Almost the whole of Kentaro's life has been devoted to dance — in particular to hip-hop dance — ever since he first saw it on television as an elementary school boy.
Even today, as a well-known professional dancer who prefers not to reveal his surname and calls himself simply KENTARO!!, he recalls the TV show that changed his life — Dance Koshien, a nationwide street-dance contest for high school students that ran from 1988-1996. In 1996, Kentaro won the second prize, and his career began to take off.
That first success came after Kentaro, who was born in Sendai but grew up in Tokyo, went to one of the capital's very few modern dance studios, when he was small. In a recent interview, the 31-year-old said of that period, "I really hated school because, basically, I didn't like studying. So, really, I was rescued by dance, and every day I practiced dance steps under my desk during the lessons."