Kung Fu Hip Hop

A few of my friends who I used to do dulcimer with now break dance. I never got into break dancing even though when I started Kung Fu there were a lot of peers who were really into break dancing too. Part of my not being into it was I was more clumsy. Part of it was also that I was seeking to get in touch with my Chinese side. My father was Chinese but he had died when I was four. Where as the Asian kids that were into Kung Fu were pretty comfortable with their Chinese and Asian culture. The altars and the language were not something they needed to learn about or remember. So Kung Fu and lion dance was just an activity, like break dancing, but for me it had much more significance than that, like it was the key to my soul or something.
Now that I am teaching a lot of kids though, I have changed a lot of the format. I noticed for kids, and even modern adults, our forms are just too long. I mean there are some older adults from white heritage that have mentioned that they could probably watch me do Kung Fu all day, even the slower forms. But they are older and their eyes probably are searching for something different than the average young adult. For those that have been exposed to Youtube, or even as far back as MTV, traditional forms, like Classical Music, might be too long. They might like that traditional stuff as background music, but only certain people with an acquired taste can listen or pay attention for that long.
So when I started watching a youtube video of my friends break dancing in a "battle" I saw that Kung Fu could be put in a similar format in a kids class. Instead of taking turns doing free style forms the way I have in the kids class (which is already shortened from the full forms that I learned) I could break a class into groups and they could compete against each other, with Kung Fu moves, and you don't risk the kids accidentally poke each other's eyes or something.
As far as tradition, a lot of Kung Fu was performed on the street on small stages with flashy moves. There was a lot of "Mai Mo" or "Selling Movement." My Sifu tried to put himself above this (though he did some of it and we have some origins in it) It's just that he had reached a status in his career in China where his Kung Fu was considered more respectable. If you think about it, Selling Movement is sort of like Selling Out the purer, mystical, essence of your Kung Fu. Which is why Sifu didn't have a problem with doing it to survive. But thought that if you don't have to do it, you should try not to.
However nowadays in America, I think those lines, castes and hierarchy are more blurred. Not that they don't exist, they just exist differently. For instance I'm sure there are people of older age from old money that turn their noses up at Hip Hop. Doesn't make them right though. In fact some of that old money might very well come from trafficking in Drugs and Humans. does make the descendants bad people, but the ancestors were downright scum of the earth.
And in that video I was watching I recognized two of the dancers. One was an MIT grad and a scientist. The other was a doctor. What can be more respectable than those two professions?

As far as selling out, I think of it more as selling something more pallatable to my audience/students to try and get them interested in the other aspects of Kung Fu. In fact my Sifu once mentioned in frustration that in China, it was all about the Sifu. Just like it was all about respecting the parent. But in America, the culture is different, and it's all about the student, or the consumer, and the child, and that it was hard for him to adapt. Well, when in Rome.