So I was blessed with the opportunity to take a popping class from Suga Pop. If you don’t know who Suga Pop is, he’s a member of the Electric Boogaloos who are quite possibly the biggest contributors to what is known as popping. My mentor Bionic learn from Suga Pop, so I knew it was gonna be crazy since I’m going to the source for information. Here’s what I got from him:
Many dancers will work on their techniques, which is perfectly fine. But in the process they lose the groove. They become so focused on perfecting their hits, waves and whatnot they they loose the original meaning of popping, which was dance. So they turn into technicians, not dancers. Technicians will definitely kills the beat almost every time because they’ve trained their body to, but they’ll have no feeling which is more important. When you approach the song, you don’t just start popping to the song. You first find the groove that is given off by the song. It might be just a simple two step or bobbing your head. But once you find that groove, then you add the technique to it which can be popping, locking, krumping, etc. DANCE first, then add the style. If you ever feel like you lost the groove just go back to the booms and the claps.
Suga Pop didn’t exactly teach much popping in the strictest sense, but he gave us his mentality of popping, which is probably even more valuable. What he said hit me right on the spot. Lately I’ve been just trying to refine my angles and strengthening my hits that I ended loosing the groove of dancing. That’s why when I recorded myself, I just look off whenever I danced, because I had no feel. If dance is about expressing yourself wouldn’t feel be more important than all that technique? It like when when we first started dancing, we just grooved to the music and that was about it. But as we delve deeper into our styles and learn moves, many start losing that groove. Quite possibly the simplest thing to achieve can be so hard to attain simply because we ignore that side of dance. But we do need feel AND technique however. Technique allows use to make better use of the music and thus allow greater potential for our groove. But we should never forget about the feel, because it defines who we are as dancers.
I was gonna post a video up for this but then I ended up not liking it anymore. Got some good and bad stuff that I wanted to cover today from what I saw.
Lately I just haven’t been feeling the music. Every time I recorded myself it just felt off. Then I think I realized that I’ve been dancing with negative energy. I know it sounds all like mystical or cliche, but it’s true. Instead of dancing to release the energy, I was dancing to create more energy to store inside and it just held me down. Once I got more into a positive attitude, it definitely helped out my flow.
I’ve been studying other poppers and man… I’m light years away from being good. I compare myself to them and I realize that my dance just looks different. Not different in style, but just different. The feel and vibe that the elite poppers have is something that I don’t have as of right now. I think it has to do with my shoulders because I feel like that’s what making it forever awkward right now. My body just feels too uptight. I don’t know if it’s cause I’m not using it, or if I’m nervous, or what. It’s been frustrating trying to figure what I have to work on exactly.
I’m hoping this little secret trip to SoCal will help me at least get grasp of what this feel is like. I’m really lost right now and I need some guidance from those wiser than me.
Holy cow, today was a long session. I just was not feeling anything the whole session. I was extremely tired today so I was exhausted and felt out it so that partly to blame for my performance today. I was trying to incorporate the stuff that Nikodemus taught me today, but all the information and not enough practice lead to frustrations at the cypher. I was definitely not ready for a group session when I clearly knew I needed more alone time to work on the concepts and technicality of the moves.
But right now I have the “take one step back, take two forward” mentality. I’m breaking down my dancing right now so that I can work on the new concepts and incorporate into my dance. This means that my skill will be lower because I’m trying out new ways to hits, use levels, and conjure up new concepts and my body isn’t used to it yet. But when I get the hang of it, I’ll be so much better because of my practicing. BREAK THAT COMFORT ZONE. I need some alone session time with myself so I can just experiment and practice for days.
On a side note, our vision of expanding Popping Club into an affiliation/family is starting to become a reality! One of the dancers, Josh, is part of a popping group in UCSD called Poptix. He’s gonna talk with the president about becoming a part of Popping Club, or rather, a new chapter of Popping Club! That’d be dope…instead of just Popping Club @ UC Davis, there’s gonna be a Popping Club @ UC San Diego, or even a Popping Club @ UC Berkeley and so forth. Though these visions might not be realized until I’ve long graduated UC Davis and have left Popping Club (physically), just the thought of this vision slowly coming to fruition is crazy! I’m excited for this club and what it has to offer the world.
I finally got to go back to the Alum Rock session, which I haven’t gone since summer and it was definitely a dope session. I know I’ve been improving but lately I’ve felt like I hit a small plateau. I knew that I had improving to do, but I just didn’t know where. You know, it kinda sucks, practicing or studying something for days and you just don’t seem to get any better at it. What I realize is that you need a catalyst. Something to ignite that learning process, whether it be through time or through an event. You don’t know when it happens, but when it does, it just clicks. I can’t explain it any better really. For me, it was going to this session. Being around all these talented dancers really made me want to step my game up for some reason. All of a sudden my practicing felt different and my feel felt different. I had more concept that I used albeit that I went pretty fast at some points. It was the fuel of friendly competition that spurred me to practice harder AND smarter tonight. I even got to learn some strutting from a member of Playboys Inc. and it was really dope to learn some of that OG feel. Just overall I got so much information to process and I felt like I learned a great deal today as well as improved vastly just from tonight.
I remember Bionic telling me about slumps. He says that it’s gonna happen regardless of your level of dancing. But the thing is to push through it. You’re gonna hit plateaus anyways, multiple times so are you gonna let this one discourage you? If you shy away from it, you leave the fact of what could have happened should you have overcame the plateau. So keep dancing my friends. You’ll figure it out one way or another. Sometimes in the most peculiar way possible.
So I’ve been extremely inactive from this blog and have been only posted only my “cinematic” videos. This blog was created to update my progress and what I’m working on so that I can inspire others to improve their dance. I feel like I’ve lost that feel and I need to go back to it. I’m gonna post a practice video soon and start my whole dance journey again.
Also, this blog will serve as a blog for my trainee team, FWB. Go back to the very beginning, as I’ve posted things about what Bionic and what he’s told me. My grammar is is extremely bad (probably because I was tired and I wrote all these directly , but I’m sure you can understand what I wrote. Also, I wish you could see how I used to dance but I privated everything LOL. But I’ll be posting on the Youtube channel I’ve created for you guys so keep a lookout and kinda see what I do to improve my dancing.
I might get some haters for this, but I think that hip hop in Asia, particularly in Taiwan and especially in Japan, is light years ahead of what we have here in America right now. I’ve been going through tons and tons of videos and the quality is just so different.
Hip hop has changed throughout the years and right now we’ve been really focused on what I called “New Hip Hop.” Original hip hop dance was the likes of breaking, popping, waacking, etc. and to be honest, a lot of that culture has changed now, for better or for worse. A lot of the original feel has been lost throughout time and it almost feels like we’ve lost the meaning, or rather the soul of dance. When I look at American hip hop I see cool moves and dope choreography, but that’s all I see. When I look at Japanese hip hop, I see soul and emotion. They are able to incorporate the “new hip hop” with the “original feel” and it just looks different. I notice some people complain about how Shit Kingz won with only 4 people and teams like GRV (much respect to them) got second with who knows how many people. Just take the time and watch the musicality of the Shit Kingz and how they interpret the music. Look at how they incorporate original styles such as house and popping into their choreography. Once you can start noticing things like this, then you can start noticing on how different they really are compared to so many groups out there.
People dance to express and if all we express is just cool moves, what does that say about us? I’ll admit, I’ve been trying to alter my style into this “new hip hop” movement, but I realize that I need to bring in that old school feel in order to really become the best dancer I can be. It’s time to train to try and gain that state of dance. I might never attain it, but the journey in itself will be worth it.
