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

Yo, just a quick heads up about events coming up soon that you should be at if you’re cool. If you’re not cool then you should probably stay at home for you might not be able to handle the enjoyment. You uncool people can just watch the bonus video at the bottom of the post from Just Jam while you’re staying in and having an early night

Masta Ace – Fresh Jive 28th November 2009

9pm onwards tonight at The Elbow Room in Leeds there will be a 7 to smoke bboy battle and later on Masta Ace performing all the hits at  Fresh Jive!

The first Fresh Jive event in a while, which is nice I know Shane Fenton (B-Boy 10Tonn) and the Fresh Jive/Speak to the Streets crew have had a busy year, so keep up the good work guys! I’m sure there are some awesome events in the pipeline for next year!

The Haggis Horns – Local funk band are also playing tonight at The Wardrobe with their new singer Lucinda Slim. If time will allow it, I might try go to Fresh Jive and then over to The Wardrobe to catch the gig for an ultimate night of pure hip hop and funk!

The Masterz Crew Showcase Battle

12 Midnight at Shed Bar Thursday 3rd December

After an absolutely awesome night out b-boying at Tiger Tiger on Tuesday, my mate Luke, a manager at Shed Bar in Leeds thought a breakdance performance would be the perfect fun and different entertainment for the Shed Bar’s 1st Birthday on Thursday 3rd December. So The Masterz Crew have been booked to get our groove on the only way we know how – B-BOY STYLE!

We’ll be warming up from about 11pm ready for the show to start around midnight – a 3 on 3 exhibition battle lasting between 10 and 15 minutes! I’m not sure of the 3 on 3 crews yet, but obviously the side I’m on will smoke them foooools on the other side! It’ll be like The Battle of Briggate all over again!

After the showcase battle we’ll stick around to jam for the rest of the night. You’re all welcome to come along to watch and party with us later … even the uncool people who were planning on staying at home watching YouTube bboying videos, you can come too!

Thursday the third of December two thousand and nine – Put it on your calendar, if there were a hook it would be totally off it!

Attention to Detail – The Hop

Wakefield 13th December

The next ATD is set to be full of festivities! With a Christmas themed fancy dress competition for the b-boys and b-girls it is definitely going to look interesting!

As well as the usual battle format which is always awesome, this time there will be special exhibition battles and showcase performances… and Fusion has asked me and Ross to do a 3 round exhibition battle with a bit of a twist. I’m not entirely sure if that’s for definite yet, but either way I’ll probably be there having fun so come down!

Just Jam International B-Boy Event Video

14th and 15th November – Newcastle, Dance City

Earlier this month I told you about Just Jam International and how much it sucked that I wouldn’t be able to make it, boohoo :’( so here is a sweet compilation from Sole Heaven of some of the b-boys who battled on the day. If I watch it fullscreen, turn the sound up and squint I can pretend I was right there in the audience…

Click here for more footage of the full bboy battles from Just Jam International.

Sole Heaven have written up a rather lovely review complete with photos too, have a gander here.

That’s the end of that chapter. Hopefully I shall see you at one, if not all, of the awesome b-boying events in the next few weeks, but for now here’s some fantastic advise for life:

” Do your kids a favor – don’t have any. ”

Robert Orben

Peace out!

Ho ho ho, Christmas must have come early… What an awesome weekend of bboying treats that was

Keep reading cause I’ve got 3 lovely videos for your entertainment today, and I know you’ll particularly enjoy the last one…

Street Dance Competition – Friday at Mission

Friday night at Mission was LoveDough, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago they were having a street dance battle  with a £200 cash prize up for grabs.

We got there at about 11pm to enter and get warmed up. I’d texted to get myself + 7 on the guestlist,  so we paid £5 in, even though we were on the guestlist and competing, but Philthee and War who came down later got in for free on my guestlist. Mother truckers! Quite a few bad ass bboys turned up which I didn’t expect, so we got a cypher going on the nasty concrete floor before the competition began as the room filled and the crowd grew.

The whole event was hilarious, clearly not a bboy battle – the stage was awful, it was like dancing on coarse sandpaper painted black and the DJ was playing shit-hop. I still gave it a go though and busted out a few moves, saving some in case I got through to the next round, ha, never mind. I received a fairly decent response from the audience – woooooo, and so on. Despite that the dancers who went through to the next round after the qualifiers seemed to be 8 people picked at random. The dancer who won overall was pretty good though, a nice fusion of different styles of hip hop dance. Well done to him, whoever he was.

Here’s my 45 second throwdown in all its glory:

I wasn’t too bothered about not getting through, especially as B-Boy Flo and other’s didn’t make it either. Fun was had and I ended up dancing the night away till about 5am with lots of lovely ladies They just can’t resist the b-boys! It was cool seeing friends I hadn’t bumped into for months too.

The Fresh Factory – Saturday in Huddersfield

My brother and I arrived a bit late, thankfully just after the popping qualifiers, right on time for the b-boy battles. Don’t worry though, I still received more than a life times viewing of body popping through the evening.

The atmosphere was really good and friendly! I managed to get a seat and actually see what was going on for the whole evening, without even having to struggle and push my way past any unusually tall people that always seem to appear right in front of you at crowded events.

The body popping battles were impressive and there were some amazing contestants. Shuffles won overall, whoop. But to be honest once you’ve seen more than a couple of minutes of body popping you’re probably going to fall asleep whenever you see it again. Maybe that’s just my opinion…

The bboy battle was where it was at! Flo won, cause he is pretty damn awesome. Some day I’ll have power moves like that, but hopefully I’ll still have hair as well.

I jumped in the cyphers a few times through the night, mostly at the end along with B-Boy Just Me, who for some reason was wearing a full green body suit hahaha! That was damn good fun, it’s nice to have him back from Germany. Unfortunately my phone had taken a strong dislike to me recording so much video so I only filmed a couple of my throwdowns:

Well done to all those who organised the event, you should do it more frequently than in 4 months time!

At the end of the night I was chatting to Flo, our conversation went as follows:

Flo: “Are you battling tomorrow?”

Me: “Errr, I don’t think so. I’m not sure if there are any places left. “

Jamie happened to be stood nearby so we called him over and asked if there were any spaces available to enter. So Flo continued…

Flo: “Are you battling???”

Me: “Hmmm, maybeee.”

Flo: “Let me ask you again, are you battling?!?”

Me: “YES! Yes I’m battling tomorrow!”

Haha, I definitely needed that little push and I had an ace time on Sunday. Thanks Flo!

Attention to Detail jam – Sunday in Wakefield

I fuelled up at Subway and got there early for the battle. I know, I was amazed by our time keeping too. The whole jam was funky as it always is, phat beats and cool people all having fun!

I thought up a little surprise before setting off that I could throw in the mix and was excited about my first proper solo battle (Friday night at Mission didn’t really count). The qualifiers were only 1 round each, and I was up against B-Boy Lil Jay. Damn. The dude’s got skills! I thought I’d let him go first so I could see what I needed to do to beat him. Personally I thought I’d done enough, but for some reason I lost, boohoo. Ah well, no shame, Lil Jay is awesome and I had a great time!

I took my shiny HD camcorder and filmed it all, however when I was copying the video files from the SD card to my hard drive my PC thought it’d be hilarious to crash and corrupt my memory card, loosing all the files. Nice one. Thankfully Seb filmed it all and he hooked me up with the footage of my battle… Check it out!

B-Boy Twist vs Lil Jay at Attention to Detail

Hope you enjoyed watching “the Paul Daniels of the bboy scene” I didn’t get through but I danced a little bit in the cyphers and got to sit down to rest my tired little self. Plus there was the other 6″s of my footlong Sub to devour,  mmmmmmm yeeeeeeah. There were some dope battles through the afternoon. Jingles ended up just beating Ryan in the final. Nice one Jinglist!

What an intense weekend!

“A good fight should be like a small play…but played seriously. When the opponent expands, l contract. When he contracts, l expand. And when there is an opportunity… l do not hit…it hits all by itself (shows his fist).”

Bruce Lee

If you loved this post long time, leave a comment and let me know what you think of my blog, subscribe, post vast sums of money or anything else your might feel inclined to do.

Sunday 8th November 09 – The Hop – Wakefield

All the details for this Sunday’s jam are in my last blog post but I felt like adding another quick entry for you lovely people because Seb has just edited the promo video from October’s Attention to Detail bboy jam.

Look how bad ass last month was and just try to resist coming on 8th…

Nice work Seb!

“A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or PH.D. Unfortunately, they don’t have a J.O.B.”
- Fats Domino

Word up!

Earlier, due to my tender windmill bruise, I trained some footwork and came up with a little style move. I’ve seen people do it in a straight line, but never in a circle before. It’s actually pretty hard to do it rotating around, and today I’m aching all over from breaking and lifting weights on Tuesday, so the whole throwdown is a bit dodgy excuses, excuses…

For todays video I felt like throwing in some bonus random craziness. Enjoy!

Ooo look at that, Virgin Active have painted the studio a different colour, very warming.  That should provide better lighting for filming my training sessions too.

Keep reading to find out what’s hip-hop-happening in the next couple of days. What a fun filled weekend this is gonna be!

B-Boying events this weekend you should be at:

Karl text me earlier and apparently I’m going to Mission nightclub in Leeds tonight…

STREET DANCE COMPETITION // £200 CA$$$H PRIZE // LOVEDOUGH // MISSION // FRI 6TH NOV

Let’s smoke some fooools!

SATURDAY 7th NOVEMBER 2009

THE FRESH FACTORY

Featuring:
1 ON 1 POPPIN BATTLES
1 ON 1 BBOY BATTLES

PRIZE – £100

B-Boy Judges
Jingles (ghetlow pirates)
Zorro (ghetlow pirates)
2Juice

Popping Judges
2Juice
Special K
Pierre

DOORS OPEN 6PM

BATTLES START 7PM SHARP!!! AND WILL FINISH AT MIDNIGHT

DJ’s IN THE MIX!
DR WEEVIL & DJ WHISPA

AND A SPECIAL GUEST PERFORMANCE!!!

St. Patricks Centre 2 Trinity St, Huddersfield, HD1 4DA

Sunday 8th November 2009

Attention to Detail

1on1 competition where all invited bboys/bgirls judge. Fun jam nice vibes, straight chilling!!!!

Hosted by Owdogg
DJ Wispa

8 invites and 8 qualifiers to be sorted on the day.

Prize is £50 + F-rock clothing

Entry £3, Doors 3pm, battles start at 4pm

Also Owdogg will be doing a house class and a locking class before the jam
House 1300-1400
Locking 1400-1500

£3.50 per class (if you do both classes the jam is free)

The Hop – 19 Bank Street, Wakefield, WF1 1EH

See you there homeslice!

“One good thing about music – when it hits you feel no pain. Hit me with music.”

Bob Marley

Welcome to B-Boy Twist’s shiny new blog

Good morning, afternoon, evening and night to all you delightful b-boys and potential b-boy lovers! This here is my first, and therefore most awesome, blog post. Exciting isn’t it?! What do you mean no? Well I’m excited anyway…

Eeeee, so many things to say, so little time. I suppose that’s why you should subscribe to my blog so you can be informed about all my future posts. Just enter your email address into the box on the right over there  —->

But for now less text, more video…

Introducing B-Boy Twist and I Came To Dance dot com

Still no idea what’s going on? Allow me to take your hand and guide you to my About B-Boy Twist page that shall enlighten you and reveal all. Either that or confuse you even more…

Damn right I’m wearing a Hong Kong Phooey t-shirt; he’s the number 1 super guy! Apologies for the mega distorted audio for the battle, unfortunately my phone can’t handle DJ Wispa’s heavy beats.

Anyway…what a fun day that was, watching B-Boy Vietnam all the way from California throwing down some crazy moves – 1990′s on the back of his hand, ON THE BACK OF HIS HAND!

Make sure you get down to the next Attention To Detail jam at The Hop dance studio in Wakefield. Good atmosphere, good tunes, good people – good times! You’ve just seen how bad ass this month’s final was and I’m sure B-Boy Seb will edit a nice little trailer of it all which I shall post for you to enjoy when he does. Until then, here’s last month’s trailer filmed and edited by Seb for your viewing pleasure:

That’s a hefty quantity of video fun for you to absorb today. If you liked what you just experienced please spread the word about the blog. Leave a comment once you’ve told all your friends to visit http://www.ICameToDance.com and I’ll award you with a shiny medal next time we meet, I’ve only got one though so you’ll all have to share.

Found something to criticise me and my blog about? How nice of you…if you think it might be constructive criticism then leave a comment and let me know, I’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions for improvement.

Keep checking back for more updates, although you wouldn’t have to if you subscribed, fool!

“When there is an opportunity, I do not hit…It hits all by itself.”
— Bruce Lee

Ta ta for now