"Dare to have a freestyle fight?" This is the most popular variety show "China Hip Hop", which is a trend among young people.
However, compared with rap, which is the main theme of this program, other contents in hip-hop culture, such as streetball, skateboarding and hip-hop, are more in line with this slogan to some extent-compared with rap, the latter relies more on physical ability and physical performance and has a more visual sense of fighting.
One advantage of this program is that it can make some young people pay attention to these hip-hop sports, such as hip-hop we are going to talk about today.
Two days later, on August 7th, the final stage of HHI(HIP HOP INTERNATIONAL) World Hip Hop Championship will officially begin. Three China dancers and two China dance troupes will take part in this world-class competition.
They were the winners of the China Finals held in early July. HHI originated in L.A. in 2002 and didn't enter China until last year. Xu Yue, CEO of a sports event in HHI China, told Lazy Bear Sports that this year's China Finals had more than 20 million live hits on Sina Weibo and more than 5,000 viewers.
Hip-hop was introduced to China in1980s. It was also called break dance at first, and later it was collectively called hip-hop with the diversification of dance. Today, according to the data of China Hip-hop Alliance, there are more than 300,000 hip-hop related employees in China, with more than 3,000 members and 5 million people trained annually.
This sport, which was born on the streets of the United States, is becoming more and more popular in China.
The living conditions of hip-hop people
At 6 o'clock in the morning, Fang Zhigang got up on time. After a simple wash, he came to the Xuhui River near his home, warmed up a little and started running. Two hours later, he appeared in a street dance studio in Xuhui District and began to practice street dance. He will stay here for eight hours.
Two years ago, Fang Zhigang, who fell in love with street dance, drifted from Xi to Shanghai. Today, he rented a three-bedroom apartment of less than 80 square meters, with only one goal: to pursue his dream of street dance career.
Before making this decision, he had a big fight with his father and almost "cut off the father-son relationship." "My dad is still a traditional person. He hopes that I can go to work in a public institution after graduation. " Fang Zhigang said.
Fang Zhigang's father's objection makes sense. Hip-hop, which advocates freedom, has always been regarded as a natural barrier in Huashan, and few people have succeeded.
"Now most professional dancers earn their main income from participating in various competitions-training and performances, but if they want to get married, they need a second job. Only a few dancers can support themselves by dancing. " Wu Yannian, master of street dance in Guangzhou Institute of Physical Education and director of Guangdong National Fitness Street Dance Committee, said.
But street dance still has a large number of fans, and more people regard it as a hobby. Ye Zheng, the head of Wiik Symphony Dance Company, a hip-hop studio, told Lazy Bear Sports that only a few students who come to their studio to study hip-hop hope to become professional dancers in the future, more just for the sake of being cool.
The Wiik Symphony Street Dance Troupe has more than 300 people, of whom more than 50 core members "can be seen almost every day". "Some of them are white-collar workers, some work in bars, and many are students." Ye Zheng said. In his street dance studio, there are 4-5 street dance classes every day.
The Wiik Symphony Street Dance Troupe has more than 300 people.
Yao is a typical hip-hop lover. As the president of a street dance club in a university in Shanghai, she has nearly 100 members and attends street dance classes with friends about three times a week. The reason why she likes hip-hop is simple. She can keep in good shape while playing cool, and she can meet many cool friends.
"I'm not going to make money by street dance in the future." Jiang Shuiyao bluntly said, "This is just a hobby of mine."
Another interesting phenomenon in the street dance circle is that the boundary between teachers and students is not obvious. "Although I am his teacher, I think he is good and I will go to his class." Ye Zheng said. Many teachers in the hip-hop studio are not much better than their students, and class is just a form of gathering and dancing. It is not so much a class as a good communication.
Therefore, even many adult hip-hop teachers are not full-time in a studio. From all dimensions, in the street dance circle, hobbies are much more important than professional attributes.
Aside from children's street dance training, the unit price of the current street dance industry training courses is not expensive, mostly around 120 yuan per class. Hip-hop lovers are mostly young people born after 1980s and 1990s, and most of them are self-sufficient and regard hip-hop as a way of life.
Ye Zheng told Lazy Bear Sports that according to the data at the beginning of 20 16, there are 86 street dance studios in Xuhui District of Shanghai alone. Among them, the more famous studios don't have to sell-their own fans register. This shows how hot street dance is.
Offline hip-hop activities and online promotional videos
For other training institutions, it has certain reference significance for the promotion of street dance. Two elements can not be ignored: offline activities and online studio video.
Offline activities are the main form of street dance promotion. On the activity page of Hip-hop City, a hip-hop fan website, Lazy Bear Sports found that there were nearly 60 hip-hop activities in June 2065438+2007.
For most street dance lovers, the most anticipated thing is to be able to participate in the competition. On the one hand, for those who want to become professional dancers, taking part in competitions and ranking are the main ways for them to get started; On the other hand, the competition is a good opportunity for hip-hop fans to get together and socialize.
Whenever there is a street dance competition, Jiang Shuiyao will lead her club friends to sign up for it. In her view, winning the ranking is secondary, and the key is to enjoy the process. "Participating in the competition can let us meet cool new friends and see cool actions." Jiang Shuiyao said.
At present, the most famous street dance competition in China is KOD, which was founded by Beijing Dance Plus Dance Company in August 2004. Founder Gao Bo is a well-known dancer in China, and Dance Plus Dance is also the first professional street dance training company in China.
Wang Lijun, founder of D-CLAN Dance Studio, praised KOD's competition. "They almost proved an era of hip-hop," Wang Lijun said. "We used to go to Beijing to participate in the KOD auditions. It's not good from morning to afternoon, as there are many people landing in Normandy. But although I am tired, I enjoy this process. "
In addition to KOD, there are many large-scale street dance events with certain history and influence, such as WOD and China.
Before this year's HHI China Finals, Xu Yue also held a carnival-like activity, with street dance performances, master classes and some merchandise sales around street dance. At the same time, he also invited Cai Ying College, a subsidiary of Shengli Family, to enter the carnival with basketball training classes and other contents.
HHI also held a street dance carnival before the finals in China.
Of course, competition is not the only way for hip-hop lovers to revel. "Hip-hop is a very relaxing and free thing. Let's put on the coolest clothes and have fun together. " Wang Lijun said.
In addition to competitions, parties are also an offline social form for hip-hop lovers. "A DJ put a song in a bar. Everyone likes this DJ, contact each other, and everyone in a circle has gone. " Ye Zheng said.
Wang Lijun missed the time: "Many dancers interacted with strange white-collar workers and taught more people to dance. The environment is very comfortable and everyone respects each other. " However, there are fewer and fewer such parties now.
The online studio propaganda film is considered to be another main way for hip-hop to attract the general public. Some large-scale studios regularly produce and release some hip-hop videos, which is also the most effective means for large-scale hip-hop studios to promote themselves.
The best one in this respect is the1100,000 dance studio in Korea. In addition to handsome guys and beautiful women, the production level of 1 10,000 promotional videos is excellent, which can be seen from the response on Youtube. At the same time, they also refined the most attractive and cool movements in street dance, and the displayed dance was more powerful. In China, on the official platform of 1 10,000, most of its videos have won nearly 10,000 likes and even more than 20,000 popularity.
In addition to 1 10,000, promotional videos such as "American Red House" and "Sports Lifestyle" also have good hits on the Internet. The promotional films of this kind of street dance studio have no traces of commercial packaging, and more rely on the difficulty and skills of dancing to win.
The commercial packaging of street dance made by 1 10,000 is excellent.
It is worth noting that the promotional videos of the hip-hop studio, including 1 10,000, have successfully attracted the commercial implantation of big brands, including brands interested in pan-sports, such as Adi, Nike and even Coca-Cola, which have sponsored the promotional videos of the hip-hop studio.
What is the next goal of the pan-fitness crowd?
Hip-hop shows people a possibility: this free and cool sport has become a fitness method that young people are more willing to choose through effective promotion.
From the purpose, hip-hop and narrow sense of fitness have many similarities: both are high-intensity, high-density whole-body exercises, which can burn fat and keep healthy.
In fact, the combination of street dance and fitness, fitness group aerobics giant Laimei as early as 18 years ago. Gandalf, curriculum director of Auckland, New Zealand? Archer integrated street dance elements into group aerobics class and launched a course called BODYJAM.
Different from other group calisthenics standards that pay more attention to action, BODYJAM pays more attention to the combination of action and music. House, Hip-Hop, Drum' n' Bass, Trap and various styles of electronic dance music have all been added to the course soundtrack of BODYJAM.
Laimei incorporated street dance into the group training course as early as 18 years ago.
Jiang Nan, CEO of Laimei China, told Lazy Bear Sports that the BODYJAM course has been very popular since it entered China. "In China, the number of gyms offering BODYJAM has tripled in two years," Angelnan said. "Dance fitness courses usually attract some elderly women with average athletic ability, but Laimei BODYJAM is very attractive to the younger generation, both men and women, and has a certain intensity of exercise, which can achieve effective fitness effects."
Fitness is a boring process, which is an obvious fact, but street dance is not. If the goal is to burn fat and keep healthy, the latter has a chance to be more popular.
If you invest in the sports industry, the two possible specific directions of street dance in the future are fitness and training.
However, the rapid rise of fitness in recent years, to a certain extent, benefited from a series of fitness Internet tools such as Keep and Hot Fitness, which reduced the participation cost of fitness and made many fitness whites quickly complete a process from 0 to 1.
But if the same model is used in street dance, it may not be so easy to become a garrison in a street dance circle.
On the one hand, it is cost. For fitness tools, a push-up can be played circularly to form a set of actions; However, street dance is often composed of many different and diverse movements. If it is split, the recording cost will increase greatly.
The bigger obstacle lies in the form of expression. As a coherent dance, if the movements are divided, it will lose the charm of street dance in expression. "It will be very dry." Ye Zheng said: "It's not fun to practice street dance through this."
So at this stage, the combination of street dance and fitness mostly stays in group gymnastics class.
However, some people have begun to regard street dance as a means of fitness. Ye Zheng told Lazy Bear Sports that in the past two years, he found that more and more people came to learn house dancing. This dance is characterized by all the movements of the feet, requiring a high heart rate and effectively burning fat. Moreover, the music of this dance is relatively more in line with the modern trend and easy to be accepted by the public.
In fact, training has always been the main business of street dance studio. Compared with the sports training institutions that have sprung up in recent two years, the latter are mostly aimed at teenagers. The reasons why parents are willing to send their children to training institutions are mostly focused on physical exercise, consideration for further study and even future study abroad, and sometimes even let the training institutions have a look.
In hip-hop, there is a cultural consideration. Hip-hop, tattoo, advocating freedom and publicity in hip-hop and other cultural factors will affect China's parents' choice.
But it is different for adults who have the right to choose independently, especially when a new generation of young consumers are looking for sports that meet their personality and interests, street dance that can meet the fitness needs will have the opportunity to gain more audiences.
(At the request of the interviewee, Fang Zhigang and Jiang Shuiyao are pseudonyms. )