The rise of street dance in Hong Kong, from battle circles to cultural capital （只有英文版）
Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 hit “Not LikeUs” crescendoed, the two battle-ready competitors faced off, and the final round of the Red Bull Dance Your Style university qualifier was under way.
Among the 16 contestants at The Burrow in San Po Kong in April, the race for the crown came down to the sultry shoulder rolls and eccentric arm twirls of Chlorine, a whacker repping the red team, and the dips and twitches ofWing, the popper in blue.
The two teams’ flags fluttered over the rambunctious crowd of students and dancers, both aspiring and accomplished, as they raised their colour to cast their votes.By a narrow margin, 23-year-old Wing, or Chow Cheuk wing, took home his first Red Bull championship. Sporting a basketball jersey over a checked shirt, a grey tie and dark jeans with oversized pockets, Chow was elated about this unexpected win, an impressive step up from his results last year, when he was voted off in the quarter-finals.
A year-two psychology student at the Hong KongMetropolitan University, Chow learned popping five years ago, when his friend signed up for a class after watching the mainland Chinese reality-competition show Street Dance of China. He has since entered competitions in Hong Kong and Macau, hoping to kick-start a dance career – “teaching perhaps?” – but doubts that popping, or street dancing overall, would be accepted in the “critical, closed-minded cultural desert” that is Hong Kong.
Various forms of street dance have been growing, nevertheless, thanks in part to the infectious popularity ofK-pop, local girl and boy bands such as Collar and Mirror, and sponsored events like Red Bull Dance Your Style platforming new talent.
Last year, breakdancing made its official debut at theSummer Olympics in Paris, and a breakdancing event is scheduled for the 2026 Asian Games in Japan, bringing a welcome shift in perception, given street dancing’s questionable reputation in Hong Kong. It is the medium community centres had used to build rapport with young delinquents, such as the Education Bureau’s funding of the School of Hip Hop in Sai Wan Ho, founded in 2004, described on its website as building “positive personalities[to] enhance self-esteem” for “at-risk youth”.
Today that stigma has been mostly forgotten thanks to people such as Elaine Lam Yick-ling and Louis Pong Chun-tat, general manager and educational director, respectively, of the Hong Kong Street Dance Development Association(HKSDDA). Founded 10 years ago, the organisation is responsible for the annual Hong Kong Street DanceChampionship, bringing together choreographers from mostly underground venues around the city.
The HKSDDA has hosted workshops and performances within community spaces and schools, backed exchange and training programmes in Europe, and even bridged street dancing with conventional art forms such as theatre and Chinese opera, enjoying the support of charities like the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and theLeisure and Cultural Services Department.
Lam says the association’s objective is to foster job opportunities for street dancers, and while global sporting events have brought recognition to the genre,“what we need are ongoing commercial events, which are dependent on whether businesses have the budget to spend.
“We’ve seen more interest from arts groups, such asLe French May and the Hong Kong Arts DevelopmentCouncil, which has supported the championships since 2016.”
Ocean Wong Chun-yeung, the choreographer and director of the award-winning ChestRoll dance crew, says breakdancing’s technical elements lend the form to score-based competition, but other styles such as hip hop and R&B should be interpreted as an art form.
Since its founding in 2018, ChestRoll has taken home championships at the World of Dance Hong Kong in 2019and 2023, and representatives have danced for Chanel, Pacific Place and, most recently, in the Hong KongTourism Board’s 2025 Chinese New Year Night Parade.Wong has also choreographed for the likes of Hins Cheung, Jace Chan Hoi-wing and members of Mirror.
“My passion lies in choreography, in creation,” saysWong, “so I want to explore how dance as a medium can shape-shift when put in different contexts. Through finding new outlets for street dancing, we are also making it more sustainable in the long run.”
And Hong Kong big guns West Kowloon CulturalDistrict and M+ agree, the former having incorporated street dancing into its outdoor festivals as early as2020, the latter having held street-dancing battles within the museum last March, drawing in some2,000 participants.
Paul Tam Siu-man, executive director of performing arts at West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, says interest in street dance has skyrocketed since the 2024 Summer Olympics, adding that three shows featuring Dutch street-dancing group ISH DanceCollective at the West Kowloon Cultural District all sold out last June.
“Street dance in Hong Kong still doesn’t have the respectability its cousins such as ballet and Chinese dance command,” says Tam, “but it’s the dance of choice for many young people. The quality of Hong Kong’s street dancers is quite high.”
Enter Kwan Mun-chun, aka Bboy ET, vice-chairmanof the Breaking Division of the DanceSport Association of Hong Kong, China, from 2021 to 2024. In 2023, a year before breakdancing officially debuted at the Summer Olympics, Kwan was recruited to share his talent with local schools as part of the Hong Kong Jockey ClubCharities-funded Active School Programme. In 2024alone, Kwan says he taught more than 8,000 students, and he’s since placed 15 breakdancing instructors in the programme.
With breakdancing being a technically difficult style,Hong Kong only has a handful of breakdancers and studios, but Kwan hosts cross-disciplinary events that highlight DJing, graffiti and tattoo art for the Hong Kong Alpha Artnity Association, of which he is the founder.
“The Olympics calls breakdancing a sport,” saysKwan, “but street dancing is an entire culture of its own, with its distinctive music, its own language.”
Aside from home-grown efforts, an increasing number of international brands and competitionshave shown interest in Hong Kong dancers. The first perhaps being the regional Gatsby Dance Competition, the 2008-inaugurated annual event hosted by theJapanese men’s cosmetics label. Winners received prize money and a fully expensed trip to compete in the finals in Tokyo. The last edition took place inHong Kong in 2016.
Soon to follow were Hong Kong qualifiers for theWorld of Dance and Red Bull Dance Your Style in 2018and 2023, respectively. The first edition of the latter, in 2018, saw 29 events across 14 countries. Today, it brings 300-plus events to more than 50 countries,“recreating the social atmosphere from which street dance emerged”, wrote a Red Bull representative.“We hope to empower local dancers through the event to bring them a different battle experience and potentially an international stage [and to a] wider audience with the involvement of a spectator judging concept.”
HKSDDA’s Pong, though he’s yet to take home the Red Bull crown, says his milestones overseas in the early days, whether as a dance champion or a judge, were the anchor to the support HKSDDA now enjoys.
“The HKSAR and investing organisations saw that this was something that can bring Hong Kong’s name onto the global stage,” he says. “We want everyone to understand that street dancing is an art form that has a place everywhere, not just on the streets.”
查看文章來源：SCMP