CHAOS WASHING MACHINES

There is a festival at the Cheonggye Stream starting tonight to celebrate its opening a couple of years ago.

(This is the stream I pictured here at the Eyeball a few days ago, for those of you keeping track of how I just instinctively seem to be taking the pulse of things...)

The opening of the festival features, oddly juxtaposed, "a performance of b-boy and b-girl dancers and Argentinean tango dancers".

If I can get a chance to catch live the "B-boy and B-girl" dancers it will be a good way for me to test my theory that Korea has absolutely no sense of kitsch.

Incidentally, I asked the Fulbright enthnomusicologist if she thought there was a sense of kitsch in the culture, and she said that there was not. Furthermore, she thought that it was not analytically useful to apply that Western notion to Korean pop culture at all. Since I haven't really studied theoretical models of kitsch (but likely should) I couldn't roll out a good answer. But my sense is that kitsch certainly exists, and plays a universal function (re: Kundera: "Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit" ) but that it is the sense of it or recognition of it that differs culturally. Any thoughts on this will be appreciated.

The B-movement is the Asian (I think Korea-centered) embrace of breakdancing. I think this comes at least twenty years after breakdancing flamed out and became completely uncool with Breakdancing 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I may be wrong about this.

{I'm an old time musician, so 1) what can I possibly know of breakdancing and 2) who am I to complain of doing something that is "old"?}

On Chuseok, I went to City Hall Plaza to listen to the Korean music show and they had set up a huge photo display in tents along the edge of scenes of Seoul. One section was focused on the B-boys and it was, er, intriguing.

Since I don't know anything about this, I looked for some help.

I never let me students cite Wikipedia (and still won't) but in this one instance I will rely on the most assuredly kitsch-free stylings of Wikipedia's B-Boy definition to help us define B-boy movement (pun, lowest form of humor, intended).

"A B-boy/break-boy (male) or B-girl/break-girl (female) is a person devoted to hip-hop culture, specifically the breakdance element. The term "b-boy" has come to refer more specifically to a male who practices what the media refers to as breakdancing, i.e., an individual who has the ability to perform rhythmic dance combining a variety of dance forms with gymnastics and original body movements. These stylized movements are commonly known as "breaking" or "breakdancing," and B-boys are often called breakdancers.

This lays it out rather clearly, even down to the helpful distinction between B-boy (male) and B-girl (female)

There are four basic elements which form the foundation of B-boying. The first is Toprock, a term referring to the upright dancing and shuffles that B-boys do when they enter a circle. The second element is the Downrock or Footwork, refers to dancing performed on the floor. The third element, is known as the Freeze, refers to the poses that B-boys throw into their dance sets to add punctuation to certain beats and end their routines. The fourth and final element of bboying is the Power moves. These are acrobatic moves normally made up of circular motions where the dancer will spin either on the floor, or in the air.

A related dance form which influenced B-boyings Uprocking / Rocking / The Rock Dance, also performed while standing, and a style of dance in which both dancers fabricate ways of beating the opponent using fictional weaponry and embarrassing situations in rhythm with the music (Burning). This style involves moves called Yerks [pronounced Jerks] which are a set of motions executed to the break of a track and are where most of the battling occurs, outside of the break of a track is where the freestyle element of the dance is executed with great musicality throughout.

Note the verb "b-boying," gerund of "to b-boy."

More detail than you may have anticipated, and definitely irony-free...

Notable early b-boys included Klark Kent, The Amazing Bobo, James Bond, Harrison, and Tom Krew, Sau Sau, Ricksy, The Nigga Twins and El Dorado Mike. These dancers predated what we now know as the B-boy foundation, but they created the backdrop that inspired younger dancers to develop the moves that are used today.

Second-generation B-boys include Phase 2, Melle Mel, Mr Ness, Breakout, D.S.T., Pow Wow, Beaver, Spy, Sundance, Jo Jo , Jimmy D, Trac 2, Mongo, Off, Vinnie, Spivey, Cadilac Mel, Weeble Rock, Blue eyes, and Joey. These B-boys developed much of the uprocking, footwork and freezing now recognised as integral to B-boy style. Their early spin moves led to the first power move, the backspin.

Third-generation B-boys include Ken Swift, Frosty Freeze, Rip 7, Take One, Ty Fly, Flip Rock, Chino, Kid Float, Lil' Lep, Crazy Legs, Kid Freeze, Mr Freeze, Icey Ice, Doze, The late Buck 4, the late Kuriaki and the late Kippy Dee. These B-boys created most of the basic moves which are today considered foundation.

I don't know how far you can go in the B-boy movemenr with some of these names. But obviously you can get at least to the Cheonggye Stream festival.

My wife and baby finally arrive in Korea today. I am hoping we can back from the airport and across town early enough to really dive into the local culture with some B-boy battlin'.