Kiss and Tell

THE RISE OF STREET DANCE 05 August 2009

From underground to mainstream, from The Jump Off to Britain's Got Talent. Sounds like a little something called Populist Innovation doesn't it? Kiss' Head of Research Mark Crawford examines the rise of street dance.

One of the founding principles behind setting up Kiss Confidential was to explore the idea of Populist Innovation; to uncover all those brands, concepts and movements that offer cutting edge cool but also appeal to the mainstream. It’s certainly where we see Kiss sitting and you could put things like Topshop, the iphone and Grime in the same bracket. Something else that we think you can now add to that canon is Street Dance. So how did something that started with B-boys battling in New York end up winning ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent?

When Diversity won BGT beating Susan Boyle, the odds on, nailed on favourite, most of the nation was shocked. If you were checking Facebook or Twitter that night I can guarantee at least half your friends probably mentioned it or had an opinion on it and it fed the tabloids for days. So much so that even a Middle England favourite such as the Daily Mail was running wholesome articles about Diversity member Perri Luc Kiely having to return to school a few days after the final. Such was the initial surprise of the victory that even group leader and choreographer Ashley Banjo said "I didn't expect it, really didn't expect to win at all"

One man who wasn’t surprised though is Ara Stevens (pictured), Founder and Managing Director of Jump Off TV (www.jumpoff.tv/) . For the last few years Ara’s Jump Off events have offered people the best in street dance, breakdance and MC rap battles. Both Diversity and Flawless were regular performers at the events and for the last 3 years Kiss has been the Jump Off’s radio partner with our very own Manny Norte’manning the DJ booth. Ara says that he was, “Not surprised at all. The judges and the general public hadn’t been exposed to this sort of entertainment before. It has an incredible wow-factor the first few times you see it, we learnt this from Jump Off events. Dancers want to be noticed; they want to prove they are the best and they want to make a living from dance so the best dancers will jump on the best opportunities. BGT is not frowned upon by the dance community.”

How has this transition happened though from Break Dancing being developed in the Bronx of the early 70s as one of the 4 elements of Hip Hop  to mainstream ITV appeal and acceptance? Ara suggests it has been driven by brands and then met in the middle by dancers wanting wider recognition, “Street Dance has always been cool but in recent years we've seen it rise as something 'cool' and 'in'. I think it comes down to mainstream artists and brands embracing it. Red Bull do an annual B-boy battle, Madonna has a team of street dancers everywhere, Nike have done several Street Dance initiatives, Missy Elliot, Usher, Chris Brown, Ciara have all been pushing Street Dance and of course BGT saw some weaker crews enter earlier which obviously the better crews saw and thought 'we're better than them’ and they got to the finals!”

The value of combining cutting edge cool with a more mainstream appeal is obvious when you consider that 18.5m people watched Diversity crowned Britain’s Got Talent winners and more than 4m people voted. The ripple effect has been far and wide. Off the back of both Flawless and Diversity’s success the number of Street Dance instructors hired by schools has tripled with teachers reporting that the number of boys taken part in street dance has increased dramatically. The world famous Pineapple dance studios in Covent Garden signed up an extra 850 people to Street Dance classes in the month after the BGT final with the Evening Standard reporting that they are having to build an extra studio to cope with the demand. And thanks to the wonders of TGI we at Kiss know that there are also nearly 200,000 of our listeners who take regular dance classes. Outside of people having a go themselves it seems Street Dance has firmly fixed itself as part of the current cultural zeitgeist. Not only were Diversity given mainstage status at this year’s Wireless festival alongside the likes of Alesha Dixon, Calvin Harris and Kanye West they were also rumoured to be in talks with Michael Jackson to support him at his O2 shows. There’s also a 3D Street Dance movie about to start production starring Diversity, Flawless and George Sampson so it is certainly branching out into different areas.

One of the key elements of Diversity’s success is that in a world littered with lazy and pejorative tabloid journalism they offer a counterbalance to the notion that we should all be scared of young people or that they deserve to be demonised. Their members consist of people in school, at university or in full time jobs and to achieve what they have they needed to work extremely hard and make a huge deal of sacrifices. For most brands like Kiss that work with young people that is the reality for most kids or teenagers – a million miles away from Daily Mail fear mongering. We asked Ara about the positivity of Street Dance and if he found that it has a part to play in keeping young people out of trouble. He says, “Without a doubt. I've spoken with many dancers who say dance was their way off the street, how their old friends are in trouble now and do nothing. Dance, like any positive activity, is not a way to keep kids out of trouble - that is a by-product of it. I think if we try to get people into dance to stay out of trouble that is wrong and strays will back fire. If a dance infrastructure is in place in UK, if there are several competitions, schools, events, paid work and stars/idols then you will naturally find kids flocking towards dance, that’s how it happened with Jump Off.”

It seems therefore that Street Dance is here to stay in the mainstream whilst still developing the best in underground talent and innovation. And when Diversity finally perform at the Royal Variety Show in front of the Queen, on ITV1, then innovation truly will have become populist.