I'm in Japan for a vacation now and finally got back to my computer. Luckily, all the battle clips from the ESS 4 is up. Thus, I want to post it here!!!
Most recent showcase by What The Funk?! Crew.
Featuring
Ilya "iLL" Leyzerov
Edmund "E.T" Tan II
Shinjiro Ray Tanaka.
And myself.
It was difficult to complete this piece because
1. I don't lock. I suck at it lol
2. iLL was in Boston finishing up his semester. He came to the rehearsal 3 times in total.
3. We realized that we forgot to bring the bag LMAO.
So over all, we were REALLY nervous.
But as you'll notice watching the clip, the crowd loved it. There are many mistakes made in this piece. But I just love the fact that we were able to make everyone exited and happy.
Thank you sincerely to my brothas, iLL, E.T, and Shin.
Dope music, atmosphere, and of course the get down........
I love Monsta Pop's dance because it is very clean. But he makes it stand out by dancing raw, like hard core raw, within his get down.
Also, this guy makes his movements seem really really easy. But he is REALLY TALL. I know many people who injure their knee because of their hight. But he must be taking care of his body well.
Definitely one of the best on the planet right now. Huge respect.
First of all, whoever came up with the name is a genius lol
Japan+Animation=Japanimation. AWESOME lol
But thats not the reason why I'm writing this on here. I want to give my thoughts on this amazing show.
Now why am I not saying "This amazing dance showcase"? Because I felt that this is stepping outside of dance category a little.
It is obvious that Japanimation is using dance technique that falls under the style of Street Dance called "Popping/Animation". They use popping, bopping, dimestop, speed control, isolation, etc. Most technique that are commonly used by poppers or animation dancers.
However, in my personal opinion, Japanimation is simply utilizing the Street Dance technique, and not DANCING. They are not dancing to the rhythm from beginning to the end. What they do is something we call "Beat Freaking", where you emphasize the sound in the music with emphasized movements to make the sound and the movement to stand out. This is a very popular technique used by many choreography dancers.
Therefore, this show feels like an entertainment show more than a dance performance/showcase. I mean it looks like PS 4's Samurai Game commercial in real life. lol Therefore, I'm not sure if this is a good representation of Street Dance.
Furthermore, the mission of this TV show is really vague as well. It states that it aims to create a "Hero" from the Japanese Dance community to introduce it to the world.
BUT FOR WHAT???
YOU BECOME A HERO AND THEN WHAT???
I see many performances that uses street dance style, so are you trying to advertise Street Dance to the masses??? But again for what???
Don't get me wrong, I do like what I see. I actually LOVED IT. This piece is perfected to the maximum level. The detail, atmosphere, technique, outfit and all are excellent. In addition, I love the fact that they brought their cultural heritage. This is definitely a showcase that can be done by Japanese because Samurai us one of the core element in our culture. It lives in our DNA. Thus, using that this way is great.
Its just that I don't think it is a good way to inspire dance to the young generation. This will only lead them to misunderstand the dance. These types of showcase is very mechanic. DANCE SHOULD BE ORGANIC. FREEDOM should be the main feeling that you get while you dance. But showcases like this makes me feel only about "Systematic movements".
In my humble opinion, the show shouldn't be called DANCE@HERO. Should be like TALENT@HERO or something.
I appreciate any feedback that you have!
Thanks for reading.
The Moon Runners.
They are one of the upcoming and active Popping Crew in Canada/U.S.
Dope concepts and sick execution. I believe any tut, wave, botting, animating poppers will love their style.
So I met these Alien like poppers at Juste Debout in 2011 in Canada.
My friend Kai who lives in Queens used to live in Portland and knew Icon, who introduced me to Icy, Snapp, and Shawn.
I was in the phase of exploring waving, tutting, strobbing, and animating. Meeting them was a mind blowing experience. I still carry the knowledge they shared with me there. The exchange I had was awesome.
I knew on my way back home to NY that this crew will be the next crew to watch out. And I think my guess was on point. The world won't be able to ignore them soon. Trust me.
One of the two favorite animated poppers on the planet. Their creativity and skills are beyond our control. Not many of new generation poppers know of Mr. Steen. But I think he is gradually been spot lighted once again by the masses. Not sure exactly why but I believe the connection between the Assassins may have huge influences. Well, at least I got to know Mr. Steen through Rashaard and/or Future's post on Facebook.
Anyway, I'm definitely glad that he is getting the spot light. Old school dancers like him who still are maintaining amazing skills should be welcomed by various communities and share the knowledge. It'll definitely help the popping community.
And Boogie Frantick. I think all poppers in US knows who he is. I think he should get more international recognition though. He is a BEAST, period. I have to go back to LA to learn under him soon......
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 POPPINGONLY 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!
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.
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