IL Breakz 8 @ UIUC ARC MPR6 on April 7th, 2012!

Glad to be back after an extremely stressful week in preparation for IL BREAKZ 8. This is the jam that all of FLI has been waiting and working for all year long; this is the jam where bboys come and representing their names/crews in, as my mentor BennyBen said, the "corn town". But first and foremost, this jam marked the beginning of my crew. The Suburbaknightz crew had its debut previously on IL Breaks 7. Looking back, we have accomplished quite a lot in between ILB7 and ILB8. No, I do not mean accomplishments in terms of winning jams, but rather bonding through attending jams together, battling together, and having fun together.

As the treasurer/member of the organizing board for this jam, I have but one word to describe the feeling I during the jam: EXHAUSTING. Putting the paperwork aside, which, may I add, is unnecessarily complicated, long, and tedious, trying to get everything to go according to plan is simply next to impossible. With our guests arriving day/days before the event, it was still pretty impossible to push the jam forward as a whole entity.

One of the most agitating/annoying feedbacks or/and comments I have been getting regarding to the jam happens during workshops which one of our guests, bboy Physicx (Rivers Crew) was in charge of.

Just because he is known for his explosiveness and powerful dancing styles does NOT mean he has to teach those kind of techniques during his workshop. He had already emphasized that he firmly believes that foundation is more important than learning big moves. And with the modern bboy scenes' tendency to sacrifice foundation for big moves, it really isn't surprising that he would want to make sure that we learn proper foundation.

Secondly, people needs to have more patience.
I CONSTANTLY, and yes I mean CONSTANTLY, got people bothering me about how bboy Physicx could not have both a functional mic and music simultaneously at the beginning of the workshop due to the way the system was set up. The moment that I heard from the tech staff that he could not get both equipments to work, I immediately requested to speak with his superior in order to pursue the slight possibility that this issue could be addressed. Luckily, within ten minutes of time, the tech staff came up with a plausible solution and finally resolved the issue. But during those few minutes of waiting, I was CONSTANTLY bothered with complaints from the same individuals even though I already told them that I was trying my best to accommodate. Dear lord people, I was just as displeased as you were, perhaps even more so, and I DO HAVE A GODDAMN BRAIN so saying it once is more than enough. Phew, finally let that out.

Now, onto the bright side of the jam. This year, as aforementioned, we were very blessed to have big names in the house. The judges this year were Roland Bluntz (Battle Born), Physicx (Rivers), and Wicked (Phase II). The DJ lineup is composed of the legendary DJ Skeme Richards (Rock Steady) and DJ Edouble (Phase II). In addition, MC AMS (Self-X/FLI) truly made the jam entertaining with his mere presence. With such solid lineup, the jam was nothing more than action-packed amazing. Physicx and Roland Bluntz both hosted some very inspiring workshops that are bound to ignite some sparks of creativity under each participants.
This video entails the judges show case. Big shout out to Wicked. Despite his busted knee, he still went out and put out an amazing go on the floor!

I have to say, I am rather damn proud of my crew in this jam. We made it to the top 16 prelim selection out of 24 crews and then lost to our bros from the chicago tribe/cypher headz crew. There's no beef/hate in the battle. In fact, there's nothing but respect, peace, and love. Below are the footage of our battles:

PRELIM:


TOP 16:


In all honesty, for a commando which we JUST MADE and rehearsed for a day to turn out as well as it did during our preliminary round, I was both amazed/shocked by how well it turned out! Surely with more practice, the execution would be way better. But hey, like I mentioned, that commando was under 24 hours old LOL! In terms of battling, I think we did a solid job in demonstrating our foundation while throwing down some pretty legit rounds. However, we lost at the top 16 most likely (just my opinion) due to the difference in the difficulty of our moves of choice in addition to the dynamics of our overall rounds. But nonetheless, we did our best and had a great deal of fun, and in the end, that's what really matters!

My crew and I left early in order to celebrate my boy/crewmate Blu-Jay's 21st birthday! Needless to say, whatever happened in our private after party will stay strictly confidential ^_^ but this jam truly brought our crew even closer. Actually, now that I think of it, this is probably one of the bigger crew gathering! Six out of eight members were present on that day! With most of us attending different universities in pursuit of our academic growth, it is extremely difficult for all of us to have a chance to gather like we did on April 7th. I am very happy that we were blessed with such opportunity and am very glad that we took advantage of it. I miss you all already!

Now the only thing left is the paperwork that is involved. Hopefully I can finalize everything and get everyone who contributed to make the jam successful rewarded.

With curtain for this jam finally fallen, I now have to put a pause into training/sessioning until I am officially done with MCAT on June 21. Ironically, my bro Justinian will be taking it on the same day, time, and place with me. Guess we truly are repping on and off the floor! LET'S DO THIS!

But fear not, I will still be posting on this blog on a regular basis. In fact, bboy Minus-One and I are doing this mini project together that, if successful, can be quite informative for those that are interested in learning more about the dance in general. Well, enough talk for now. PEACE!

N-dure