The 5 elements of Bboying, as worded by Alien Ness

I am sure that many of you are familiar with the manga called Naruto, I mean..it's only one of the most popular yet very long manga series ^_^ Sometimes in the series, they mentioned that each ninjutsu element traces back to the 5 natures of chakra: Fire, water, lightning, earth, and wind. Well similarly speaking, Alien Ness categorized everything about bboying into 5 similar elemental classifications. He divided the dance into fire, earth, air, water, and ether. Let's go further into the details of each.

Fire: The element of fire, when mentioned, is often associated with a hint of heat and danger. With that said, it is only logical for Alien Ness to define the element of fire as a a bboy's attitude in battles. He stated: "YOUR FIRE IS HOW HARD YOU COME OUT OF THE GATE,WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE ALL IN YOUR OPPONENT'S FACE, AND NOT JUST LOOKING AT THE GROUND". As I was reading this, I recalled the teaching from one of the OG of FLI named Edward Moses. Recently he came to visit campus and pretty much taught the exact same thing to us. This made me think: Did we do a good job as a crew to enforce this element? The Suburbaknightz crew definitely can improve in this aspect. Seeing that we were involved into the scene at a minor environment back in the suburban area, it is hard for many of the suburban bboys to adapt to this fiery spirit that is meant for pure agitation and aggravation. But nonetheless, I think this is one thing that all of us can work on, especially if we are fairy new to the scene.

Earth: As many bboys know, we spend a whole lot of deal on the floor itself instead of dancing at standing height. Therefore, it only makes sense for Alien Ness to define the element of earth as floor work. Now what does that entail? This includes all your footwork, freezes, rolls, back rocks, and even power moves like windmills and, according to Alien Ness, headspin, which depends on how you get into it. This is pretty much the bread and butter of the dance in my opinion. This is the element which all bboys will strive to improve constantly. However, one thing I realized when I watched bboys practice is that it is one thing to know how to do it, it is another to know how to apply it. Even though one may know how to do a move, but this bboy or bgirl may or may not have emphasized on the form as he or she trains for it. Another possibility is that he or she may not even know how to get into it during a set. Therefore, when training, try to keep a look out for both form and application methods.

Air: You may wonder what the element of air may represent. Well, seeing that tornado picture, what's the first thing you think about? That's right, Power! This is the category which defines all the power moves that makes you "fly" in the air. In other words, this includes, as Alien Ness said, "AIR CONSISTS OF(BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO) ALL YOUR AIR MOVES, FLIPS, SWIPES, FLARES, CONTINUOUS BACKSPINS, HALOS, AIR TRACKS, AIR FLARES, 1990'S, ELBOW SPINS, SWIRLS, AND SOMETIMES HEADSPINS (DEPENDING HOW YOU GET INTO THEM)." This is the acrobatic aspect of the dance, and it is many bboys dream to have a huge arsenal of moves in this category. This is definitely one of the weakness of our crew. One reason being that power moves requires tons of hours of training. But because all of us are pretty tide down by academic pressure, it is very hard to put into that many hours into the move while improving our earth element. This is why a lot of bboys nowadays either choose to follow the path of earth or air, but rarely both. However, this should definitely not dishearten us. Instead of feeling discouraged, we should still continue to invest part of our session time into learning power moves. Then we we do learn it, we will try to corporate it into our style work or find various ways of getting into it. Learning one air move will provide a tons of possibilities, therefore there is no rush in learning many air moves at once.

Water:The ultra-uber-sexy Bruce Lee once said "Be like water, my friend." in one of his interviews. What does that mean? Well, what he means probably contains a different meaning from the way Alien Ness views it in terms of bboying. The element of water represents the flow of movements in bboying. In other words, this element defines what we call the transitions. Only when correct transitions are applied in between movements can it maintain, and even increase, the flow of the set. Alien ness stated "I BELIEVE EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE A CONTINUOUS FLOW, WITH NO HESITATION FOR A SET UP." My mentor, bboy Benny Ben from the Rivers Crew and Mighty Zulu Kingz also emphasized the same thing: Everything needs to have, or maintain, the flow or the energy that one creates in the beginning of the set. Some members of the Suburbaknightz Crew definitely are the masters of this element. This is definitely one of the bigger focus for bboys that emphasizes on style work.


Ether:What is ether? To be honest I definitely did not hear of this element until Alien Ness mentioned this element...but I guess this was some ancient Western ideals. Ether, according to wikipedia, was once believed to hold everything together. It is this very element that keeps the other four elements together like a glue. What would be the bboying counterpart? Ether in this case would then represent Rhythm. No matter what we do as bboys or bgirls, the most important thing to do is to make sure that everything you do is on beat. Ultimately speaking, bboying is a dance, not a move contest.

Therefore, dancing on a beat is a GIVEN. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. One mishap with the music it could almost always mean instant lose in a battle, as Alien Ness mentioned. The Suburbaknightz Crew in general definitely don't have too much problem with this element. However, there are still room for improvement. After examining our past battles, it seems like we rock the beat when we get a good feel of the music. We can definitely be more consistent.

Well this is it for the 5 elements of bboying, as worded by Alien Ness. The next post will cover the content of the book called the 10 Commandments of Bboying! Look forward to it!

Cheers!

N-dure

The Art of Battle by Alien Ness

Being a friend with Alien Ness himself on facebook, of course I wud get notifications. When one day, he put up his own book for sale and shared it with the facebook world, I saw this book. Being very interested in what he has to say about battling, I decided to buy the book titled The Art of Battle written by Alien Ness himself.

Being decades since he is into the scene, so he must have something useful and interesting to say about the dance right?

Well, I will tell you what my first impression of the book was prior to reading a single word from it. I thought this book will contain the secrets of one of the most well known bboy in history; I anticipated words that will completely change my way of thinking when in a battle; and I was dying to absorb every information this book has to offer.

When I first opened the cover of the book, I find myself looking at a page full of CAPS. YA THAT'S RIGHT! HE WROTE THE ENTIRE BOOKS IN CAPS! WHAT THE HECK....IT FEELS LIKE HE'S SHOUTING AT YOU THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE BOOK. IT'S PROBABLY MEANT SO THAT YOU CAN FEEL THE ENERGY AND THE PASSION THAT HE HAS FOR THE DANCE. SO HOW DOES IT FEEL TO READ THESE PAST COUPLE LINES IN CAPS? :P

Well, putting that aside, this book is really short. I would have finished the entire book in an hour if I am just going to sit down and read it straight up. But that is not how I decided to read the book. I decided to read a little section a day, and see if I can relate myself to his words.

As result, this book took me about a week to finish. To be honest, I did not expect him to focus a good portion of the book to gestures and burners, nor did I expect him to really cover a bboy can think strategically how to respond or start his round. This book really does cover some in depth mentality and some good strategy for battles.

Even though now I have absorbed the content of the book, the hard part is to apply it during battles. After reading the book, I went back and examine the past battles that the Suburbaknightz were in. As I found out, we definitely could do much better in Alien Ness's standard in terms of battling. It is definitely impossible to do that in a couple battles, as experience plays a major role in the application of the knowledge. However, I can see a few areas which we are already doing well.

So I am going to do several posts regarding the content of this book and how it relates to me as well as the rest of the crew from now on. Please look forward to it!

N-dure

Cypher Central @ Hinsdale Central 3/18/2011!

Alright, I know I haven't been updating this blog for a month because school was a little bit hectic along with a lot of things that were going on. But now that I am on Spring break, I am going to work ahead to ensure my availability to update the blog on a regular basis ^_^

So on the day that Spring Break started for UIUC (3/18), I quickly packed and grabbed my bag from my apartment after class and rushed toward the bus stop in order to make it on time for Cypher Central.It is an event hosted by my high school crew called Midnight Rave. As an alumni, how can I miss such event? So off I went!

Thanks for Ali Arfeen for recording this battle. For more footage of the event, just visit my facebook page or his.

Ink Motionz picked me up at Oakbrook Mall around 3:30 because the bus driver just had to stop by a Jewel Osco and took a long dump that delayed my arrival by like 30 minutes ~.~ But either way Ink Motionz and I rushed to Akimbo's house to pick him up and then head over to Hinsdale Central to set up the event. To my surprise, my two Spanish Teachers became the sponsor of Midnight Rave O.o Well...just a little bit awkward but hey~ it was great to see that they are doing pretty well ^_^ Definitely miss those high school times :3 After everything seemed to be functional, we quickly decided to experience the floor after a stretching. Definitely forgot how unforgiving the floor was in the cafeteria..but I guess that's what made my fist tough LMAO!

Shortly after, people started to show up. This whole time I was looking out for members of Cypher Rangers because we were scheduled to have an exhibition battle in cypher central. The clash of the two suburban crews! The battle can be found here:


We didn't really do much in this event because this event was dedicated to high schoolers. And due to the tight scheduling of events, there really wasn't much time given to cypher. But we saw high school students from all over the place showing up for this event. As we were looking around assessing the crews' skill levels, I couldn't help myself but compare them to my old self back in high school. Gotta say, they were definitely much better than I was in high school. But Midnight Rave came a long way to make this event happen....ah...it's so sentimental T^T

When the battles begun, we quickly surrounded the center floor. We definitely observed some dope battles among those high school kids! Damn dude! Kids these days! So many mad original commandos/routines...so much flavor and so much spirit! This is definitely something that we need to learn from these kids! Mad props to Astronaughty Crew (bboy BeNice and bboy...Roo?)for bringing the crown home! Represented Midnight Rave hard! You guys made me proud! And not only me, the older generation Midnight Rave Alumnis as well! Great job for making this event happen!

To be honest, the event far exceeded everybody's expectations in terms of the turn out and bboy skill levels. But these high school kids just never ceased to surprise us! We witnessed the birth of growth of Hip Hop culture in Hinsdale on March 18th, 2011. I sure hope this will not be the last of it, because this is definitely something I would love to come back to!