Browsing by Subject "breakdance"

Breakdance is a hip hop dance which originated in the South Bronx of New York City in the 1970s. Hip hop is a global phenomenon which values authenticity, community and individuality. Breakdancers often dance with others to develop their style and create a community of like-minded individuals. Dancers may travel to other countries to compete for titles and develop their skills by participating in workshops. The current study explored expressions of identity in South Korean breakers. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis served as the theoretical framework for the study. It is often used in identity research exploring how individuals make sense of their identity in a given situation, phenomena or context. Trough IPA, the embodied practice of dance can be assessed where one’s feelings, emotions and the body can be made salient. Five South Korean male breakdancers from five different cities were interviewed. With the use of semi-structured interviews, questions aimed to be non-directional and open to interpretation. The analysis showed that the dancers expressed their identity in breaking in different ways. Individuality was valued through developing one’s own dance style and having a nickname. Some dancers indicated using their body to express themselves and experiment with different styles of dancing. Music acted as a way to introspect, to identity feelings and emotions in oneself. For a few of the dancers, the clothes they were while dancing were the same as their everyday clothes. Further, the breakdancers placed importance in dancing and learning from others to develop their dancing style. Importantly, for all of the dancers, it was crucial to acknowledge and understand the roots of hip hop. The dancers explored their journeys in breaking and continuously referred to their past and present. The breakers’ identity was affected by their dancing style, clothing, music, the use of their body and their relationship to other breakers. The current research adds to the already existing but limited research on sense making processes of breakdaners. Future research could explore the notions of community and sense of belonging in other hip hop subcultures, and develop research focused on breakdancers’ meaning making processes.

Purposes. The purpose of this study is to construct a picture of experienced Finnish b-boys' viewpoints on learning in breakdance culture. The theoretical framework for this study is constructivist learning theory which is used to form understandable claims for questions such as how to describe the learning framework in breakdance culture and what are the fundamentals in learning from individual and social perspective. Methods. The study was executed as a qualitative research and the used methodological philosophy was phenomenography. The research material was collected by using half structured interviews. The interviewees had at least 15 active years experience in breakdance culture. There were five interviewees in this study, though the interviews were plentiful. The analysis is based on content analysis. Conclusions. Learning in breakdance culture is a process inside the culture structures (pseudonym, rituals, movement and style, tradition). Creative and constructivist activity combined with meaningful belonging to the culture was the fundamentals in learning. There were several perceptions of teaching and a teacher. Traditionally breakdancers saw teaching as a sosioconstructivist process, where every person in the community acted as a teacher and a learner. Since the dance schools has become a notable learning environment, there were also a clear teacher role. B-boys and b-girls evaluated learning as a given or recieved respect from other people.