Anyway, there’s been a distinct lack of updatage going on here on my once nurtured website. For that I apologise to any die hard fans who enjoyed my frequent random ramblings. Fear not, I’ve been getting up to loads of mentally awesome stuff!

To save me time and effort describing evvvvvvvvverything I’ve been doing in my own little b-boy world here is our shiny new showreel that I spent hours labouring over and includes some of the highlights of past months which I’ve wanted to post updates about, but am too lazy haven’t found time to do:

Blood Masterz – Professional Breakdance Performance Crew Showreel

So it is evident that exciting new things have been hip hop happening. Importantly – the fusion of MixBloodFlow dance crew and the Drunken Masterz crew to form the Blood Masterz professional breakdance performance crew available for hire. Contact us to hire a breakdance show for your next event!

Blood Masterz?

Yes! Blood Masterz – once upon a time (about the end of July) myself, Bobak and Just Me from The Masterz crew joined MixBloodFlow b-boys Crackroc, Leeroc and Joe on a wacky and wonderful adventure to The Secret Garden Party 2010 to perform spontaneous breakdance shows around the festival site… AND THAT WE DID – CONSTANTLY!

From the moment we arrived, midnight on Wednesday, we wound down the windows of the car in the queue before even entering the festival gates, pumped out some funky tunes and unleashed our pent up b-boying moves on the grass to receive applause from fellow performers queuing up to get in! From then on we pretty much danced solidly until Monday!

We even had our own circle of tents with a lino in the middle. Every time a random passer by tried to take a short cut through our circle we made them bust out their best move on the lino!

Oh, there are soooo many crazy stories to tell about The Secret Garden Party, this post could go on for many scrolls of your mouse wheel but I’ll conclude in a couple of paragraphs and you can check out YouTube etc. for more about The Secret Garden Party 2010.

Here’s a sly video for you anyway from some other random festival goers that I happened to find. Our perspective of the festival was entirely different obviously and we didn’t even see most of this stuff going on, which just shows how many crazy things were happening the whole time:

Basically my point was (I think I had a point about all this…) we started off at the festival as two separate crews – The Masterz and MixBloodFlow but within a few hours, let alone the 5 days we were there together we fused and formed Blood Masterz Since our return from the rabbit hole we’ve done a couple of performances together at nightclubs in Wakefield and corporate events in Leeds and more! We’re looking forward to performing together at more weddings, corporate events and nightclubs as well as battling in the near future! Watch out, Blood Masterz are coming for you with more flavour than a Pot Noodle!

Contact us to hire a breakdance show for your wedding, corporate event or nightclub promotion!

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.  ~Jules Renard

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

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

So here it is a day late, or 364 days early…

Happy Birthday B-Boy Philthee

Last night town was absolutely dead, hardly anybody anywhere – it was freezing and there’s an abundance of snow everywhere! However, WE ARE THE PARTY, so we had an absolutely awesome night jamming where ever we went… some were even breaking on the street… in the slush and snow! Dedication or what!

Phil was of course killing it, busting out flares to the max and everyone else was repping hard. I even popped out a couple of front flips and everyone went mental, cause they’d never seen me do it before ha ha Phil started throwing down on the road while the traffic lights were on red, then the Police turned up and told us they’d seen us obstructing traffic on CCTV… Bruce’s response – “Yeah it was sick wasn’t it?! He was killing it!” hahaha.

Monday was also Aahid’s, Afro’s and Shane’s Birthday and if I’m right in thinking Jingle’s Birthday on Tuesday too? I might as well just say Happy Birthday to all the b-boys who’s Birthday it was recently, you’re all lovely and I hope you enjoyed yourselves!

Now I’ve got to go do some real work, so here’s your ‘quote’ for today…

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Philthee
Happy Birthday to you!

Me

1. I’m lazy.
2. I started training some top secret moves which I didn’t want to share with you until I had perfected them.
3. In the process of practising these new top secret super bad ass moves I pulled a muscle.

So I have only been b-boying a tiny amount when I have been itching to move my feet on nights out, no hardcore 2 or 3 hour training sessions at the gym recently I’m still resting and hopefully recovering so I haven’t had any cool new video updates for you.

However, you will be pleased to know while I’ve been injured I’ve been training my fingers instead and working on some fun close up magic! So if you’re lucky my next update in the very near future will have a bit of that thrown in for your entertainment.

I have also been watching the Move Like Michael Jackson dance contest on BBC Three, which has just finished! A dance contest judged by Jermaine Jackson in search for the best MJ inspired dance act to perform at his Michael Jackson tribute concert to be held next year. Initially I thought the competition was going to suck and be full of idiots grabbing their crotch attempting to moonwalk. What I really liked was all the Jacko imitators were shot down as soon as they auditioned because of the fact they specifically were not Michael Jackson carbon copies. Instead they were searching to find dancers who clearly admired Michael as a performer, took his moves, made them their own and elevated it to a whole different level.

I started watching the progamme just because I knew B-Boy Didge (Daniel Ovel) was in it, but then realised there were other soloists and dance crews who were actually really good with all sorts of different styles and flavours competing too! Unfortunately Didge only made it to the Semi-Finals… but then again… HE MADE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE SEMI-FINALS! Very well done to him … not sure about that sparkly school uniform costume though…

If you missed the Move Like Michael Jackson programmes you can catch up on the BBC iPlayer here.

The editing did my head in when trying to watch the performances though. It looks as though they filmed everything from all angles, and then chose to show all the worst possible shots so you had no idea what was going on. Only on watching it again do you realise you missed a sliding headstand which was one of the most impressive moves of the routine or something. Well done to the BBC editors on that one.

Be quick if you want want to watch the show, the videos might be gone in less than a week from iPlayer!

As a breaker I found it incredibly inspirational to watch the entire series going from the Auditions to the Finals. Soaking up all the different dance ideas, approaches and thought processes behind each act was amazing. There were a few awesome routine ideas to take away and build on that I hadn’t seen done anywhere before. As a b-boy sometimes you become oblivious to the entire world of dance that is also evolving outside your bubble. Sitting watching new battle footage of Hong 10, Morris, Junior etc. on YouTube you tend to distort your perception a little and only appreciate things like backflip to airchair or 10 planche press ups perhaps forgetting how impressive simple yet well executed moves can be.

‘Free your mind and your ass will follow!’

So after you’ve caught up with the Move Like Michael Jackson contest, here’s an amazing video to inspire and spark some creativity within you:

I think Zee posted the video on facebook a while ago. It whoops ass all over the Endangered Species crew’s backflip routine. So smooth and fluid – I had to share it with you! And that transitions nicely on to the quote I shall leave you with today…

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

Bruce Lee

Obviously this was the first session practising it, so it might take a while to smooth out, but here’s an inside scoop for you peoples!

I thought I would mix up the tunage a bit and surprise you with the 5th Symphony! Check me out killing those beats! Ha ha.

I’m going to the gym now so I’ll practise rolling about on the floor a bit more and then it’s the tumbling class later. Hopefully I’ll perfect my standing front somersault so I can bust it out when I’m breaking!

Until next time hombres…

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Warren Buffet

Keep it real!

Our showcase battle at the Shed Bar was supposed to be next Thursday, but it’s been moved forward. So unfortunately a couple of our crew members can’t make it – not to worry, I got some bad assssss b-boys in to cover. It’s gonna be off the hook! … If there ever were a hook in the first place…

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

Louis Hector Berlioz

Check out some of the elements of hip hop in its original form with popping, locking, bboying, rapping and DJing. They even threw in a couple of magic tricks in their routine -funny stuff! I was planning on doing similar bits of magic in my throwdowns… just another reminder that everything you think you have created has probably been done before!

ELECTRO ROCK – A BBOY EVENT FROM LONDON 1985

Man, I wish I had a tracksuit as cool as that…

This is the middle part of a few videos of the whole event, you can check out the rest of the videos on that guys YouTube channel – he’s got some pretty awesome old school videos. I’m currently listening to The Specials live in 1979.

“All you punks and all you teds,
National Front and natty dreads,
Mods, rockers, hippies, and skinheads
Keep on fighting till you’re dead!”

The Specials – Do the Dog

It’s currently 3D Week on Channel 4 and Sainsbury’s provided free 3D glasses for the occasion. My brother went to Sainsbury’s a couple of weeks ago and acquired about 9 pairs…even though there’s only 4 of us in the house. So that’d be why they ran out and you probably couldn’t get any for yourselves.

Here is the link to my test 3D video from training:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ03SzuFFRs

Select the appropriate 3D Viewing Option on YouTube underneath the video player. For the Channel 4 3D week glasses you need to choose “Amber/Blue Glasses: Full Colour” but to be honest I’ve had the best three dimensional results from choosing the “Cross-Eyed” viewing option then going cross-eyed until the left and right video’s overlap and become focused. It looks surprisingly cool whereas using the 3D glasses looks pants because I didn’t film it correctly.

Please be beware that going cross-eyed for long periods of time can be risky! Apparently severe winds are a lot more likely when you’re cross-eyed (even inside) and if you’re not careful, you will definitely become permanently cross-eyed for the rest of your life… according to my grandma anyway…

There are now a few random 3D videos utilising YouTube’s new 3D viewing options, just search for “yt3d:enable=true” and that should show you all the 3D enabled videos.

I found a cool video which has a mixture of breaking, juggling and magic in 3D, not at the same time though – they haven’t got anything on me or B-Boy Magic Superman ha ha. Sylvester the Jester is a funny magician though, I had the pleasure of seeing him live a couple of years ago, most entertaining!

“What I do today is important because I am paying a day of my life for it.

What I accomplish must be worthwhile because the price is high.”

SUBSCRIBE BIATCH!

If you’re planning on going to the main event this Sunday 15th, make sure you get there early to get a ticket, or buy one online in advance, especially if you’re travelling a long distance. It’s probably as bad as being the fat smelly kid at school that nobody likes when you arrive at a venue 2 and a half hours away and are told you can’t go in The  maximum capacity is only about 350 or so, which means it will sell out fast!

The line up looks amazing, it’d be worth going to see the battles on Sunday at the main event if it was just the b-boys on the reserve list but with international and UK invites including B-Boy Mouse, Hat Solo, Mounir etc. you know it’s going to be off the hook! The Just Jam live band/percussionists will be playing some funky beats for the breakers to dance to over the weekend so I believe. Even the Pre Party this Saturday 14th November with some surprise showcase battles  is set to be an awesome night. Hat Solo and Mounir will be running workshops during the day too, if you’re free – get your ass down there this weekend!

You can find all the details for the event here: http://www.ukbboy.info/forum/showthread.php?t=15084

Have a gander at Doy Travel’s bad ass trailer from last years event if you need persuading…

Bad Taste Cru Presents ‘Just Jam’ Feat Just Do it, Mouse, Hat Solo, Duzk from Le Doy on Vimeo.

For all you bboy geeks who spend hours scouring the internet for bboying videos you might not have seen yet, there are some more battle videos from last years Just Jam by Doy here: http://www.ukbboy.info/forum/showthread.php?t=14111 if by any chance you haven’t seen them yet.

Have a good time if you go this weekend! Who knows, I might still make it.

“No great work is impossible; the word itself says I’m Possible”.

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