'Breaking' new ground

Xia Rui was one of the first to see the potential in the street dance zeitgeist, pushing the boundaries of, and promoting, the art form since the early 2000s, Chen Nan reports.

With its primal rhythms and rapid-fire lyrics, delivered with hypnotic cadence by machine gun-lipped MCs, hip-hop is more than just music. It attaches itself to the listener, like invisible strings of a marionette, forcing even the most dedicated wallflower into nodding to the beat. This is the basis for an artistic phenomenon that, like the mesmerizing pulse of the music's bass drum, has gripped the imagination of the nation's youth, growing exponentially more popular since the pioneers of Chinese street dance first popped and locked at the turn of the century.

One of the first to surf the wave of this pop-culture zeitgeist was Xia Rui, who, in 2002, after moving from his hometown of Xi'an in Shaanxi province to study at the Communication University of China in Beijing, was introduced to hip-hop culture.

As a freshman, he participated in dance communities and was introduced to music videos of Michael Jackson and Madonna, which soon led him to develop an interest in the dramatically expressive street dance.

Street dance originated in the United States in the 1970s and was practiced mostly by dancers from the African American and Latin communities. "Street dance" is an umbrella term for a wide range of dance styles, most notably breaking, locking and popping.