Popping the Electric Boogaloos

Zou's own confidence is based on his six-plus years of street dancing, which helped him qualify as an EB Kids member. After a two-day competition, seven teenage dancers were qualified to be EB Kids members.

A report on China's street dance sector commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and carried out by the School of Cultural Industries Management at the Communication University of China and the China Hip-Hop Union Committee published in January 2023, shows that CHUC has connected nearly 3 million street dancers and almost 10,000 training institutions. Every year, street dance enthusiasts take more than 10 million lessons, and participate in over 200,000 street dance exams.

Zou and his new EB Kids fellows are among the learners and Li is one of the dancers at the exams. Li says that being qualified as an EB family member is a huge encouragement and he will work harder on teaching street dance. He feels that the openness of China's cultural environment will be an advantage for dancers and learners to progress.

Chen Mingtao, a street dance teacher with 22 years of teaching experience and a member of the dancers association of Jiangxi province, believes that the event — especially the lecture by Popin Pete on the developing process of popping and EB style — will help street dance learners to "better understand dancing and the style, not just know what to do but why".

He also says that a deeper love and inspiration from life will help learners have a better understanding of dance.

During his lecture, Popin Pete recalled the day when he first heard about popping and Boogaloo. While popping reveals the character of the dance, meaning that the dancers' muscles jump and pop, Boogaloo, originally an African-American dance style, was developed by Boogaloo Sam as a way of doing body movements.

Popin Pete also showed how the founding members created movements such as the Old Man and the Scarecrow. The Old Man was devised by Boogaloo Sam after watching an old man walk, and the Scarecrow was inspired by the scarecrows in cartoons. "As you can see, much of the inspiration comes from real life." he says.

The lecture was conducted on the morning of the SFB finals, and that afternoon, Li Yue fired the audience up by quickly reacting to the beat and dancing the Scarecrow in a freestyle battle that showed his own understanding and use of the classic movements.