Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Bringing out the BBoy in us all

Hello Boys and Girls,

Yes, I've been largely absent, except for a few random comments left on one of Goose's posts. And I don't have much of an excuse aside from having no internet at home and feeling fairly guilty about the idea of having the people who run my "normal" job pay for me to write on a blog. That being said, in the coming months there are a few things to look forward to.

1) That we'll be getting internet back at the house so the blog posts will return.

2) That I do in fact have a torn ACL and will probably have a good month solid to explore the internet, get wrapped up in day time tv, watch lots of movies, MTV, VH1, and numerous other media outlets and allow myself to blog like crazy while I'm laid up at home on some crazy pain meds.

So all that being said, I've found myself with some free time at work and decided to write a blog post. And I'm choosing one right up my alley. That alley being littered with Transformers, pro wrestlers, and dance movies.

A few weeks ago I partook in a little documentary at the Ritz about breakdancing. I really knew nothing about the movie except that breakdancing is inherently awesome and that I like things that are awesome. I talked the lady friend into going and we made a Thursday night of it. The movie was called Planet BBoy and the documentary is a little bit of a history lesson about break dancing followed by the story of the 2005 Battle of the Year.

Now what is the Battle of the Year you might ask? Its a competition held in Germany every year where dance crews from all over the world come to compete. The crews that get the chance to compete in the BOTY take part in competitions in their own country for the chance to go. The documentary follows these dancers who basically spend what seems like 10+ hours a day working on routines together all while trying to make ends working odd jobs, working at their parents stores, and whatever they can do to have enough money to survive on, all striving to make it to the Battle of the Year which in their mind will bring them endorsements, the chance at doing commercial performances, and the whopping grand prize of ..... something like $7,000.

Its actually a really excellent movie. Seeing the home life of these bboys and watching the lengths they go to in order to practice makes you comprehend what its like to want something so badly and so irrationally that you compromise a significant portion of your life in order to make it a possibility.

But on the the real meat of the movie, and the BOTY competition. The way the competition works is the groups all do their routines and then the judges pick four groups. Two who will be dancing for 3rd place and two who will be dancing for 1st. Those four groups then have a dance off for the championship and 3rd place. Awards are then given to the top 3 and also the "Best in show" which goes to the best group performance.

In the end, its a movie I would definitely recommend especially for something like Netflix. As its totally worth renting. And I'll also direct you the reader of the Trick to go ahead and search Youtube for BOTY to find tons of videos.

For some of the best videos, however, check out these below:

Heres a commercial that Last for One did after winning the competition. Bonus points for figuring out what they are selling.


Here's Phase T, a group from France that does a lot of big power tricks and also has a little 14 year old kid in their group.


And lastly, the video you've absolutely GOT to watch. Basically this group called Ichigeki had been competing in the competition for years. They came to the 2005 BOTY and did the performance in the video below. The comment from the judges was that it was the most original and incredible thing they'd ever seen. Ichigeki ended up winning Best in Show and stopped competing together as a group feeling that they could never do something this good again. Enjoy!

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