Breakin' Hawaii (1984)

In 1984 Breakdancing Fever hit Hawaii and they did something amazing with it.

When I was growing up, dance shows on television were very popular in our home. One of my older sisters was obsessed with them. Since she controlled the TV, I became a fan over time. A couple of the shows we watched were regional. Now, thanks to the magic of the internet, I have been able to find and enjoy other regional dance shows that I would have never gotten to see growing up in New Jersey. My new favorite was all about breakdancing and took place in Hawaii. This 1984 gem was aptly called Breakin' Hawaii.

1984 might have been the peak year of breakdancing in popular culture. On the big screen, we had movies like Breakin’ and Beat Street shining a light on the craze. While on TV, sitcoms and dance shows started to be influenced. It might have started in New York, but it didn’t take long for people of all ages to start moving their feet to this new fad across the US and eventually across the globe.

In Hawaii, this took the form of a dance competition called Breakin’ Hawaii. Premiering on July 7, 1984, and hosted by Kamasami Kong, the show ran weekly on both the television station KGMB and on KIKI Radio up to and including the finale on August 25th.

About Kamasami Kong

The host, Kamasami Kong, was pretty well-known in Hawaii. Born Robert W. Zix, he worked in Hawaiian radio for many years and was an early player of Japanese city pop in the United States. This allowed him to develop a following in Japan, where he would eventually move and continue his radio career in 2005.

Here is a great album of city pop music from 2015 hosted by Kong. I think his voice has just gotten better over the years.

The Competition

Each episode featured young dancers from across the state, all trying their best to make it to the final and win awards in four categories: Solo, Duo, Trio, and Group. Each week, a winner would be chosen, and they steadily advanced towards the final show. Here is an example of part of an earlier episode. Check out Kong’s 🔥 MJ style jacket!

As you can see, like a true talent show, they included a mix of skill levels. This is a real amateur competition, which makes it exciting to watch. Add to this the fact that these episodes were broadcast live, and you have the makings of amazing summer evening television. What I really like is how close the audience is to the dancers. Some of them are right up on the dance floor. It is like a group of kids just getting together to watch their friends dance. The resolution isn’t HD, but you can see their expressions and reactions.

As the finals approached and the popularity of the show kept growing, they realized they were going to need a bigger venue to accommodate the crowds who wanted to watch them. The Kilauea Recreation Center in Honolulu was chosen because it could handle the capacity crowd of 2,000 that would attend. The problem was that the Center was on the other side of Diamond Head, which obstructed the signal to the TV tower. This meant the final show in the series would be pre-recorded. Although, when you watch it, you will notice that they are acting like it is being broadcast live.

Thirteen of the past winners would be in the finals as well as a trio that would be selected in the final show, for a total of fourteen finalists performing. Since this was being broadcast across the state, they wanted to make sure it was inclusive. So they brought in exhibition groups from each of the Neighbor Islands (Maui, Hawaii, Kauai, Lanai, & Molokai). Add to that an exhibition by Marian Jay Dancers about the Evolution of Dance and some extra Breakin’ by the Wizard B-Boyz crew, and you have an amazing 90 minutes of television.

Lots of prizes were offered to competitors along the way. This included tracksuits, portable tape players, albums or cassettes, boomboxes, shirts, and other small prizes, but the big Division level prizes were:

• Single Dancers - A $25 Savings Account and $250 Cash

• Duos - Toshiba Televisions

• Trio - Fisher VCRs

• Group - Ten Roundtrip tickets from Hawaiian Air to the Neighbor Islands.

• Overall Winner - An epic looking Sansui Home Entertainment System (valued at $2,200)

The finals broadcast does have all the energy of a completely live event. The crowd is into it, the dancers all deliver, and Kong keeps things moving. I found myself cheering along and hoping my favorite dancers would take home the big prizes. Who won, I won’t ruin that, but I will post the finals here for you to enjoy yourself.

Breakin’ Hawaii was like lightning in a bottle. The right show for the right time. The trend was at its peak and doing it as a live dance competition was a brilliant move by a local TV station. It was so successful that they were talking about following it up with a more general talent show called Hawaiian Starlight. This would happen, but under a different name.

That November, they launched a more general talent show called Hawaii High. This 14 episode series would also be broadcast live and would feature talent from 27 Oahu high schools. Also hosted by Kong, the show went beyond breakdancing, featuring a broad range of talented young people, and it all led up to a tie-in with the long-running Brown Bags to Stardom. Which is a local high school talent show run by KIKI. A few clips and at least one episode of Hawaii High is available to watch online. It is fun, but it is not as compelling as its predecessor as a TV program.

Why did they do Hawaii High? You could be around at the time and look at Breakin’ Hawaii and think you had a reproducible formula for TV, a live talent show for young people, but its magnetism had more to do with the dance fad than anything else. That’s what makes this show so special. It was the right people doing the right thing at the right time. I didn’t grow up anywhere near Hawaii, but even watching forty years later, I can recognize this.

So do yourself a favor and take some time to sit down and watch the finals. It is a long video, but everything about it is charming. If by the end of it, you don’t wish you could travel back to 1984 Hawaii, you have no place in my Breakdancing Crew.