After Flo’s awesome workshop, reviewed in the previous post, I spontaneously decided to enter the battle at Attention to Detail, even though I hadn’t been training very much due to recovering from my sprained ankle.

So obviously my name came out of the hat first to battle, against Si – B-Boy Crackroc (which is spelled incorrectly in the video below, my bad).

So lets get straight to the point, here’s the qualifying battle:

As it transpired, Crackroc won and even though he got lucky hitting that beat at the end of his throwdown, he had a lot of style and different dynamics. So well done to Si…

Next time I won’t be holding back

The rest of the jam was awesome as always, incredible cyphers and battles with a few bboys from Scotland there representing.

Unfortunately the next Attention to Detail jam is on 21st March when the Masterz Crew are performing at a Castleford Tigers rugby match. So we’ll be dancing around on the pitch, but you should still go check out ATD in Wakefield, it’s the best regular bboy jam ever in the Universe!

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

Gore Vidal

B-Boy Flo’s Workshop

Last Sunday me and Phil ventured down to Wakefield for Attention to Detail to attend Flo’s workshop.

Here are my key points I took away from what was covered:

• Style – use all your body parts in creative ways to add original flavour to your moves. The feet do most of the moves, but your heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes add the style
• Create new top rock moves and interpret the same moves on the floor to come up with new footwork.
• Musicality – listening to the track and picking up on the recurring accents such as cymbal crashes every 8 or 16 beats etc. Make sure you go down to the floor at the start or end of a bar (on the accent beat and not randomly part way through a count of 8 beats) and hit your freezes on beat.
• To contrast with freezes and fast footwork try to add slow elongated moves when there are long droney notes and accents in the music – this adds another dimension to your throwdown instead of everything being aggressive and as fast as possible. Mixing up the tempo and dynamics adds style and makes your set more interesting.
• Power moves – for whipping and kicking power train sweeps, both directions with both legs. Then practice entering the power move from sweeps. Sweep to flares, sweep to mills, swipes etc.

Practising power moves brought us to the end of the workshop…

I had previously done one of Flo’s workshops covering the same areas a year or two ago, but it was great to be reminded of the key aspects that a lot of people are unaware of when they’re breaking.

It’s all about the music, it is a dance after all!

I just wanted to write down these key points to review what I learned before I forgot again, but maybe you will have gained some useful knowledge from it too… and if Flo holds another workshop you’ll know to check it out because it’s all amazing stuff, going much deeper than just how to do this move or that move, instead covering the stuff that really matters for those who already have a bit of experience breaking.

Laters potatoes!

And why not a quote from Flo for this post:

“Her life long ambition is to go see Stevie Wonder?!?

What kind of an ambition is that??

My life long ambition is for Stevie Wonder…to come see me!”

Florent Gonthier

Although I haven’t been posting recently due to recoving from a sprained ankle and not having many awesome training videos to share there has still been a lot of things happening in The Masterz Crew world. Exciting things… eeeee, I’m excited, aren’t you?!

I hope so, because I shall be adding a few new posts in the next week to get you up to date with recent goings on.

Seeing as I’m lazy and somebody else has already edited and uploaded this video, I’ll start with the Masterz Crew show that kicked off an MMA event inside a cage! Which I’m not even in, as I was working in Edinburgh doing rhythm activities with 3000 Girl Guides.

You can see a brief bit of The Masterz skills at the start of this video:

So if you’re interested in hiring The Masterz B-Boys to perform a breakdance show at your event, just get in touch to discuss the details and obtain a quote.

Check back soon for video delights of The Masterz awesome Oceana Chinese New Year show as well as battle footage from recent events! If you’re lucky I might even include a little bit more footage from the Martial Arts Xtreme show.

Click here to subscribe to the ICameToDance.com RSS feed, so you can be notified when I get round to adding new posts.

See you soon home boys and girls.

“He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

Ben Jonson

Play that funky music right!
Play that funky music white boy!
Lay down that boogie and play that funky music till you die!

Ahh, nothing like a bit of Wild Cherry, anyway that has very little to do with this post…

Seeing as B-Boy Sprained-Ankle hasn’t been training very much recently I thought I’d share a video of me playing a funky groove on my conga drums instead:

If you’re interested in learning the basic techniques of how to play a hand drum, or make rhythms using other easily available percussion, check out our website for free instructions Bass – Tone – Slap – Drumming Techniques

In recent news

Our crew has a couple of shows booked in for this month. You can see us rocking the stage at Oceana on Monday 15th February for the Chinese New Year party! As well as a show to start off a martial arts competition… inside a cage haha! Unfortunately I’m gonna miss that as I’m in Edinburger playing drums for the entire weekend.

Since spraining my ankle landing a front somersault like a spazz, on top of the physio to strengthen my ankles back up, I’ve been doing a bit of training and breaking that doesn’t require the use of my left leg. Which is even harder than it sounds! I always use my left leg to push off to do pretty much everything, so I had to switch it up and try getting into handstands the opposite way round, even forwards rolls felt weird! But this is a great lesson for all b-boys and b-girls to really build their co-ordination, make new neural pathways in the brain and increasse your versatility…

Try doing moves you already do the other way round.

A lot of us already know this is a good idea and probably practise it to a small extent, but we get lazy and stick to ways we are used to. Take a ttep outside of that lazy thinking box and try this:

If you do a lot of your footwork like six step clockwise, learn it anti-clockwise. Master your freezes on both arms – baby freezes, 1 handed handstands, elbow freezes, shoulder freezes, chairs, air chairs etc. Then when you’re getting the hang of that and feel like an absolutely ridiculous challenge to work on – try learning your power moves in the opposite direction! Miss having awful bruises on your shoulders and hips… then why not learn windmills again the other way round! Enjoy the pain all over again, hahaha.

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”

Og Mandino

Wow! Who would have thought my Dad would have been the one to show me the coolest thing I’ve seen at least all week! … And I’ve seen at least 2 cool things… probably more.

This is an absolutely amazing/hilarious video from Brett Domino giving a demo of the cool new Stylophone Beatbox: Portable Beats Machine. I’d seen the product in the IWOOT catalogue a while ago but never realised the incredible potential until my Father told me to check out this video featuring some classic b-boy tunes and other hip hop beats. Prepare to be astounded, hahaha:

Brett Domino: Hip-Hop Medley – Stylophone Beatbox

Click here to buy your Portable Beats Machine on sale for less than £10!

It’s got a build in loop sampler! I WANT ONE! IWantOneOfThose.com are charging £20 – no thanks…

I think I’ll be placing my order very shortly with findmeagift.com – click here to get your Stylophone Beatbox on sale for under £10!

“100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.”

Wayne Gretzky