B-boy group leader Kim on future of dancers
.jpg?w=728)
Members of Jinjo Crew perform in this file photo. / Courtesy of Jinjo Crew
Jinjo Crew director Kim Heon-jun
By Kim Ji-soo
BUCHEON — The intersection near Sandong Station in the city just outside of Seoul boasts a dizzying sprawl of commercial buildings. And somewhere amid this sprawl is the office and dance studio of Jinjo Crew, the world’s top b-boying group.
Inside the office, several b-boys, in their usual caps and casual ensemble, were hard at work in front of computers, uploading news about the team and the b-boying ahead of a world event soon to open. Kim Heon-jun, 32, is leading the preparations for the upcoming Bucheon Bboy International Championship from July 22 through July 24 (bbickorea.com).
Korean b-boys are world-class, and Jinjo Crew, formed in 2001, sits atop. The team has come a long way since it first won at the world competition in China in 2004. By 2012, the group, named after a Korean word meaning “rising fire,” won five major international competitions to achieve “grand slam” status: the UK Bboy Championship in 2012, the Freestyle Session in the United States in 2011, R16 World Finals in Korea (2010-2012), Battle of the Year 2010 and Redbull BC One, 2008.
Yet Kim believes b-boying can do with more respect at home.
“We expect around 500 participants to attend. B-boy or breakdancing is a driving force in hallyu,” Kim said. A 500-head daily attendance is a lot, he said, when asked whether the figure was typical for such an event. He then asked whether the reporter knew how many b-boys there were in the nation. “Around 10,000 b-boys,” he said.
Asked why Korean “idols” seem to be in the limelight more than b-boys, Kim replied: “We in Korea do not consume one type of content for long.” He said he doesn’t mind that some b-boys eventually move onto the K-pop scene. “The top b-boys rarely move, and for those who do, it’s fine as long as they can show the b-boy spirit in what they do ,” he said.
As the world’s top b-boy team leader and now supervisor for the July competition, Kim was vocal about the need for more government support and societal interest.
“B-boys in other countries such as Japan and China have caught up. There is a lot of interest and support, including providing opportunities and platforms for b-boys to perform. We don’t see that in Korea,” Kim said. “They may clap for us when we do well, but we don’t become full on that,” he said.
A lifelong dancer, Kim stressed his dream to create an environment that gives dancers the respect and compensation they deserve. “Korea needs to encourage its youngsters who are aspiring to be b-boys,” he said. The dream for dancers to be able to make a living in Korea was instilled by his late professor, a former dance team leader at KBS.
With a friend’s encouragement, Kim started dancing in eighth grade in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. Kim said he danced because he didn’t know anything else and he really enjoyed it. He was a quick-learner, mastering a head-spin in just six months. “After that, I went onto practice other skills, only to find at 20 that I could no longer do the head-spin that well,” he said, laughing.
During the interview, he got serious as he talked about the attraction of b-boying.
“It is one type of dance that allows you to take the fight with oneself to the highest. You’re constantly battling against the floor. More often than not, your hands are on the floor more so than your feet, and it is a constant battle,” he said. The joy you feel after creating a skill, and when it’s named after you, it’s exhilarating he said.
“Other types of dance require you to follow a certain framework, but there is nothing like that in b-boying. It is about freedom of movement ... even though there is still always a winner,” he said.
On stage, Kim’s moves are fluid, even elegant. He said constant practice was what elevated his and his team’s skills. For five years, from 2005, he and his team practiced from midnight throughout up until 9 a.m. These days, the members practice every day even on a physically tiring day.
“If we don’t dance, our bodies ache more,” Kim said.
It is not easy to become a Jinjo Crew member, whose strength lies in being able to harmonize with others in the team.
“We are together in mind and in goal,” he said. “We love each other, we care for each other; that isn’t hard to understand right?” he asked. Watching their performance, and one realizes Kim’s emphasis on trust. There are some moves in their performances that would not work without trust among the members.
“Our members need to trust each other, because trust means mobility (in our presentation),” he said.
He thinks the hierarchy in Korean society, in which the young must respect the old and the old looks after the young, helps in team b-boying. “B-boying really is just more than about freedom,” he said. He said he and his team find that to them, b-boying is everything: it is a sport, an art, a field they spend their youth in. He wants to continue to spread this concept of “everything” in Korea and the rest of the world, which is one of the reasons he and his team keep performing in the international arena.
Kim sees himself dancing even when he turns 40 and older. There are days when he mostly agonizes about how good the team can aim to be, when that will happen or when he will see an exclusive b-boy building.
Asked to show a few moves, Kim stepped onto the studio’s dance floor, turned on the music and asked the reporter to feel the music and respond to it.
“That is where it starts,” he said.