How do you see the potential of street dance?

Koutei Sennin : Well, it’s “the potential of street dance” that draws in the people that actually do it, and for them the most important thing is to enjoy it, to have fun doing it.

Besides street dance, I watch a lot of other kinds of dance where people use the body as a medium for expression, but I believe street dance has far and away the most potential to grab audiences’ hearts and minds.

Unfortunately, though, to use a cooking metaphor, a lot of times fantastic ingredients are coming together, but the recipe is missing that terrific spice or that special utensils that can really make it take off. I think this has to do with the environment street dancers are in, as well.

I mean, a lot of people who do street dance might have a feeling like, “We don’t need to spice it up with zesty flavors and serve it up beautifully, the ‘raw ingredients’ are tasty enough by themselves. That’s all we need.” But you end up with great dance without good presentation. There are diamonds rolling around on the ground, but nobody is picking them up. That’s why I say to people, “You’ve got to cut and polish that diamond,” “You’ve got to store it in a treasure chest where it belongs.”

The moment that treasure chest is opened, there are people who will recognize the value of that diamond and wrap it up, price it, and present it to the world. But there are diamonds out there that don’t want to go into that treasure chest. There’s an intrinsic value just in being a diamond, and they’re certainly making enough effort to achieve it. But for some reason there aren’t many people around to see it, and some of the ones that do are people who can’t tell a diamond from a cubic zirconia. And some of the diamonds aren’t even aware of their own value. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.