UNITED KINGDOM: Dancers from around the world partake in a 3-day hip hop break-beat festival in a London theatre

Record ID: 739507

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Dancers from around the world partake in a 3-day hip hop break-beat festival in a London theatre
  • Date: 9th May 2008
  • Summary: "TOP 9" HEADSPINNING ON STAGE
  • Embargoed: 24th May 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAE449KWBBNCG96QAVG12YL4P3U
  • Story Text: Complete with graffiti art shows by international artists and freestyling boxes marked out on the foyer floors, Sadler's Wells opens its doors for the fifth year as host to UK's one and only international festival of hip hop, Breaking Convention (May 1-5).
    Visitors of all nationalities, ages, sex and race arrived on the third of the 5-day event during London's bank-holiday weekend. While many adults try to avoid exposing themselves to the hiphop culture often associated to guns, sex and violence, one dance teacher from Lewisham was bringing her students on an educational field trip for the second time running.
    "What we like about Breaking Convention is the fact that you see street style dancing infused with other styles of dancing, and we think that children and students need to see that," said dance teacher Nathalie from Deptford Green School.
    Russian group Top9 depicted the original dance battle-offs in which gangs of friends competed against one another on the street through music, strength and agility shown through dance-moves.
    "What's good about it is that it's a very male orientated form of dance which gives the males a chance to perform and show-off which they don't often have a chance to do so that's also good," commented Janice who comes almost every week for dance-related entertainment at Sadler's Wells.
    Urban Strides, a dance group from High Wycombe UK and the Russian group Top9 were among that audience over with their creative and innovative fusion of music and breakbeat modern dance moves.
    Sadler's Wells also welcomed Brazilian group Membros performing for the first time in the UK. Membros beat out gut-wrenching realities of souls living amongst betrayal, addiction and guilt through powerful physical theatre incorporating breakmoves.
    Tony GoGo, one of the first people to ever perform the "locking" dance move on a hit 1970's American dance show Soul Train, and still performed one of the top acts of the day as he busted some moves with the GoGo Brothers, his two sons Yu and Rei. In true Breaking Convention spirit, Tony GoGo started to demonstrate and explain his infamous lockings.
    "It's called "locking" because we have a stop motion that's involved with the dance movement. Stop! That's called locking," he explained. Tony explained that it took a long time to reach the level of expertise of his sons that mange to draw some awe-inspiring gasps during their performance.
    Already with celebrity status in their home country Japan, the young GoGo Brothers wished much success for the convention.
    "Yes, if I could get just one more person to understand the goodness of dance, I'll be happy," said Yu.
    One convention visitor who reckoned some of the breakdance moves could be newly incorporated into her ballroom dancing skills.
    "Not that I could actually perform on the ballroom but I like jive, so some of the actions you could do in jive but not the swirl around the floor with your head! (laughing) Getting a bit passed that!", said Janice Thorburn.
    Twelve-year old dancer Connor, or Pop-C and and eight-year old dancer Jerry "aka Diva-J", were rather more hip and casual about it all.
    "Ummm I think just ..it looks cool on TV so I like doing it!", said Connor.
    "We have to practice a lot but it's quite easy to do once you get used to it," said Diva-J.
    Tony GoGo said it took seventeen years of training to get his boys up to their almost inhumanely high level of lock-motion.
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