Johnny

A while back when I was still attending some of the advanced classes at DCDC, while I was stretching, this guy came looking around and it seemed like he was looking for the bboy class.

Me: "Are you here for the break dancing class?"

Johnny: "Yeah, the class with Toyz, right?"

Me: "It's in the next room, but the earlier class runs over sometimes."

He sat down and started stretching a little bit too.  After a minute or so I asked him if he had been dancing for awhile.  His response was not at all what I expected.

"Ohhh, I'm not a bboy, I'm a popper."  If he told me he was a National Academy Scientist, the President of China, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had been in prison for fifteen years ... he could have told me he was a superhero and I would not have given him the same response to when he uttered the words "I'm a popper".  (Ok fine, I would have been pretty impressed meeting a Nobel Prize winner.)

I'm pretty sure my mouth was on the floor for a while because during the following chunk of time, he showed off twenty seconds of dance awesomeness.  It was insane!  Turns out he learned with a Vietnamese dance crew while he was working with a non-profit over there.  He said they were really, really famous, they were on TV and all that.  However, he said he wanted to get into bboying because it was something that really interested him.

After the advanced class came and went, I was asking Johnny about his Vietnam experience.  He didn't speak a lick of Vietnamese but he just watched and learned.  He told me about how he spent hours in front of the mirror trying to get the wave move across his arms to work and that it took him forever.  When I got home and thought about it, I was pretty amazed about how dance is able to transcend language barriers.  The fact that Johnny learned just by being around other dancers and mimicking the dance crew he was with is pretty amazing.  I guess people could make the same argument about overcoming language through sports like soccer, baseball, or others where communication isn't paramount but still, bboying is ... just different (and way cooler).  How many other sports have an aspect that can compete with a bboy spinning on his/her head?

Anyway, from what I've seen (granted it's mostly blogs & the DC bboy scene) is that bboying, and hip hop in general, when it's done right, is meant to be a unifying activity, bringing people together from different cultures, languages, educational backgrounds, whatever.  Granted, there's always going to be bboy battles and competition, and there's always going to be that jerk who takes the fun out of a jam for everyone else (I've already been to a party where there was a fistfight because two guys decided dancing wasn't enough to decide who was cooler) but for the most part, most bboys just want to see the scene grow.   

Here's an interview of Airdit and Lil G from strifetv.  This drives home my point on the language thing.  It's pretty amazing ... Airdit's from Germany and Lil G is from Venezuela.