Dance Delight is created by Mitsuhiro Harada a.k.a Machine.

Machine is the leader of the legendary break dance team ‘Angel Dust Breakers’ in Japan. In 1992, he founded the street dance promotion company ‘Adhip’ and started ‘Osaka Dance Delight’ which created a new wave of street dance culture from Osaka and the origin of all dance delight competitions. In 1994, the first nation wide street dance competition in Japan took place, this was the 1st ‘Japan Dance Delight’.

After 16 years, Japan Dance Delight has become one of the biggest international street dance competition, participating cities/countries include Paris (France), New York (United States), Taipei (Taiwan), Shanghai (China), Seoul (South Korea) and Singapore. The finals in Japan would attract audiences of up to 10,000 and the entire series of regional and cities level dance delight would attract thousands of contestants.

“From watching the competitions these past 16 years, I am so impressed with the skills and ambitions of the dancers every year. It is a dance contest, so there will be rankings, but dance is very artistic and so it can’t be rated as they do with time records in sports. In this sense, there’s no set definition for what is right and wrong. And so every year, it evolves from the young people’s new ideas and emotions. I think it will continue to evolve further. This is the most dynamic and fun part about the competition.” Machine

’Hip Hop Culture’ emerged in 1937 from South Bronx, New York. The word ‘Hip Hop’ is currently often used to refer to rap music in general. However, it is actually a collective term that includes 4 main parts - MC-ing, DJ-ing, B-boying, and Graffiti.

Originally, it was a subculture that could only be found in a small section of New York. However, its boom was triggered from the media in 1983 with the movie ‘Wild Style’, which allowed it to be recognized worldwide, including Japan. B-boying (breaking) especially drew the attention of the young generation with its dramatic moves, leading dance to become a huge boom worldwide.

The boom was further spurred by the movie ‘Break dance’ in 1984. The movie was set in America’s west coast and the leading dance styles were ‘poppin’ and ‘lockin’ – both of which originated from the west coast. Now with poppin’ and lockin’ further accelerating the boom along with the already popular breakin’, the media either took the word ‘breakin’ from the most popular dance form and used it as a general term to refer to all the genres, or they called it ‘street dance’, as the dance often took place on the streets. This boom calmed down after a while, leading the media to announce its official end in 1985.

However at the end of the 80s, a new dance boom emerged from the club scene. They are the new Jack Swing that created a craze with moves such as the ‘running man’ and ‘roger rabbit’, Hip hop dance that dances to hip hop music, and ‘house’ that emerged from the legendary clubs in New York ‘Loft’ and ‘Paradise garage’. This new boom allowed ‘breakin’, ‘poppin’ and ‘lockin’ to reemerge and the word ‘street dance’ started to be used as a general term that refers to all these genres. ‘Street dance’ continues to evolve and increase its reach since them, with various genres such as soul, jazz, reggae, capoeira, and be bop.