What is Saddancer

What is saddancer?

Saddancer is Japanese Finnish streetdance x longboard brand. We have clothing line and own longboard cruiser deck collection. If you feel that fast longboarding through dark Tokyo Neon city feel combined to Nordic europe minimalism, you are at home with us.


 
Sometimes you can see beauty in sadness. In any art music or movement, there is certain beauty in melancholy, be it street dancing or longboard dancing. It’s alright to be just you. Stay at home when it’s raining. Feel blue in Mondays. We are not super heroes, and it’s kinda cool. Rainy day and hangover, we all been there. Some times sad music gives energy more than happy music. 

Minimal with simplicity, we just wanted to make videos, clothes and cruisers we ourselves wanted to use.

This is still project that has just started, so where we are heading, we don't know. We wanted to have raw project that can put all our creativity and visual designs together, streetdance x longboard dancing videos, events, shop for clothing, skate team and longboards around it.

Tell us how did Sad skate shop & clothing project start?

 
My cousin lived in Hawaii and I started skim boarding in Oahu. Then I got my first dancer board actually when I was in Okinawa, just that I could move from place to place.

I just bought cheap longboard from local Okinawa spot and started mixing street dance and longboard dancing. I loved how you don’t need dance classes or studio to practice. You have your own moving dance floor always with you.

We have been thinking for our own clothing line for long time. We had sneakerstore called Popot Sneakerstore in Helsinki, it was first sneakerstore in Finland to specialize on limited edition sneakers. At the time we were in middle of fashion biz, we were tight with people from Vans, Diamond & co, DC and skate scene wasn’t that far from us. We had sponsorship from Adidas originals and we even hooked Vans sponsorship to one of our friends.
There were talks of our own brands a lot. Then I got into my pro street dancer career for years and quit sneakerstore.

Then when covid came, we had to cancel all street dance events, close our street spot, and in empty studio we decided to buy and introduce longboarding to street dancers.

So that’s how it ended to come with our own shop Sad Skate shop, and street dance x longboard brand Sad dancer.

We are now working on our own cruiser. After seeing videos of original 1960’s long boarding, got really stoked, and wanted plain board with no grip, just to do deep carves, boardwalks with bare feet. No flips or tricks. When our street dancer days, tricks or power moves weren’t the thing, my crew was about small details and style. There wasn’t one I wanted so the next thing was dreaming about my own deck.

I wan’t the saddancer deck to be all black, minimal, chill, simplistic and zen. Japanese-finnish heritage I guess.





Why Sad dancer name?

The music to dance to is artists like shiloh, xxx, frank ocean, moody and chill lo-fi stuff. These kind of music gives me energy more than happy music, if you get me. Motivational speakers make me really sad. I see beauty in chill music and peoples. Guy called Shawn from Longboarddancing.world was talking about in his post about happy longboarders and sad longboarders, and I immediately related to Sad Longboard dancer word and there it was. Sad dancer

What’s your relationship with skating?

I bought my first deck in eighties, it was called Turbo II, legendary cheapo deck. Fish shaped decks, the era flips weren’t the thing, it was nose grabs and hand plants. I was street dancer, but many of my friends were skaters, so I watched lots of skate movies in 90’s, Zooyork was big in Hiphop too, coining the feel of two cultures, Harold Hunter and when Kids came, it went bananas. The whole 90’s New York street culture vibe is my roots really. We would go every year to breakdance battles to New York. Hanged in Washington square and Union Square. Eventually we won RSC Anniversary that was biggest bboy contest in NYC and one of most respected events in U.S. We won that years US Champion in finals, and like 5000 dollars that was crazy lot money back then and some of the ghetto kids would come after us. We were breaking and drinking on street and got caught up from Police, went to courthouse to agreed guilty and pay lol.
I would watch later Supremes Cherry, it sort of had that old 90’s hiphop vibe, took me back, I’ve seen it like 100 times, also ZooYorks Akira Mowatt is half Japanese, so I followed a lot his stuff. From Cherry, Dylan Rieder is probably coolest skater and his part and fashion is big inspiration to everything I do. Many of street dance styles and longboarding is from California, and we would go to Cali to Streetdance events where local street dancers had decks with them, playing with street and longboarding. Both are Californian street culture from 60s and 70s.

When I started longboard dancing, it changed my life totally. It coined everything together. It’s like meditation, put your music on and just skate, forget all the shits in your life. After that I’ve been skating almost every day. Sad dancer becaming sad long boarder.

Tell us about your dancing roots.

I started dancing in 90’s, I was professional street dancer to around 2017, when I quit.
We got sponsored and used to travel to all over the world to battle, there is no country I anymore want to go, we went to everywhere. We did all the underground battles, got into fights and all batshit crazy stuff. Then did all the commercial stuff, been on like 10 different music videos and performed in MTV Music awards that was huge back then, like 100 million people watching. Battled against Wyclef on backstage, Madonna and J-Lo and all the biggest on that era were there with us and liked what we did.

So I quit few years a go active performing and teaching in Streetdance, I got burn out and wanted to move to southern island in Japan. Started investing to stocks, the moved to Okinawa to build beach hostel and take easy. Now I’m going back and forth Helsinki and Okinawa, super inspired with the sad dancer project.