狄海洋的“蓉式Breaking”

Di Haiyang was showing the movement of Breaking.

　　Dressed in big T-shirts,straight pants and peaked caps,cool young men are drinking tea in a teahouse,watching Sichuan opera and skateboarding through a graffiti wall to a bustling bar.Such scenes can be seen everywhere in the streets of Chengdu.Tradition and trend collides in Chengdu with history of thousands of years,stirring up a street culture with unique"Sichuan flavor".In various fields,such as street dance,rap,skateboarding and graffiti,many young people in Chengdu shine brightly.Today,Chengdu has become a leading city of pop culture in China.

　　With the emergence of street dance,more and more people pay attention to Chengdu,a hot land for hip-hop dance.There are more than 500 street dance training institutions,and people can come into contact with many top dance teachers in the major dance types,such as Hiphop,Locking,Popping and Breaking.Many world-class street jams,such as WOD,HHI and KOD,have set up division in Chengdu.In terms of the street dance level of the city,Chengdu must take a place in the top 3 among the cities in China.

　　"Peace&love",the core spirit of street dance,coincides with the openness and inclusiveness of Chengdu.Also,Chengdu people know how to relax and are optimistic in nature,which can be fully shown in the street dance.As a Chengdu youth,Di Haiyang has been growing up with Chengdu's street dance culture.Pursuing the dream and dancing from Chengdu to the world,he wrote the chapter of his youth with sweat and also showed the spirit and vibrancy of Chengdu youth.

Di Haiyang was delivering a performance in the street dance activities.

　　After the millennium,street jam events appeared on television.The"Energy Zone National Street Dance TV Championship"of CCTV and the"Star Dance Champion"of Star Satellite TV became the enlightenment o f a generation of Chinese hip-hop dancers.

　　During the summer vacation when Di was 14,he got attracted by a man who were"dancing around on the ground"on the TV,which opened his door to the world of street dance.Long time later,when he had a systematic understanding of hip-hop,he knew that it was Breaking,a type of the street dances.

　　At that time,there was almost no professional street dance teacher in China.Di would watch the street dance programs on TV every day after school,and then boned up on the dances in front of the mirror.He kept the practice both at home and at school,and sometimes he even spent a week studying a single movement skill.Di recalled:"Although the movement itself was hard,I'm fully enthusiastic with the process of constant trying and study,thereby not feeling difficult with the dance."

　　Such self-study had lasted until the time when he was in university.After graduation,Di became an office worker as planned.His career went smoothly,and finally he became a project manager,while before he was once a worker in the workshop and engaged in warehouse management and channel sales.However,he never forgot and kept in mind the street dance dream.When he was 24,he resolutely quit his job and decided to follow his love and chase the dream.

　　In order to save money,Di took the Eastern Suburb Memory as a"wild"dance training place.The Eastern Suburb Memory was originally the Chengdu State-Owned Hongguang Electron Tube Factory,which was later rebuilt in the mode of industrial heritage conservation,and now has become a multi-cultural park integrating music,art,drama,photography and other artistic forms.In the empty place on the ground floor,or at the corner on the first floor,or on the clean granite floor,putting on the headphones,he could start to dance,in front of the reflective glass.Almost every day in the year,Di devoted himself to practising dancing in the Eastern Suburb Memory,for 10 to 12 hours a day,from the early morning to late evening,and sometimes he went back home holding his waist after the practice.

　　But he felt content.In the past,he could only practice dancing after school or work,and it was a luxury for him to dance to his heart's content.Now,he can devote himself to dancing,getting the feelings he has never had before,and even"dances to tears"."The happiest thing is that I can still dance,"Di recalled."I feel so happy when I really devote myself to what I want to do."

　　After a year of"devil training",Di won several champions in street dance championships in Sichuan division,and the"Starry Space"of Yang Kai,the leading dancer of Breaking in China,also sent him an invitation.Di then joined the Starry Space and"fought around",together with the team which gathered the top street dancers in Sichuan.

Di Haiyang was performing hip-hop in the Dance Art Festival.

　　The openness and inclusiveness of Chengdu and Chengdu people's love and tenacity for life have nurtured the street dance culture.More and more dancers who grew up in the streets of Chengdu have begun to cut a figure on the world stage.Di is one of them.

　　Among all the awards he won,what makes Di proud most is the Theme Choreography Award for the 2017 WOD(World Of Dance)USA Finals.In that championship,his dance showed the whole process of a man's life,from pursuing faith to purifying himself."Unlike foreign street dance works,which focus more on the form and visual impact,many Chinese street dance works contain an in-depth humanistic spirit,"Di said,and this is one of the reasons why he succeed in the world's largest hip-hop tour.

　　The prototype of this dance work came from Sichuan Conservatory of Music.Once,Di happened to see a group of college students dancing,and thought the dance was very meaningful,but the dancers were mostly freshmen and sophomores,with limited overall dancing level.Then he found the Director of the Department and the teachers in charge of the choreography and the instruction,and he decided to rearrange the dance for further improvement.

　　This was a large-scale dance with 30 or 40 dancers.As the large classroom for the rehearsal could only be used in the evening,as it would be for class in the daytime,Di and his team rehearsed here from 8 p.m.to 5 a.m.or 6 a.m.every day.During the four months o f the rehearsal,some students got injured,and some gave up,and the dancers were changed over and over again.Finally,35 people participated in the formal performance,but more than 70 people had participated in the rehearsal.The three members of the choreography team,including Di Haiyang,had to shoulder the responsibility from theme identification,collection,choreography and performance t o execution,coordination and logistics.Over these 4 months,"our bones had nearly gone".

　　It was the"enduring"rehearsal that made Di feel that the dance movements were"as natural as blinking"in the formal competition.The Final were held in the United States,and 26 teams from different countries and regions competed on the same stage.Each team strived for one of the 2 admission tickets to the Final in its own division after the fierce local competitions.Finally,the dance work of Di's team won the fourth place in the world as well as the Theme Choreography Award.

Di Haiyang was performing hip-hop.

In May 2022, Di Haiyang (Left 4) assumed the chief referee of Sichuan Province Street Dance Points Qualifying Tournament.

　　I n recent years,Chengdu has continuously gained progress in holding sports events,and it will hold many major international events such as the FISU World University Games Summer,the World Table Tennis Championships and the 2025 World Games.Through sports,Chengdu will shape the spirit of the city,leading the fashion of the city,and creating a high-quality development path for a world sports city.Under this opportunity,street dance,which was included as one of the Olympic Game events,has set off another wave of enthusiasm in Chengdu.Professional hip-hop dancers who once had difficulties in survival have also gained a broader path for career development.

　　When Di was 16,street dancers could only get RMB 25 for four dances in one performance,while the starting price for other dances was RMB 3,500.After he won many solo titles,he still couldn't make a living as a street dancer.He once ran a fast food restaurant and delivered milk.At one time,his daily schedule was practicing dancing until he went to bed in the morning,getting up at 5:30,starting to boil milk and make yogurt when the sky turned light,delivering milk to the office buildings at 7:00,and going home in the morning to catch up on sleep,which made him live a life of reversed day and night.

　　How can we find a way out for the street dance industry?"At that time,I just hoped that those who would like to follow our path could have a career development path,instead of being like us,who could not help questioning themselves the meaning of what they did when they got to the top."

　　I n 2018,D i Haiyang set up a company mainly for the organisation of street dance events,among which the most influential is the"City Defenders",an exchange competition between Chengdu City and Taiwan Province that attracted around 100,000 people to watch it online at the same time.Since then,Di Haiyang has gradually changed to work backstage from dancing on the stage.

　　In 2020,street dance was included as an Olympic Game event.Coupled with Chengdu's goal to"build itself into a famous city for sports events",street dance ushered in a new development opportunity in Chengdu,from a culture and lifestyle to a profession and competition.Sichuan Street Dance Association and Chengdu Street Dance Sport Association have been established,and now Di Haiyang serves as the secretary general of the two Associations.He positions himself as"a person who serves everyone".The Associations not only organize and hold street dance competitions,but also lead the teams to participate in national street dance championships and prepare for the National Games and the Youth Olympic Games.They also aim to select and reserve talents for the national street dance teams.Di Haiyang introduced that the Chengdu Youth Street Dance Tournament held last year has been comprehensively optimized from the level of judges to the form of competitions,with more than 1,300 candidates participating in the Tournament,twice as many as that for the previous year.

　　Street dance has finally entered the public's vision while it was a niche street culture in the past.Di Haiyang's dream of street dance has also changed from practicing movement,making a good dancing work and winning an award to boosting the development of street dance industry and realizing the street dance feelings.As Di Haiyang said,"If one day we can no longer dance,the street dance will still live on,and its cultural value can be continuously explored.This is what the significance lays."