Korean Job Discussion Forums

[skinhead]

[Satori]

I've seen plenty of really hot modern style breakdancing here. You just have to be in the right place. So yeah, some Koreans can dance bloody well.

[endo]

Pete Rock & CL Smooth!

that's old school.....

[peony]

pretty cool! the guy made himself look like he has no bones

yeah, breaking and popping is old school but its still very popular all over the world and fun as heck to watch

it was funny, i guess the whole thing is a setup so they could record that video

the girl walking around carrying his boombox cracked me up

[JongnoGuru]

ehh. My previous post was real late, right before bed. Just a gut-level reaction to the video and everything in & about it, the whole gestalt and what it "really means". Like going to a concert and instead of just getting into the scene, you step back and observe that scene, you watch the crowd's reactions and wonder what they're all thinking, you wonder what socio-cultural function rock concerts play, etc. To a degree, I think Korean culture can encourage or reinforce a foreigner's aesthetic distance in that way, no matter how long you've lived here. Or perhaps even the longer you're here, the more it does that.

Anyway, as to the guy's ability... Not that I'm any judge, but I thought he was quite funny and very practised. People have said his dancing is 'old skool', but I don't care. I enjoy watching (good) tapdancers, tumbling Chinese acrobats and Charlie Chaplin films -- how 'old skool' is that!?

However, everything under the sun has its own setting. For the life of me, I'll never be able to disassociate this guy's routine from the intermission acts at Korea's seedier, old-foggey, strippy-girl cabaret nightclubs. And for most young Korean males who devote the time necessary to get that good and are that serious about it (presumably because they're not in school and are semi- or unemployed), one must conclude that success and the "big time" is precisely such a setting. Sandwiched there between the fire-eater and the mock lesbian love act. They often wear clown garb and clown makeup, the breakdancers (or hiphoppers, or whatever they call them) do. I suppose super-mega-stardom for them is a crack at becoming a second-tier MBC background dancer type person. I don't really know.

This isn't to suggest that the most talented hiphop dancers on the sidewalks of NYC have much rosier employment prospects. But jeez, what do I care about his future? I'm here to giggle at his antics today. And I did.