BBoying BY SOULTROTTER

 

BBoying- the Dance

For me the essence of every dance is : expression of the soul, spoken through the body and guided by music. If you are someone who just does moves and/or does them fast so it looks like you are hitting everything, I don’t consider you a bboy at all, I call you a tricker/acrobat/yoga/whatever. Every dance has its own music, rhytm, culture, history, names, moves and pioneers. And those things should be respected and honoured if you want to dance the dance correctly. Every person is different and has a different body, mind and soul, so ofcourse they will express the dance differently. “Be free in style”. That means you can do what you want to as long as its in the format of the physical conversation which we are having. What a contradiction ha, but I believe that is the essence of life itself. The contradiction. There wouldn’t be Ying if there is no Yang.

Uncounciously bad, Counciously bad<->Conciously good, Oncounciously good.

Lets use this human behaviour structure as a tool, for the following thoughts.

• Unconciously bad

Allow me to go deeper into the matter, many people are amazed when bboys hit some beats. But the truth is that its the essence of the dance (every dance). And besides hitting the beats, its even better when you can express different layers in the music. It is actually your duty as a dancer to make the spectator realize there is more in the song than just drums. To quote Crazy “you are an instrument of the music”. It is good to train your body and its acrobatic skills, but power without perception is spirituatly useless and as there for has no tru value. So just doing tricks on a song isn’t dancing.

• Conciously bad

Now we come to the following, there is a difference between knowing the music, feeling the music and being the music. A lot of dancers look good on certain songs, because they know the song. So spectators would might think they are great dancers, just because they can move well on certain songs. But nothing is more further from the truth. All they express at that moment is that they have heard the song a lot of times and know what to do at what moment. So they just drilled their combo’s really good. This is like you would be a sport fighter and you would have drilled a combo to react on an incoming hook in a fight. But in real life you would never know what is going to happen. Somebody could give you a uppercut. And you might have to react on that. So as a dancer it would mean. you would keep repeating these couple of combo’s you trained at whatever song, even if it’s a slow jam, you still would do the same combo’s with the same speed. And if the song, which you trained on, comes up, you are happy, cuz now it looks like you are actually dancing. Another option, you would manipulate the music on a battle/club/showcase, to make sure it actually looks like you are dancing. but in reality we see you knowing the moves and the song.

EXAMPLE:

Man I have seen so called bboy’s ask the dj’s for certain songs before they go out, or dance and all of a sudden they break out a piece of paper to see what run or routine to throw out next. That’s like a singer performing on a concert and all of a sudden, he/she has to break out the lyrics to the song. WTF…? you would be fired right away if that happend.

• Conciously good

Feeling the music means that you understand the essence of rhytm and expressing yourself thru the songs. Lets break down what rhytm is in my opinon. Again, if we look at life and the universe, we notice one main thing. It has a pattern/structure! Day/night, Summer/winter. The world turns around its axe in 365 days, what goes around comes around (your actions) etc etc Look at your own heartbeat, it all has a rhytm. So if you are not expressing rhytm in your dance, you are not living/expressing the tru essence of your being.

Lets put this philosophy back into dance, one can study the rhytms of a dance, by doing his research. How does a song work? What counts does the song have? Some cultures have totally differend standards like, Indian, Eastern Europe, Latin American, Middle East. What is lyrically being said in the song? When you have knowledge of this perception, you can start understanding the music and from understanding the music, you will be able to hear and feel the music. It will run through your veins, like blood. Now what you are expressing,will be a personal manifestation. Because you can or cannot relate to what is expressed in the song. And by doing so, you can dig into your own personal experiences/situations in life and express them through the song. Thats when you are feeling the music.

EXAMPLE

I was in a bad situation in my life, and I knew I was capable of doing something and doing it good. I wasn’t waiting for a hand out, but if their was just somebody who would just give me a chance to show what I wa capable of. And here I am in this club, all of a sudden this song comes on by James Brown: “I don’t need no body to give me nothing, just open up the door and I’ll get it myself”. So I just jumped in the middle of the dancefloor and looked at somebody, stuck out an open hand and gave him a no waving finger. I mimed opening up a door and started dancing.

• Unconciously good

The late Bruce Lee:

“DO NOT BE TENSE, JUST BE READY, NOT THINKING BUT NOT DREAMING, NOT BEING SET BUT BEING FLEXIBLE. IT IS BEING “WHOLLY” AND QUIETLY ALIVE, AWARE AND ALERT, READY FOR WHATEVER MAY COME.”

Being the music, here comes the hardest part. How can you be totally free within the music? Especially when you are entering a battle or doing a showcase. It is good to have this stage, cus in this time of age, this i the only way we are being taken seriously as artists. But in my point of view, organized competitions/showcases are just a display of ones training hours, moves and understanding of the dance. Which is being judged by points or an audiance. And seldom has anything to do with being the music. Being free means, it shouldn’t matter what song comes on, what floor you break on, what time it is, with who you are, what state of being you are in, just truely and honestly express yourelf. We can compare this to the difference between a martial art and a fighting sport. A sport fighter trains to enter competitions and has knowledge of the fact that he is gonna get into a fight with certain conditions. Martial art is not a competitive sport, but a lifestyle and artform, which is being practiced with care, honour, respect and for ones one personal evolution, still a martial artist would stand his ground when it comes to serious and dangerous situations which are threatening his life. He will be able to adapt.

•  

Now a dancer being free, means he reaches the stage of total unawareness, he just is, he/she is being swept away by a song/the energy of another dancer/the energy of a circle/battle. He totally acts/reacts on the situation without thinking. He leaves al his premedated combo’s for what it is and trusts in his own soul and body to move it they it wants to naturally. Eventhough many try to reach this stage, its only a few who truely and honoustly are students of this path.

EXAMPLE

It was a week after I cracked my neck doing backflips at a trainingession (yellow ooze coming out of my nose and mouth, not being able to move anymore), and I got a phone call from a friend. Telling me there were some serious bboys in town hitting our club. He said I had to come and represent. I told him I couldn’t even move, so how the heck was I gonna be able to dance. He suggested that he would pick me up, cuz I had to be there. That night, my first 2 throwdowns where the worst. And everybody thought I was some drunk guy fucking up the Big Man’s circle. The truth was, I couldn’t move my body, because of the neck injury, which littarly happend a week before. And I had been lying in bed all week not being able to do anything. Not telling a soul (even my fam) about my pains. Yet I still went out. But then this song came on, “Gordan’s War”, and it was 3 people stepping in at the same time, I just had to clame it and went in. I had this total adrenalin rush coming over me and the last thing I knew I was on the ground, in a neck freeze. Apperantly I did something so magical, which blew up that whole circle and everybody started givin me props. At that moment I didn’t feel any pain. At the end of the evening I was just standing in a corner with my eyes wide open and this waitor walked up to me asked; “Are you tripping? Are you on drugs?” And I replied : “No man, just experiencing a natural high”. All my pains where gone, untill I got back home and tried to go sleep.

BY SOULTROTTER 04-11-2008