New Hong Kong street dance festival Flo Fest aims to change ‘troubled kid’ stereotype

The founders of a new Hong Kong festival dedicated to street dance culture have pledged to transform local perception of a dance category that has made it into the Olympic Games but is still associated with “troubled youths”.\nFlo Fest was founded by the Hong Kong Street Dance Development Association (HKSDDA), which celebrated its 10th anniversary in November 2025, and is the culmination of a year-long programme that saw eight emerging local choreographers undergo intensive training in Hong Kong and the UK. They will show off their new works over the weekend of January 10 and 11.\n“This festival is a declaration of the potential and creativity of Hong Kong’s street dance scene,” says Elaine Lam, a founding member of the HKSDDA, which is run by professional dancers and instructors on a volunteer basis.\n“The journey has been one of relentless passion and evolution, and this festival is both a celebration of that history and a bold statement about its future.”\n\nThe festival is supported by Breakin’ Convention, the UK group that has been a mentor for Flo Fest and is widely credited with elevating street dance into a powerful theatrical language.\nFounded in London in 2004 by hip-hop dance and theatre pioneer Jonzi D – who is one of the speakers at a seminar about street dance development on January 11 – Breakin’ Convention started out as an annual festival run under the prestigious Sadler’s Wells organisation, but has since expanded into tours and education programmes.\nThe week-long festival officially kicked off on January 3 with a free taster event at Hong Kong’s Central Market. The venue was buzzing all afternoon, with crowds packing the stands. Below, crews from Hong Kong and overseas threw down in a series of explosive battles, where seasoned pros went head to head with dancers as young as seven, trading blistering footwork, windmills and sky-high freezes.\nThere will be an exhibition at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre until January 11 about the history of street dance in Hong Kong. There will also be four ticketed performances that weekend, featuring all eight participants of the Flo training programme, as well as performances from Ivan Michael Blackstock from the UK and The Ruggeds from the Netherlands.\nBlackstock will perform Traplord, the 2023 Olivier Award-winning multimedia dance performance that blends striking visuals and physicality to explore themes of life, death and transformation. The Ruggeds – the 2025 Battle of the Year world champion breaking crew – will present Adrenaline, a work of raw intensity built on jungle, house and breakbeat rhythms.\n\nThe eight Hong Kong choreographers – Hoax, Jon Wen, Sica, SuenNam, Fan, HoTung, Kelly Lee and Mr ChanYip – all completed HKSDDA’s year-long “Flo – Choreographic Journey of Street Dance Theatre” programme. They will offer their fresh perspectives on local urban dance aesthetics.\nTsang Tsz-wa, also known as B-boy Think, describes the festival as an opportunity to showcase the city’s “incredible world-class talent”. As a Hong Kong representative at the National Games, Asian Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics, where breakdance was a category for the first time, he believes that the potential is already there, and all it needs is a well-supported platform.\n“To be honest, the local breakdancing level has never really been low anyway. My seniors in the industry have reached the Red Bull BC One finals, so we were already on the right track,” he says.\n“But it was only when I was training for those things that I realised there aren’t enough resources in Hong Kong. On one hand, it’s a proud moment as a Hongkonger to see the team making it so far with only themselves to rely on, but on the other, it was an immense amount of pressure.\n“I hope that from this [Flo] event, breakdance will get more exposure, and in turn we can be better equipped to help the next generation of dancers.”\n\nFor Louis Pong, another founding member of the HKSDDA, the festival’s commitment to context, through its exhibition and forums, is crucial. It provides the cultural framework he feels was often missing during the scene’s explosive growth in Hong Kong.\nHe explains that the city’s breaking community has made rapid strides in the last decade, narrowing the gap with long-established pioneers Japan and South Korea. Fuelled by the global popularity of early-2000s hip-hop music videos and films, the dance style gained strong local traction, though not without significant public misconception.\n“There was a long period where breakdancing could only be watched on the TV, and there were not enough in-person venues or people didn’t know about them, and the media kind of portrayed dance as a sort of coping mechanism for troubled youth,” Pong says.\n“People would think, ‘Oh, you dance hip-hop? You must have gone through something bad in life.’ That was the stereotype, and it overshadowed the discipline, artistry and sheer joy at the heart of the culture.”\n\nThis perception, they argue, is precisely what Flo Fest is working to transform.\n“We’re not just catching up any more,” Lam says. “We’re contributing to the conversation on our own terms. It forces people to re-evaluate. It shows them this is not just a ‘street’ activity; it’s a sophisticated, global art form with its own history, masters and expressive power.\n“It legitimises what we have known and loved for over 20 years.”\nTickets for the Breakin’ Convention theatre performances at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Studio Theatre on January 10 and 11 are available via Urbtix. For more details, go to the Flo website.\n