Will Our Street Dance Culture Grow in 2011?

To contact us Click HERE
What is our street dance community going to look like in 2011? If we just look at Los Angeles, it's possible that we're not going to see tremendous growth in our local scene. The reason? Lack of exponential growth internally and externally. The older dancers in their late twenties and early thirties are moving away to other life priorities. A younger generation in the late teens and early twenties has stepped in. But we don't seem to be learning from our predecessors' mistakes. We're repeating the same blunders in running events and building our community. Sure, we have a little more technology on our hands, but we haven't been using it to its full potential.
Is our culture doomed to exist only within a niche environment? On its own, we have always been an underground scene. We don't normally take measures to be inclusive and invite outsiders into our circles. Often, it's easy to just focus on preserving what is currently in our scene as a way to create our own secret world that we inhabit. There are pros and cons to this approach. Of course, it is wonderful that we find a place where we belong and where we can share common passions. But do we become too narrow-minded in closing ourselves off to the larger outside world? Our mentality to keep things "raw" and "underground" can lead us to self-limitations if we don't continue to evaluate the bigger picture of where we're heading.
Maybe that's why there have been talented dancers who have left our community. It's hard to pinpoint exact numbers but there are some who have vocalized why they left the scene due to the overbearing challenges of being a part of it. It became difficult to pursue goals they set for themselves with the current way our culture functions. How much talent have we lost due to the inefficiency, miscommunication, and narrow-mindedness that plagues us? It could be alarming if we saw the numbers.
Where do we go from here? If we were to make New Year's resolutions for 2011, could we find ways to execute them successfully? Let's start to think about where we want to be as a community next year. How about three to five years from now? As we start to envision this big picture, maybe it'll help us to iron out the kinks in our current situation.