Street dance: form of expressing identity in adolescents and youth

The purpose of this paper is to foreground the counterculture phenomenon that is provides the basis for street dance and the reasons why young people practise it, as well as to analyse the styles of dance developed within this type of dance. The study was made between February and May 2010 in Timi oara on a number of 149 people practising street dance, 46 girls and 103 boys. The results of the research emphasise that the dancers mainly come from an inferior social background (49.66%) or from a middle-class background (46.03%) and have been regularly practising breakdance (83.89%) for more than five years (32.88%). The effects of practising it can be observed on an overall basis as concerns physical condition, artistic sense, self knowledge, discipline but also culture and way of life. Conclusions show that people practise street dance due to its nonconformist and all alive style that continuously makes use of new moves, new trends but also due to it being a way of socialising within a group.