another culture?

Of course you can.  Starting out as a pre-dominantly Hip-Hop dance school, you’d think this issue would have been raised with us before.  How can a bunch of ‘Aussies’ co-opt Hip-Hop and claim it for their own?  ‘Aussies’ don’t understand about being raised in the projects and having Hip-Hop as their only outlet for culture.

Of course we don’t, and we don’t pretend to.  We all have our own connections to music and dance and film and whatever form of culture.  I grew up loving Hip-Hop because I was poor and felt that Hip-Hop represented me a little better than the middle-class pop stars littering the airwaves.  Other people like the beats.  It’s all good.

K-Pop is in a similar position to where Hip-Hop was in the 80’s.  It’s becoming a global phenomenon and people justifiably wonder why everyone else in every corner of globe is jumping on bandwagon.  I don’t want to get into a discussion here about the shrinking planet and global connectivity, but the moral of the story is, we don’t own our culture anymore.  I may love the Hilltop Hoods, but some dude in France may love them even more, and who am to tell him he can’t listen to them?   

As a dance school (I like ‘dance community’ better), our job is to teach you to dance, help you get fit and introduce you to other people who like dance.  It’s also to realise a dream, however big or small that dream may be. 

For me, the dream is indulging my fantasy of being Justin Timberlake for an hour a week at Beginners Hip-Hop.  Maybe it’s a pipe-dream, but there’s always the chance it’s not, however stacked the odds against it may be.  That’s why we do anything, because it might be the first step to something great!

That’ something great’ for you might be to dance like G-Dragon or Daesung, or any other K-Pop luminary.   Is anyone else going in Adelaide going to help with that?  Unfortunately, the answer is no.  Knowing that that void exists, and knowing that we have the tools to help, is what drives us to change and adapt to your needs.

If you’re a dance teacher, and you can teach a dance that might be foreign to you, but loved by others; teach it.  You’ll b helping a bunch of other people to enjoy themselves, and that’s a great thing. 

And what we do here, and have been doing here for many years. – is to try and work out what that dream is for each student and do the best we can to fulfil it.

We might not always succeed, but we’ll always die trying.

K-Pop classes are every Saturday 1pm-2pm