What The Funk!? Crew Show at Takala Land 1 year ago

We did our show again at Takala Land for its two year anniversary party.

They haven't posted the showcase yet, so I'd like to share our show we did last year!!!

Enjoy :D

Juste Debout New York 2013

Before reading,,,,,

My objective here is to write my personal thoughts about this internationally recognized event. I'm stating what I honestly thought, however, I don't have any intention to disrespect anyone. Therefore, I sincerely apologize if there are any statements that offends anyone.  All comments that is directed towards my thoughts are welcomed. PLEASE DO NOT POST COMMENT TO DISRESPECT DANCERS/ORGANIZERS.

Juste Debout (JD)  is no doubt one of the most recognized and credited Street Dance Competition in the world. The event attract dancers from across the world by hosting regional events across several countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. There are five categories, Hip Hop, House, Locking, Popping, and Toprock. The battle is done in 2 on 2 and the winner of each categories will earn the opportunity to attend the main event in Paris, France.

Since 2011, JD's regional event began to take place in the U.S and Canada. In 2011 it took place in Brooklyn, NY, and in 2012, Montreal, Canada.

This was my third regional JD. Compare to the past two events, JD New York 2013 had a totally different feeling.

Lets compare.

Location

In both 2011, 12, the location was huge. The past events were hosted at a warehouse and a gymnasium. I personally didn't like the warehouse in Brooklyn due to its location and the condition of the warehouse. The floor and the bathroom was just a mess. 

The gymnasium was great. It was clean and there were a lot of room for dancers to rest, eat, and have cyphers.

It also had raise up benches on the side so that people can sit and enjoy the battle. 

Compare to the past two, this year's location, Santos Party House, had the best atmosphere.

The Lighting, Sound System, Beverage, Food, DJ, and the people were great! 

BUT

1. It was too small....

It was so crowded that I felt like I was riding a morning rush hour subway to the city :( 

That, was a total turn off.

And this even effected the competitors. The floor that dancers had to dance in was so small. I mean look at the pictures and compare the size of the floor space.

The club environment was great. But it was way too small. People had hard time dancing and watching the battles. They did have a projector that lived the battle on the big screen, but WHO WANTS TO SEE THAT WHEN THE ACTUAL BATTLE IS HAPPENING IN FRONT OF THEM???

2. Locking us in

WAS NOT COOL

Until the last couple hours of the event, the dancers were locked inside the venue. You can get out, but to get back in, you have to pay $40, which was the price of the ticket for the event. 

This was ridiculous.

I mean the place was packed with people and it was hot. Of course people will get exhausted and will need food and beverages. But no. They offered food inside the venue and for it to be sold out (I assume), they cut our access to stores around the venue. Good for them. But think about the us. 

For this reason, although the location had a the best atmosphere, it sure made us have a bad experience.

People/Dancers

Ok, on this section, I will focus on POPPING ONLY because that is the style that I know best for now.

The dancers/poppers that attended the event were great. 

On 2011, most of the poppers were from the east coast U.S or Canada. The only crew to attend the battle from the west was Machine Gone Funk.

On 2012, most of the poppers were from Canada. I can surely say that about 80% were from Canada.

This year, we saw people from various locations. Let me name some recognizable poppers who attended the event.

Monsta Pop & Venom (Symbiotic Monsters), Canada

Jrock & Popula (Animated Beat Mechanics), LA and Indiana

Breeze Lee & Ms. Funk (Versa Style), LA

Jon Boogs & Jonh Doe (Soulbotiks Crew and Control Freakz), Texas and Miami

Dnoi & Soul (Soulbotiks Crew and Ill Minded Stylez), ? and Detroit

On top of those names, we had large attendance from the east coast and Canada popping community as well, making Popping categorie to have the most competitors on this event. 

Therefore, the quality of the dancers were great :) 

I personally enjoyed meeting new dancers and reuniting with many of my friends. Having many friends at an event is awesome :) Everywhere I went, I saw faces that I recognized or haven seen in a while. 

Now HAVING SUCH ATTENDEES SURELY WOULD MAKE A GREAT BATTLE! Yes, it does, but there is one more fact that you can not miss out. The Judges.

Judges/Battles

Judges play a HUGE ROLE in making an event awesome.

JD have four judges from each category (Hip Hop, House, Locking, Popping) to Judge the competition. Toprock is the only category that has a single judge for it's style of dance.

Some people have mixed feeling about this Juge system because not all the judges practice all these four styles. In fact, most of them don't. Therefore, it may not be as accurate than it should be. 

But for the past two event, they had a epic battle that typed the crowd like crazy!

In 2011, the Popping final battle had Machine Gone Funk against Assassins. You can see from the crowd reaction that it was amazing. And yes, I enjoyed this battle a lot.

In 2012, the Semi-Final had Symbiotic Monsters against Namco & Boombeast. Watch it and you'll know how hyped we were lol

This year, by the looks of the name that appeared on the event, I assumed that it would have epic battles of  the night like the above that I can still picture in my head how awesome it was.

However, this year was different. I don't have any battle that I can recall as epic as the two above.

The battle that gives you chill and make you think "damn how the f did they get to this point? like how do they dance so awesome???" didn't happen. 

Why?

I think because this was the year that the politics in the game revealed itself the most.

This doesn't mean that I disagree with the winner of the event. Symbiotic Monsters definitely deserves to go to Paris to represent the U.S. They were on the next level.

However, the selection of Top 8 and couple battles that occurred that night was questionable. 

Reason 1: 

I think the winner should have been Jrock & Popula.

Now some of you know that I've been hanging out with Jrock & Popula, and they've been really good to me. But that does nothing to do with my opinion.

I've fought against Breeze Lee before and got toasted really hard and learned a valuable lesson. I havent met him since than but I have huge respect for the guy.

So there is no dislike on which sides. With that in mind, let me break my opinion down.

1. Synchronisation

When I see 2 on 2 battles, I see them as ONE CREW and not two individual. Thus, having a synchronized vibe, feeling, get down is vital in battling 2 on 2. If you see the footage above, I see ABM vibing off each other really well. They are battling as a crew. In contrast, Versa Style goes out to the floor individually while the other wait rooting when he/she does a cool move. From this perspective, I think ABM has advantage over Versa Style.

2. Level of the rounds

Synchronisation IS important. But the level of individual round needs to be taking in account as well. This is because their rounds sums up the average level of rounds of a crew. This means that when battling 2 on 2, a partner shouldn't outshine the partner, but vibe off with an equal level of dance to have a balance that shows how the two is connected as a crew during the battle. 

There are cases where the one of the opponent comes out really hard and you have to out match that. But on this battle, I think that Breeze Lee had an awesome round that was on the next level compared to Ms. Funk.

In contrast, Jrock and Popula both had a solid high quality rounds without showing much of a skill difference between the two. 

For these reasons, I think ABM won. But they did not. 

Another battle that I thought similarly was a battle between ATN & C-Pop VS John Lock & Katalyst. ATN & C-Pop are two top poppers in Canada. They are young but very fierce and hungry, and surely proved their skill on the cyphers. 

But on the battle, C-Pop didn't have a solid round. Instead, John Lock & Katalyst showed a equally high quality rounds. 

There is not footage of them yet, but I thought that was a questionable judgment as well.

Last but not least, on Top 8, Dnoi & Soul was not selected.

From my perspective, the two have higher skill level than most of the poppers that was selected. Honestly, this was a wrong choies. 

For these reasons, I think the crowd lacked in getting hyped compare to the past two events. Given such atmosphere, they were missing out on the opportunities for us to be hyped.

I mean lets assumed that ABM won, and Soul & Dnoi were selected.

We could've potentially saw Symbiotic Monsters VS Soul & Dnoi on Top 8 and ABM VS Symbiotic Monsters (I WAS VERY LOOKING FORWARD FOR THIS SCENARIO) or ABM VS Soul & Dnoi!!!

Now that, would've been a battle of the night :))))

In conclusion, the event was ok over all. Given the fact that it is one of the most recognized international Street Dance Competition? It should've been much better.

But I had fun that night :) 

And I thank the people who is TAKING ACTION to make this HAPPEN. I'm just stating this but doing nothing. But they actually DO IT. Now thats a BIG DIFFERENCE. Huge props and respect to the organizers.

And to all the winners of JD NY 2013, GOOD LUCK AND REPRESENT US HAAAAAAARRRRRDDD!!!!!!

You guys either STEP UP OR GET SMOKED!!! 

Sincere thank you for people who read it all the way through.

Peace and God Bless.

P.S This is my prelim with ilya :) there is also Jon Boogs, John Doe, and our good friend David Castro! Check it out! 

ELECTRO SOUL SATISFACTION Part 1: Before the Battle.

Ok its been almost 2 month since this happened, but it was a hell of an experience so I'm going to write about it now LIKE A BOSS!!! OSU!!! lol

Let's go back in time……

Jazzy J, Fayzah Fire, and me

On Friday, July 27th, after I finished, work, I went to NJ using PATH with Fayzah Fire and Jazzy J to meet up with my crew mate, Ilya.

From NJ, ilya drove for 4.5 hours to get us down to D.C (Thanks brother). 

It was a smooth ride and we were able to arrive a little earlier than we expected.

Ilya driving seriously lol

Our first stop was DC Dance Collective.

Every Friday, at DC Dance Collective, theres a dance session. On that night, Jr Boogaloo, Bionic Man, Dickson, A.K.A Kin, A.K.A Ra, 1G and other amazing dancers were practicing.

We were hoping to get down with them a little, and ask Gwo whether he can find a spot for Fayzah to stay over the weekend. 

Unfortunately, we arrived a little too late. We didn't get to session. But Fayzah got a place to stay and that was great :D

Photo Credit to Gwoping Young

So we missed the chance get down. But instead, we went to a Korean restaurant called Honey Pigs with everyone.
There were probably group of about 25 people! 

We ate, drank, and had a good pre-party+Jr Boogaloo's Happy Birthday dinner until 3am!!! LOL

After that we went to stayed with my friend (BF Crewmate, if u wanna know what this is? Just ask me to write about it lol) James Wu's house. When we got home, it was 4am. We were exhausted except Jazzy, who was hyper from his drink. He was talking nonstop but I was done.......

I changed and passed out on bed immediately lol

Unfortunately, this was a nightmare for Ilya, who shared a bed with me. Because I took most of the space on the bed AND I moved a lot while I slept. He couldn't sleep well. I'm sorry brother, I was tired lol


The jam was scheduled to open from 12pm.
In order to get breakfast, get ready and be on time for the jam, we woke up at 9am.

I slept well for 5 hours, which was perfect for me because i've been on the training schedule that gives me 5 hour sleep at maximum for a month. Also because I took most of the bed space.... :P

For breakfast, James took us to a diner called Silver Diner.

It was old 80's kinda dinner where they still have the Jukebox on the table. The food was delicious! But not enough for me so I took ilya's fries and James's pancakes lol

We still had time before the jam.
Luckily, there was something we can do to kill time. 

On the parking lot, the diner was holding a residence classic car show. They had couple cool looking classic cars and so we decided to take a look.

They were encouraging audiences to vote for the car they liked so that they can decide which car should be awarded as the best classic car. We voted for this car.

I'm not crazy about cars. But I liked this one because of its color and the body design. But I would never want to drive this car though......the body parts were LITERARY touching the ground lol I don't know how people can drive that car man....lol

We were full and had some entertainment. It was time to head to the Jam.


As I posted "On my way to challenge eating some poppers.... Delicious meal on the dance floor today!!! Can't wait, can't wait....." in side the car, I was mentally ready to battle. 

My mind was calm. But my soul was on fire.

My body was waiting to unleash the power that I gained through months of training towards stronger and good poppers.

I don't know if the training I planned and worked on was the best way possible.

I may be just overconfident.......

But I know that I've been consistent.

At that point I stopped thinking and realized that I wasn't expecting a good result.

All I was aiming for was to get down the way I wanted so that I won't regret afterwards and I know it would feel AWESOME regardless of the result.


Continues to Part 2.....

A month of training.

Since 7/3/2012, ilya moved into my new house and we began our summer training.

The idea was simple.

We just wanted to be a bad ass popper and a great popping partners/crewmates just like the ones we look up to like Jsmooth and Kid Boogie, Crazy Kyo and Popping J, Gucchon and Kei, Mosta Pop and Venom, Rasshard and Future.

I had a glass and got knocked out lol

Those guys are dope as an individual popper.
But when they go on the stage together, chemical reaction happens and destroys the floor.

We wanted to know how they do it.
And from a shallow resource, we just assumed that they train together often and in some cases live together.

We just put that into action.

Our goal was to strengthen our body and get the basics solid.
This is because we are going to LA from 8/19-25th and we wanted to be ready to learn and absorb as much technique as possible when we get there.




Therefore, we focused on working out, diet, and drilling.

We both worked during the day. And since I have two jobs, sometimes I came home after midnight. So we decided to go to the gym to workout in the morning.

We woke up at 4 am.
First thing we had was oatmeal + whey protein shake.
Than we got ready for the day and left the house at 5 am.

What I enjoyed the most about getting up early was to see how the sunrise colored the cloud.
Taking pictures of the cloud using iPhone is actually starting to become my new hobby lol

82nd St Station

By 5:45, we got to the gym. Planet Fitness was a little far from my house, but its only $10 a month and the tools are easy to use. On top of that, it was open from 5 am, and when we got there, it was almost empty, allowing us to use the equipments and machines freely.

Planet Fitness

Both of us had our own training routine. I'm not sure what Ilya's workout routine was but I stuck to the Brad Pitt work out I found online.

After the workout, we had another protein shake and off to work.


Ilya's job ended by 5 pm. However, I have two jobs so when I had double shifts, I came home late.

Therefore, when I had double shift, Ilya worked on the drills alone at home while I tried to drill a little on the train back home :D lol

When I ended my work by 5pm, we drilled together.


Like I said, we didn't do anything intense. We did basic drills with intensity.

Since we needed at least 5 hours of sleep, we slept by 10:30-11 pm.

We ate healthy too.
I made the meal and we packed it into the neat lunch box I got from Wal-Mart.

Other than the protein shakes, we had the meal (picture below) on lunch and dinner, had snacks between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner.

Rice (white/brown), Chiken, Green Salad

It was not easy to do all this. lol

I mean we were awake and active for almost 20 hours a day.

But we kept going, believing one thing......

I mean if you can't believe in yourself, how can you keep on improving for the better?

Of course we had arguments as well.

I mean our lifestyle were pretty repetitive. It wasn't really fun lol
Especially when you don't see that much of a progress, it was very stressful.

So we talked a lot. A LOT OF TEXTING during work LOL
We discussed about many different topic. Dance, work outs, diet, videos, jokes, girls, mentality, inspiration, life etc.

The conversation made us understand each other as a person more than before.
And kept pushing ourselves to keep on going.

I felt all of this was worth doing when I went to events with Ilya, especially at Electro Soul Satisfaction (waiting for the organizer of the event to upload the video. Review of the event will be posted once the vids are published).

Having Ilya aside when I was battling influenced me more than I could ever imagine.

Since I got into this dance battle environment, I've always been alone.
I had a crew, but I've always lead the crew. Therefore, when I battled, I got prepared and pushed my ass up to go against someone.

But this time, I had a partner that slapped (more like slammed lol) my back to get me prepared physically and mentally.
Not only that, I had someone who knew what I should do or should've done and I can ask for advice for the next battle.

This was very new to me
But having a crewmate that I can rely on gave me strength.

Now we are a part since I'm going back to Japan for a week before visiting LA.

Our summer training is not over yet.

But I just wanted to summarize what we've done till this point.

 LA is going to be AWESOME.

We will keep striving to evolve as a human being, dancer, popper, and crewmates.

Kamikaze What The Funk?! Crew

Training with consistency to gain the power to bring destruction on the dance floor!!! 

Peace and God Bless

SUGALOO