check da skillz 3
so i landed in shenzhen and i had a hotel already lined up for me, courtesy of b-boy glacial of tripline crew. its pretty crazy how i come across these people- basically a long chain of coincidences and good luck. but yeah, he's was the organizer of the battle, and apparently the organizer of many other dance events in shenzhen (he's got another one coming up on the 27th that i'll probably go to too). anyway, i told him how i was coming out for the battle but had a gigantic luggage since i was moving out of shanghai at the same time, so he hooked me up. good thing, since all i've heard about shenzhen is bad things. lilian's roommate's friend was from shenzhen and she was telling me about people getting murdered, people kidnapping tourists and leaving them out in the middle of nowhere, and all this crazy stuff. so i was a bit paranoid to say the least, but everything worked out. it was a bit of a shock to leave shanghai - because in shanghai you can sometimes forget you're in china - and shenzhen seemed like a very "chinese" city. but yeah, the battle was a 3 v 3 b-boy battle and a 2 v 2 popping battle. there were about 40 b-boy crews participating and maybe about 20 popping crews, mostly from this southern part of china (macau, hong kong, guangzhou, and shenzhen).
i managed to tape almost all of it, even though you weren't allowed to film in the club. it was a good thing i bought a fish eye lens the day before i left so i could capture all the action without really having to point my camera at the action (since i was being undercover about it). so that's exciting... i'm going to have a bunch of minidv tapes full of footage by the end of the year i hope :). i think this is the first b-boy battle i've actually attended (all these firsts in china!), i've of course watched plenty of battles on video tape so i was prepared for the whole thing. but the battle took about 5-6 hours! i missed about 2 hours of it because i was walking around the streets trying to find the stupid club (i forgot to write the address down... and when i got the address no one could help me because there was no street number or anything. oh and about street numbers, in some cities they don't even go in order! and to further complicate things the numbers on one side of the street are totally unrelated to the numbers on the other side. i don't understand...) but i finally made it there and probably didn't miss much. to get an idea of what the place was like and how the battle went, here's a clip of the previous check da skillz battle, it was a really nice venue and a very nice dancefloor.
so the battle. it was mainly a b-boy battle, i think the popping battle was there to kinda break it up. you could tell the crowd was there for the b-boys because whenever it was time for the popping battles, the crowd (or maybe just the b-boys) would kinda crowd the dance floor space and not really respect the poppers. i think a common misconception is that b-boying is harder than popping because it involves so much acrobatic things - but popping is hard in its own way - isolation and having clean, hard hits takes years of practice... but i'll save the details. in fact, i haven't really tried b-boying yet so i can't even make a personal judgement. anyway, i was really surprised to see a lot of the poppers and some of the b-boys lip syncing all of the lyrics to these great random funk songs (which embarrased me for not knowing them). rhythm attack (hong kong) was probably my favorite crew, as they were really dancing to the music, they knew every little breakdown and every little sound so they could really dance out the music. this made me really happy since a lot of the dancers in shanghai don't really listen to music - which i don't really understand at all. why learn to dance if you don't love to listen to music? i think a lot of people here just get into it because they think it looks cool - i've heard the same things about some of the dancers in guangzhou.... oh it was also good to see a crew of b-girls too! i didn't meet any b-girls in shanghai so its good to know that they're out there. the biggest flaw i saw in almost all the crews (b-boys and poppers) was that they all seem to be battling the floor, they hardly looked at their opponents when they danced... so i guess the battle lacked intensity at times since there was no real like personal beef going on between the crews.
i thought it was funny that there seems to be a universal b-boy language. there are two movements that translate into words "cock" and "bite". the "cock" movement is basically an alternative to the middle finger/fuck you, you just act like you're holding a gigantic cock and you point it at whoever you're telling to fuck off. the other is "bite" which is making a chomping movement with your arms folded in front of you to show that whatever move your opponent just did was bitten (copied) from you or somewhere else. both of these movements were used quite often in the battle and you can see them in battles in probably any country haha. ahhhhh the universal language of dance.... ;)
afterwards i had dinner with b-boy glacial and b-boy ronnie (full force/super crew), a really down-to-earth guy. he's pretty famous in the b-boy world, he came over from the states to judge the battle. he's currently working for the maxim (magazine) party tour, he flies out to different cities each week to perform at the beginning of these parties and he's supposed to get people to dance. i started a conversation with him and he was really interested in what i was doing and gave me a lot of respect. i talked to him a little about doing hip-hop as a job (i always end up asking people about this) while it is a dream come true, he says the bad thing about it is that it doesn't make you want to practice. stanley (dragon dance studios) also said this, he doesn't perform anymore - he makes all the other dancers in the studio perform - because doing too many performances doesn't let you enjoy dancing as much, making you lazy about practicing. he doesn't regret it though, he's taking time off from school to ride out his career as a b-boy and will go back whenever he sees fit. oh he also might be a character in the next release of b-boy - a ps2 game about breakdancing (trailer) haha. i got to talk to him about his opinion on b-boys in asia since he's also been to korea and japan to judge battles - in short he broke it down that chinese b-boys are catching up but they need to work on consistency, korean b-boys are all power moves (those crazy acrobatic moves)... but are kinda moving away from hip-hop (he said most of them don't even listen to hip-hop) and japanese b-boys are pretty well-rounded. after talking about hip-hop we somehow got into a conversation about dreams and lucid dreaming... it was becdause he was telling me to journal and he started talking about how he keeps a dream journal because he has lucid dreams... but yeah - it was a pretty crazy random conversation.
i was supposed to hang out with them the next day, but they ended up waking up really late since we didn't leave til about 4am. i had to check out at 12 so i just hopped on the train to guangzhou which is about an hour or two away by train depending on what train you take.
i get to guangzhou with my huge luggage - i manage to just walk right past the people that scout out people with big luggages (because they'll charge you if you're over a certain weight). well someone was trying to call me to come aside to weigh my luggage but i just kept walking and he yelled at me for a bit, but i just acted like i didn't understand and didn't turn around- so he gave up. i kinda realized that if you just walk through or in anywhere acting like you're supposed to be there, it almost always works. i got into many clubs free just kinda walking straight in without hesitating so i didn't have to pay cover. haha. ahh china brings out the cheap scammer in you. :)
to be continued...
------------------------------
check da skillz 3 pictures
(sorry about the quality, was holding the video camera up with one hand, trying to snap pictures with the other)
tripline crew
(check da skillz 3 winner)
------------------------------
i managed to tape almost all of it, even though you weren't allowed to film in the club. it was a good thing i bought a fish eye lens the day before i left so i could capture all the action without really having to point my camera at the action (since i was being undercover about it). so that's exciting... i'm going to have a bunch of minidv tapes full of footage by the end of the year i hope :). i think this is the first b-boy battle i've actually attended (all these firsts in china!), i've of course watched plenty of battles on video tape so i was prepared for the whole thing. but the battle took about 5-6 hours! i missed about 2 hours of it because i was walking around the streets trying to find the stupid club (i forgot to write the address down... and when i got the address no one could help me because there was no street number or anything. oh and about street numbers, in some cities they don't even go in order! and to further complicate things the numbers on one side of the street are totally unrelated to the numbers on the other side. i don't understand...) but i finally made it there and probably didn't miss much. to get an idea of what the place was like and how the battle went, here's a clip of the previous check da skillz battle, it was a really nice venue and a very nice dancefloor.
so the battle. it was mainly a b-boy battle, i think the popping battle was there to kinda break it up. you could tell the crowd was there for the b-boys because whenever it was time for the popping battles, the crowd (or maybe just the b-boys) would kinda crowd the dance floor space and not really respect the poppers. i think a common misconception is that b-boying is harder than popping because it involves so much acrobatic things - but popping is hard in its own way - isolation and having clean, hard hits takes years of practice... but i'll save the details. in fact, i haven't really tried b-boying yet so i can't even make a personal judgement. anyway, i was really surprised to see a lot of the poppers and some of the b-boys lip syncing all of the lyrics to these great random funk songs (which embarrased me for not knowing them). rhythm attack (hong kong) was probably my favorite crew, as they were really dancing to the music, they knew every little breakdown and every little sound so they could really dance out the music. this made me really happy since a lot of the dancers in shanghai don't really listen to music - which i don't really understand at all. why learn to dance if you don't love to listen to music? i think a lot of people here just get into it because they think it looks cool - i've heard the same things about some of the dancers in guangzhou.... oh it was also good to see a crew of b-girls too! i didn't meet any b-girls in shanghai so its good to know that they're out there. the biggest flaw i saw in almost all the crews (b-boys and poppers) was that they all seem to be battling the floor, they hardly looked at their opponents when they danced... so i guess the battle lacked intensity at times since there was no real like personal beef going on between the crews.
i thought it was funny that there seems to be a universal b-boy language. there are two movements that translate into words "cock" and "bite". the "cock" movement is basically an alternative to the middle finger/fuck you, you just act like you're holding a gigantic cock and you point it at whoever you're telling to fuck off. the other is "bite" which is making a chomping movement with your arms folded in front of you to show that whatever move your opponent just did was bitten (copied) from you or somewhere else. both of these movements were used quite often in the battle and you can see them in battles in probably any country haha. ahhhhh the universal language of dance.... ;)
afterwards i had dinner with b-boy glacial and b-boy ronnie (full force/super crew), a really down-to-earth guy. he's pretty famous in the b-boy world, he came over from the states to judge the battle. he's currently working for the maxim (magazine) party tour, he flies out to different cities each week to perform at the beginning of these parties and he's supposed to get people to dance. i started a conversation with him and he was really interested in what i was doing and gave me a lot of respect. i talked to him a little about doing hip-hop as a job (i always end up asking people about this) while it is a dream come true, he says the bad thing about it is that it doesn't make you want to practice. stanley (dragon dance studios) also said this, he doesn't perform anymore - he makes all the other dancers in the studio perform - because doing too many performances doesn't let you enjoy dancing as much, making you lazy about practicing. he doesn't regret it though, he's taking time off from school to ride out his career as a b-boy and will go back whenever he sees fit. oh he also might be a character in the next release of b-boy - a ps2 game about breakdancing (trailer) haha. i got to talk to him about his opinion on b-boys in asia since he's also been to korea and japan to judge battles - in short he broke it down that chinese b-boys are catching up but they need to work on consistency, korean b-boys are all power moves (those crazy acrobatic moves)... but are kinda moving away from hip-hop (he said most of them don't even listen to hip-hop) and japanese b-boys are pretty well-rounded. after talking about hip-hop we somehow got into a conversation about dreams and lucid dreaming... it was becdause he was telling me to journal and he started talking about how he keeps a dream journal because he has lucid dreams... but yeah - it was a pretty crazy random conversation.
i was supposed to hang out with them the next day, but they ended up waking up really late since we didn't leave til about 4am. i had to check out at 12 so i just hopped on the train to guangzhou which is about an hour or two away by train depending on what train you take.
i get to guangzhou with my huge luggage - i manage to just walk right past the people that scout out people with big luggages (because they'll charge you if you're over a certain weight). well someone was trying to call me to come aside to weigh my luggage but i just kept walking and he yelled at me for a bit, but i just acted like i didn't understand and didn't turn around- so he gave up. i kinda realized that if you just walk through or in anywhere acting like you're supposed to be there, it almost always works. i got into many clubs free just kinda walking straight in without hesitating so i didn't have to pay cover. haha. ahh china brings out the cheap scammer in you. :)
to be continued...
------------------------------
check da skillz 3 pictures
(sorry about the quality, was holding the video camera up with one hand, trying to snap pictures with the other)
tripline crew
(check da skillz 3 winner)
------------------------------
posted by Derrick at 1:07 PM
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