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Breaking is going to get that big.
Its gotta start here, in Korea.
It might not be perfect in everyone's eyes but it’s like the first step towards
something big I think.
Something has got to change, or we are going to be living like this for ever.
I don't like dancing... I love it!
There's a lot in it, in breaking that’s worth way more than money
...but there's a lot in life that's worth way more than yourself...
what was the question again? (Laughs)
My name is Dyzee, from the Supernaturalz Crew,
Rock 4 Christ and 7 Commandos Crews. The first time I got into breaking was in
1992. I was in a lot of trouble; I was rolling with
some gangs. Now it’s a lot more different because
when I started there were like no competitions.
You just breaked with your friends and then you'd go out to a party,
and when you heard an old hip hop song, people automatically knew that bboying
would start. You didn't even have to say "Let's battle!"
you would just be throwing down together in the same circle and then it
would automatically somehow turn into a battle.
That was the reason why it was so hype. If you were wack, and your skills were
really wack, people used to tell you. The crowd would let you know 'You
suck!" I started to receive a lot of props in my
area because of my legs. My friend showed me a video and said,
"this guy is the best bboy in the world". It was Bboy Crazy Legs. I thought, if he is
the best in the world, its because he has crazy legs.
So I based my whole style on having the craziest footwork, legwork, patterns that I
possibly could.
From the very beginning, I just realised that there was no money in breaking.
For a long time I was doing it, no money in breaking,
it was about the battles, it was about the girls.
I would be dying to get to practice.
“Oh God, it's Monday!” I would be in school, writing down every single move
that I had, drawing the pictures out.
I spent a lot of time writing in these books.
Usually I would always be talking with people and getting in trouble and having
temper tantrums, but because I was so into this breaking I
was quiet.
I was a naive kid. I thought everything was happy dandy until I started getting
bullied and picked on and after that happens to someone, it
changes your mind and it changes the way you are.
Something made me want to hurt people. Breaking allowed me to express that part
of me, you know? When I was 18, I had to move away to the
Philippines. I got my mother to send me there because
I was in so much trouble with police, fighting, people were looking for me.
I was looking for people. It was like a war.
And when I had a dream about breaking, I dreamed that I was in this huge stadium.
There was a spotlight in the middle of this huge stage and the spotlight was shining
on this guy in the middle of the stage, shouting "Alright everyone!?"
The spotlight continued onto the DJ and the dj started spinning some old skool hip
hop, and all of a sudden these two crews came
onto the stage two groups of ten or twenty members in
each one, and they started battling and everyone
went crazy shouting "Yeeeeeaaaaah!"
That was so important to me because it was the coolest thing that I had ever seen
in my life. At that moment there wasn't a
competition or tournament like this. Then I saw Battle of the Year and UK
Bboy Championships and then I saw the Koreans and their
events and I started to believe that it could happen,
that breaking could be that big. Every other culture or way of life,
or even sports, they all have ways to make money. They know how to do it.
We are all of those things. This guy emailed a big university in
Australia and asked "Why do you not consider bboying a
official and legitimate art form?" and the reply was that it was because
every legitimate dance or art form that was not just a fad has a governing
body or association that defines it and works for it and has its
best interests at heart. Other people have always said this, that
the way you know something is a true art is if you know how to judge it. And some
people say, you can’t judge art… Are you crazy!?
The reason art institutions have particular paintings on the wall
is because they have a specific way to judge them.
So theres a specific way, its not just some people sitting there saying
“Oh I think they won, or they won”. Do you understand?
I have to go pick up my passport with my visa for China.
I have one Chinese visa. It’s already marked…. And now I have a second one.
I guess breaking is really the only job I have ever had.
I started doing youth programmes when I was at college.
I took recreational programming so I started opening up
practice sports for breaking all over Toronto.
When I was younger I lived with my mother. I didn’t need to worry about the
rent. I was like a bum.
In 2006 I got my own place and it got really difficult then.
It was difficult to survive. I had to work really hard and I got into a lot of debt to
pay for the rent. It was pretty tough. But I never really
cared about money though, you know?
Now I live in Seoul, Korea, in Itaewon the foreigner district.
I owned my own company, I had my own office in Toronto
and had my own big events. I realised that things weren’t going to change
or get any bigger there and I asked myself, ‘Is this how I am going to continue
living my life? Begging sponsors for funding? I don’t
think NBA has to go to sponsors and ask them for money. I am certain it’s
the other way around!
But here, in Korea, if you have a dream and the right connections
then you can make anything happen. Korea is a trendsetter,
a trendsetting country. If there is anywhere in the world
that we can make bboying professional with a judging system
and a new standard it would be here in Korea.
I miss my crew, my family, my friends. I need to sacrifice
and accomplish things for the greater good and I’ll know
when bboying has grown around the world, I will know
I have done my part in this world.
This company is responsible for bboying to grow.
They really believe in what I am doing and what my vision is, you know?
I was watching Flea Rock vs No Name and reading the comments.
Flea Rock won. Abstract was the only judge. But NoName really danced well.
I’m not saying who won. There is no official standard.
If you think about Abstract, his style is about freestyle,
flow and finesse. If you think about just that,
Flea Rock had more flow, finesse and freestlye. So
Abstract probably really thought that Flea Rock won based on his perspective.
My last battle was three weeks ago at AFN (A Friday Night) in Korea. I lost
I wanted answers. I wanted to know why I lost.
I did feel a bit confused.
You take it personal. You take your dance personally.
When someone decides your expression and the way you expressed the music was
not good enough.
There are some days where the reasons are quite obvious,
if you know you crashed or your opponent was clearly better than you.
Then there are other days when you are a bit more equally matched
and sometimes you feel like the judge’s decision
just comes down to personal opinion.
As a dancer you are subjected to a subjective decision making process
and even though you agree to it in the first place, when it goes against you.
It kinda pisses you off.
Currently judging has been inconsistent, opinion based, unexplained…
lately judging has been a bit of a mystery.
The first time a judging system was made into a concept was 1999.
I organised one of the first bboy competitions in Toronto called “back to
the underground” and at that time there were no
competitions, no judging systems… only cyphers. So I
started thinking, “How am I going to judge this?” So me
and my crew started talking about it and we thought that it would be really
stupid if we just got a couple of guys to sit down together and say
“Hey I think this guy or this guy won” that would be stupid.
So there has be some criteria.
There are the people who think foundation is the most important,
there’s people that think originality is the most important,
there’s people who think the dynamics, power and tricks is the most important,
there’s people who think being clean and not making any mistakes
is the most important, and there’s people who think its all about
how you respond in a battle.
Foundation is about dancing with swagger and either
a) complete musicality confined only to the music,
b) footwork or sporadic energy or c) about finesse or suave.
Next category is originality or artistry
Originality is about having your own creativity or unique individuality,
having either your own character, your own style or your own technique, or
concepts, or even changing things to make them
your own.
Dynamics is about having very distinguishable or observable qualities
in your moves. Such as a high level of balance, speed,
strength, energy, complexity, something dangerous, that has a potential
for injury, or even flexibility,
Execution is about executing 5 components.
You have to execute:
Your confidence A rhythm
Your style, no stumbles Your technique, your moves, no crashes
And you have to execute something fresh or new every round.
No repeating
The battle category is about two things:
Having your confidence, not just any but swagger, meaning
aiming your style and your moves at your opponent.
And 2) responding, meaning taking what your opponent does
and outdoing it, or adding on.
There’s one judge assigned to each perspective.
Each judge is giving a score of 1-5 only according to his or her category
and the winner is determined by who wins the majority of the five perspectives.
Well I think I would go to the battle with OUR system
and the reason why is because I know what people are looking at.
I know what I need to do to win the battle. I know that
I need to have foundation to a certain level,
I know my dynamics have to be on point, I need to be artistic, whereas if I got to a
battle where anyone is judging, it could be the other crew’s friends, they
could be paying off the judge. Who knows?! You know, its nothing
concrete!
There are so many different directions that you can go in,
and you don’t always know if the judges can relate to your style.
I mean there’s flexistyles, theres powermoves, there’s guys who focus
more on rocking, foundation, everyone has their own opinion. And I
think there’s been a lot of beef, all around the world, with people trying to
say that their mindset or their way is the best way. And I think
the r-16 judging system, the new one, the OUR system, brings
everything together, and accounts for everything.
Boxing does it! You can watch a match and say that guy whipped that other guys
butt, the experts will say 'Nah man, the dude
on the right took it.' Why? And they can tell you why, they can
tell you why. In bboying, you can't do that! But then
even if you speak to the judges, they don't even remember what happened
in the battle. There's so many rounds in the battle,
everything just goes past, goes past. We all understand how the human mind
works. You can't remember a twenty mintue battle and decide in five
seconds who's the winner.
With the OUR system, they can tell you, ok in your second round,
this was sloppy, your execution was off, or whatever was
wrong, so you can track everything, you can
break it down.
Let's say today's judge is a powermover, "right I have got to do powermoves to win
the battle". It's not like that, you know exactly what
you have to do to win the battle.
The OUR judging system has got rules, its consistent, you get answers, answers
that you can work on.
I think it has the potential to take the dance to the next level.
For bboys, we are just going to go through the same cycle,
talking about how it's ***, how someone got robbed.
They are going to get completely lost, and that's pretty much what I think happened
in Korea.
Right now we are going to meet up with my homeboy
from "All the way Live" that does "All the Way Live' Powerserge.
Going to have a meeting with him and dinner to see about implementing
OUR system at "All the Way Live' in Manila.
It's definitely a step in the right direction. It'd be very beneficial
for us to have a system like this, a s a community
just because again, there isn't anything.
I talked to fans of Gamblerz because Gamblerz
were winning everything back then.
And the reason why they liked Gamblerz is
because they were the best crew, they won world championships.
And you look at Gamblerz as opposed to other crews,
they have better power.
A lot of times, what happens is, we bring our mum or our aunt to a jam,
and guess what happens? They'll be really excited for the first two
battles, and then what?
Right, but one day they would lose against Rivers Crew
and the fans would be like, "Why did they lose?" because Rivers has better foundation,
better dancing. Ok, so it's going to be about dancing.
And the next time, Rivers would lose against Gamblerz,
and they would be like "What is going on here?"
What it does is it takes that guessing out and makes it like "this guy has good
foundation, this guy has good battle tactics:
There used to be so many viewers in Korea,
watching breaking. But because there was no way to understand,
then they just stopped watching and lost respectfor breaking.
So I guess that would be the good thing about it,
that like the audience isn't confused, or like, in darkness.
It just makes it a little bit easier to understand what is happening.
They can be entertained. They can be like, this is really entertaining.
But you can't really respect it, because there is nothing in it to acknowledge,
to be like this is how it is, there's actual deep thought and philosophy.
Nothing is concrete right now. If you at least have one base,
you know the judging system, then you can have your trends on top of that,
that's fine, thing's change, but if you have something concrete,
then you can have something evolve, yet stay the same the whole time.
So this judging system is like a trunk of a tree.
There can be tonnes of branches, you know, there can be tonnes of leaves,
you know, different colours and stuff, it's no problem
it makes it more beautiful. But it needs a base.
Bboying is not a sport. It's a culture. It's a dance, it's an art.
That's what it is. It's like saying, when people are fighting on the street,
a street fight, it's like saying "That's a sport".
I think you have to agree that it does have a sporting aspect to it.
Because you have two crews, two teams, going against each other head to head,
just like soccer, basketball, or something like that.
Bboying is like a language, it's everything, you know what I mean?
But a professional competition, you put judges there,
you put a time limit, a cash prize, you put a clear winner and loser,
it becomes in every definition a sport, when you make it like that.
Taekwondo right is not a sport, it's a martial art,
but once they go into a professional Taekwondo competition
where there are rules and judges and everything, that is a sport now,
because it's a game.
We're not trying to take over the bboy scene
and make it only battling on ESPN or something like that.
We want to keep the rawness. We understand that it's an art form
and everything like that.
What I think about Amjad and Circle Kingz is that that's dope.
I think it's a good idea because we need to have events
that aren't just about the competition.
So like I just said, there's different types of battles
and I think it should be like that, y'know? There's raw stuff,
showy stuff, but I think it can work together,
if people work hard enough to let room for other people's views
and stuff like that, y'know it depends on how bboys want to do this,
how they want to approach it. We're not trying to say,
this is how it is, we want to get everyone's opinion
and make it best for everyone together.
The main point is that we need to set up bars and levels.
For example, in the skateboarding industry, it was only
because of those huge competitions with those huge half pipes
and that level that bought the media attention and
as skating got so big, now that underground scene, with that filming and
steez, just skating on the street, is now huge
too, right? The pro and the underground, they both
need each other.
yeah I heard some people say that bboys shouldn't make money
and they shouldn't make money off bboying. It's really easy to say
when you have options. You have like jobs, you come from a rich family,
or whatever, it's so simple to say. But when you don't have anything,
you don't have a father, an education, you don't have any money,
and all you have is your ability to dance, you know what I mean?
And you are working so hard to dance , because it's all you've ever known
while growing up, and that's what saved you from being in trouble,
from being in a gang, you know? And now it's like people are recognising you
for your skills. You know, it's easy for someone who's not in that situation
to be like "Oh you shouldn't make money" but that's not true.
If you ever went to the Philipines and you saw
how the bboys there do it, they don't have anything,
you're telling me they can't make money? So what should they do,
are you telling them to go beg, you know, and not get money from
shows?
Some people are just so close minded about things
What you get from hip-hop that's so small Can be so much for somebody else
They don't see a big picture where things can be better if everyone just gets together.
Its bigger man Its something that can take care of everyone
There's certain people in the scene that hold a certain amount of power.
They might hold jams, and they might have a whole load of judges lined up or
whatever. They might feel threatened by the system
because they feel "Oh, now I can't just choose my judges or
my friends". Or they might think, "Oh well, this is what
I think of bboying, and I don’t want to allow, I would hate to
see the day that another crew that doesn't break like
that wins". They fail to see that this system will still
help them, you know what I mean, and their event,
grow even bigger too.
Like I said, people think Dyzee, maybe, is doing it for himself,
to make himself big, or rich, but I've worked together with him
this past year and seen that it's not what he's doing.
He works with Cartel Creative together right now, in and out
day and night, he's pretty much stopped practicing,
he's put a lot of things out, you know if you look at his stuff on youtube
on OUR channel, he’s got stuff about his plan for the bboy’s future,
about what the association is, about what the judging system is,
he just made a manual for the judges and the district representatives. At least look
at all the information he has before going and judging it, you know?
So the system is ready to go, it’s just about the association aspect now.
Getting people certified, because we are going to need a lot more judges,
getting more officials, because we need to have more people
looking out for the agreed standards. It’s tough though, right?
To get these kind of people who are really passionate
about seeing such a big thing or change like this.
We are trying to provide opportunities for people
that want to do what they keep doing but at the same time
want to keep bboying and help out the bboying community.
We are eventually trying to implement this system
in countries around the world and in order to do that
we need representatives in every country.
That’s what I see the future for bboying. A place where all bboys, whether you’re
OG’s or pioneers, or legends, or you’re new, there’s a place
for everyone to make a living, you know? That’s what I see. If bboying
can go that level, you know, we can take it there.
The system, the association, we are trying to make
is going to be Not-For-Profit. We don’t want any corruption involved,
we don’t want the media taking over, we’re doing this for the bboys.
If we have a way to make everything concrete and documented
then we have something for the future, we have hope.
When we lived together, I saw this old agenda and I opened it up
and it was from his first school ever, you know,
he would have everything planned out, this is what’s going to happen starting
from a list of one to ten things that I have to complete
and everything he finished he would take out of his agenda and put it
in his finished pile. And he had piles and piles of these. All he
knows or loves is bboying, so… He’s been working on this thing for ever.
Dyzee is a hard worker he works very hard
and then when he comes home to play, it’s basically Facebook,
so he can write about his bboy Dyzee diaries, and then it’s youtube
to look at the latest, if there’s any latest, uploads based on him
or his interviews, or fan’s comments, and then it goes to all his fan’s mails,
where he goes and prides himself on answering each fan mail individually.
Yeah. I could barely get a foot massage in at the end of the day.
I’ll come home tired from work and I’ll be like
“Can I get a five minute foot rub?” and he’ll be like “What?”
There’s his ADD, it’s funneled into his bboying.
You think it’s cool when we’ve made dinner, and eaten,
and now it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and right before I go to bed
she’s like “Can I get a foot massage? A foot massage?’
And I’m like “It’s 2 o’clock, I’ve got to sleep, I have work!”
“You never give me a massage!”
I’ll get home at 11pm, and I haven’t eaten in seven hours,
and Dyzee will always have dinner on the table. So sweet.
Dyzee… yeah like I said, goofs around a lot,
he’s always fun to joke with, but he always, you know you can tell,
he has a direction, and knows what he’s doing all the time,
which is kinda cool to see in another person.
He wants everyone to be organized together,
whether it’s his association or someone else’s association,
he’s all for it, this is something that’s his passion, his dreams,
his goals, it’s all part of who he is, and something he has to do,
it’s from his heart. That’s one of the things I love about him.
I really honestly believe that’s there reason why I’m supposed to be here.
That’s what God wants me to do. It sounds crazy.
In ’98 I didn’t think there was ever going to be anything like that,
a lot of people told me, “Why are doing that!?”
I thought I was going to be a bum, I thought I was going to be nothing.
The hardest thing about this job is that bboys are too used to being rebels.
This judging system says there is no right way, and that everyone’s way
is equal and valid, trying to get people to unite,
that’s going to be the hard part. No one respects breaking outside of bboys.
I’m not talking about 15 year old girls at high school parties,
I’m talking about grownups. No one wants to say it but they look at us like little punks
punks and youths and whatever. They don’t take
us seriously. And we know that we are better than that.
Yeah. Just think about that. That’s why we need to come together
to come together and as we grow older we need to fix things,
things, we have to find ways to unite the
community and protect the culture. So yea, that’s it! Ok?
Good? Alright, word.
Hello.
Alright Pedro, let’s shoot that rap video, kick your rhymes.
Man, you’ve got into this camera ***, I dread to wonder what you do in the bed
with this ***.
Yo, I saw an old lady walking down the street last year
with a Battle of the Year t-shirt on, I was like “Whhhhaaaaaat?!”
Out in the country too. Just crazy.
It’s not even for romance! I work my heels to the bone
for this man and it’s not even for a romantic foot massage,
it’s more like, can you really, really rub my feet because they kill.