Bboy Storm - A Pioneer in Hip-Hop Dance Evolution

Full transcript: Bboy Storm on London Real

3:39 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Niels Storm Robitsky, the German dancer, choreographer, world traveler, philosopher, hip-hop artist, dance contest judge, and OG B-Boy. Since 1983, you’ve represented hip-hop and funk as one of the leading artists and pioneers in the fields of popping, locking, and B-Boying. In the 90s, you won every kind of competition there was, and today you tour the world teaching at universities, performing in theaters, and continuing to spread your message through dance.

5:04 You’re here in London to judge the UK B-Boy Championships, happening this Sunday at the Forum in Kentish Town. Storm, welcome to London Real. Thank you very much. It’s awesome having you here. And before I start trying to get inside your head and find out more about you, I got to tell you, you know, one of the reasons you’re here is three years ago, I had a guy in this chair, and his name is Edo Portal.

5:26 I think I mentioned him earlier. And he’s a movement guy. And at the end of the show, we were talking about movement, and he said, Brian, you need to try some new movements. And at the time, I was doing boxing and Thai boxing, and I was lifting weights and doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, kind of tough guy stuff. And I didn’t really listen to him.

5:44 And I had him back on the show a couple of times, and finally he said, you need to just try moving more. And I started doing some, like, kind of animal walks with him. And about 15 months ago, I was on my gym floor doing lizard walks, and I got to the end of it, and I kind of flipped over and something in my head thought, breakdance. And I think when I was a kid in San Diego growing up, I went down to the hood because I went to this magnet school, and about 80% of the kids were black and Hispanic, and I got introduced to hip-hop culture a little bit there.

6:15 And I think something in my brain switched, and so I started seeking out breakdance teachers. And I went to Pineapple Studios here in London, and I put out to all the London realers, I’m looking for people, and some guy named Alexander Ziri in Antwerp, Belgium, contacted me and said, I’ll come to London and teach you breakdance. And so that’s how my adventure began. And I learned from him and a guy named Mark Jacob, who’s in Liverpool with Rocksteady Crew.

6:41 Both these guys have been breaking for 10 years. And they started me off with the basics, you know, teaching, like, why we do this, how we do this, all that stuff. And so that led me to this whole kind of fascination. So that’s been my last 12 months. I love training.

6:57 I train three or four times a week now. I can string together about eight or ten windmills, and I’m almost 46. And so I’m really glad to have you here. But a lot of people don’t know much about breakdancing or even hip-hop. But, you know, you started in the 80s, and you were the guy in Europe that really people look to as one of the originals.

7:19 And I was wondering if you could tell everyone listening and myself, why did you embrace this form of expression that started in the Bronx? Well, it could be a real long story, but let’s make it short. So, well, first of all, I danced on. I loved physical movement, like, from a very young age already. I realized that whether I was playing soccer, whether I was playing handball or tennis or whatever, that I realized that very late, yeah.

7:54 I realized that I was always more in love with the movement itself and how it looked than that I scored. So I also got into Kung Fu, and, you know, for seven years I did Kung Fu. But I always won in Qatar, yeah, and in form. So the championship itself, like beating somebody up or something, was never my thing. But I liked the way it looked, you know.

8:18 So I wanted to, like, I remember my Kung Fu master when he asked me, why did I come here? I always said that, oh, I want to fly like the guys in the movies, you know, so that the movement itself and how it looked was always much more important to me than anything else. And I really appreciate, I really appreciate quality of movement, yeah, whether you see a carpenter and the way he handles his hammer and his nails or something like that, when he’s professional, and he really knows what he’s doing, I think it’s very impressive, yeah.

8:49 The rhythm, the timing, and, you know, like that every single little move is perfect. I just love it. So I would say that was the first thing that got me into dancing at a very young age already. My family, I would say we’re all like music lovers. My mom used to dance in the kitchen where I was supposed to do my homework, and I couldn’t really concentrate.

9:17 She showed me my first ballroom steps in the kitchen and my first cha-cha and so on and on. My sister got to get, like, at a very young age. She’s three years older than me. She got into disco dancing at the John Travolta era back in the days, you know, so she was going to clubs at a very early age. I remember how my parents were always upset about it, so when she came home, she always taught me the dance steps that she learned in clubs.

9:45 But I was already, at that time, I was roller skating, and a little bit later I was skateboarding, and also always to music, and we always, like we called it freestyle, freestyle skating. But we were always dancing, you know, so we were looking at choreography at that age already and what we were doing. It’s in the 70s then. Yeah, late 70s, that’s how I grew into that. And then early 80s, in the beginning, when I started, I didn’t even know what it was.

10:13 I started with robot first. So since I was already dancing and stuff, and my sister was doing disco dancing and so on and on, I remember the times when craft work came out and we are the robots, those songs, you know, when that first came out, we all wanted to look like robots. Not that I took it seriously, but those were my first tries, my first movements to look like a mechanical man or something. Okay, because the craft work music was sounding like robots.

10:39 Yeah, already. So I mean, because of the music that was hip at that time, it’s just something there. Also, I remember the craft work, I remember seeing them on television and they weren’t moving much when they were in concert. And there was this thing where people didn’t know, was it really craft work playing or was it just some puppets that were standing there, you know, behind the instruments? So that was the start of that.

11:06 But I think… It’s interesting because craft work was German, correct? Yeah, exactly. And then Africa Bambaata ended up grabbing them and sampling them. So there’s that weird kind of US German connection there.

11:19 Yeah, but that was way later. And, you know, that connection didn’t really, you know, like click until way later. What was very important to me and with my upbringing, I think, you know, I’m German. I’m German, I’m from North Germany. And I would say like from the beginning, from the moment I got to school, I got confronted more with Germany’s past, Second World War, what the Germans did and so on and on.

11:48 So I kind of like… I would say that I was oppressed with guilt for a long, long time and I still feel it. And everything that was German was just simply bad, no matter what, yeah? Whether I saw the German flag somewhere, you know, like you have the Union Jacks here all over the place. If you would have done that in Germany in the 70s, it was, you know, you would have looked at people different.

12:13 Right, but they were anti-nationalistic. Yeah, absolutely. They were recovering. Because you knew like, hey, wait a second. You know, like, are you proud to be a German?

12:20 Are you a nationalist? Are you even a Nazi? Are you, you know, so none of us, you know, like we could run around with those German army parkers that had the flag on the arm. And in the beginning I was like, well, I don’t want to have this, you know, like on my arm, I don’t want to have the German flag there. But then my father explained, yeah, but those are the colors of democracy.

12:43 If you would have the German Reichsfahn, you know, the Hitler flag or something, or the Prussian flag, it would be something else. So I was like, oh, so this is okay. He was like, yeah, yeah, that’s okay. You know, or then I had a NATO jacket as well, which was cool, you know. But from that moment, and I was seven years old, six, seven years old already, you know, you get confronted with this and you realize, you know, at that age already, I did not want to be German.

13:10 Yeah. So I asked my dad also when I was six or seven years old, who are the strongest in the world? Who are the strongest people? And he said, the Russians are the Americans. So I was telling everybody I was Russian.

13:21 And people believed me because my name was Robitsky, you know. So things like that, you know, so it swung along. And so when hip-hop, when I learned about hip-hop, I won’t say that consciously, but, you know, like on the inside, there was something, of course, you know, like now there’s this thing that was invented by Afro-Americans and Latinos. And, you know, the music, everything, so it was multinational. You heard the music.

13:54 There was free expression, you know. You could dance. You could do whatever you wanted in that frame of, you know, like whatever was culturally invented. It was just so welcoming that, you know, like I dwelled in it from the first second. You know, it was perfect.

14:09 So already, if you were saying that you were a hip-hopper, you could not be associated with that other side, you know. So it was the perfect dichotomy to that nationalism, to, you know, like what we were confronted with. So for me, it was perfect. Okay. So kind of that German history gave you that extra push to go towards that hip-hop culture.

14:32 Probably. Probably. Okay. Yeah. And it was also, you know, I never succeeded, really, like with when I looked at team sports like soccer, handball, basketball, you know, I tried all of this and I never really liked it, you know.

14:47 Like I was never really a team person like this, but like the positions that I was playing on, you get the ball, you kick it back, you have to wait five minutes until you get it again. It was not my type of game. You know, I wanted to play different. So, and in that dance, I could just develop freely. It was about me, what I developed, my movement and, you know, also to perform, to, you know, to show what you were training on.

15:13 So it was really up to me, as much time as I put into it and the new movements that I did, you know, plus, and then after a while, you know, like I got into it when at the age of 14, just got into girls and stuff and all of a sudden you find out, oh, it makes it easier, you know, all this helped. So it was not one reason why I started, but there was a whole background, you know, like in it. Okay. In the 80s, there’s no internet and you’re trying to learn about a culture that’s across the Atlantic Ocean.

15:42 Yeah. So how do you learn about it? How do you hear about the music? How do you? The first thing, I was skating, I was skateboarding, and the guys that I was skating with, you know, like, so we had our little circle of people my age, 13, 14, 15, and they were the older guys, 18, 19, 20.

16:00 And in the summer of 83, I remember that a lot of the older guys, they went to Sweden. It was called Eurokana summer camp, a skating camp. So they went there and there, you know, breaking was the hippest thing already. So when they came, when they came back, when they came back, I didn’t know what they were doing. It’s just that, you know, like one of the guys, he was doing a pirouette on his board, then he lost the board and then he did a backslide, you know, like, and it looked like as if he was skating without skates.

16:36 So for me, it was just a magic trick to make it, you know, to make like camouflage that he actually lost his board, but it was a magic trick, so it was cool, you know. So for me, it was connected to skating in the beginning. Another guy, he fell off his board, he did a little backspin and he came back up, and all these were like good tricks to camouflage that actually something went wrong while you were freestyle skating. So that’s how I started, and then quickly later, I would say like maybe two or three weeks later, I saw Buffalo Gals from Malcolm McLaren, which is the first music video I’ve seen, and Flashdance, you know, clippings of Flashdance where you see Rocksteady Crew.

17:17 Also, same guys that were in the Buffalo Gals video. So all of a sudden, I connected. I was like, oh, wait a second. So they’re doing the robot moves, they have that kind of music, and okay, what is this, what is that, you know. So for me, it was like, you know, like I could put everything together, but at that time, still, in the beginning, I didn’t know the terms.

17:39 I did not know what was what. We still called our robot dancing, we called it robot dancing, but then only like, I would say like two months later or something, we really knew. So this was break-in, this was, we called it electric boogie, because you know, the first guys that we heard speaking about it came from New York, and way later, we found out that this was pop-in and all the different terms that came with it, or what was hip-hop. Like, why is everybody, because also there was a radio show, I remember, in Germany, that I was listening to like once a week, you know, where all of a sudden they were playing that hip-hop music, sort of sitting there recording on tapes back in the days, and they were talking about hip-hop culture, and I was like, so what is this?

18:25 Universal Zulu Nation, and all of this. So, you know, it’s that really, and I got deeper and deeper and deeper. That’s how I started. It’s fascinating, because, you know, a meme is something that you kind of copy that you see, right? They say it’s like the smallest, you know, the smallest part of an idea is a meme.

18:43 And so now, you’re seeing these things on music videos, and movies, and music, and now you’re saying, okay, I think it’s that, and you’re making it your own in Europe, right, and you did that for the next few years. So, it’s not like you’re copying it. You know, of course I took it serious, because I really dwelled in it. Ever since then, I cannot think of anything else that would take me like that, you know, so even back then, when I saw the first moves, I was so fascinated that I really, like, I want to do that.

19:13 And, you know, the usual way, the usual pedagogy letter goes that you start playing something, right, like you want to learn an instrument or whatever, you start playing. I took that very serious from the very first beginning, so it became a serious play from the first beginning. I wanted to really become good in this. There was no question for me. Usually, you get confronted with somebody that is so good that it questions you like, oh, whether I’m going to stop now, or I really start. Yeah, that’s how it usually goes. I had that with other things that I did, learning guitar, and all this.

19:53 So, for me, when I saw other people that were better than me, there was no question. No, I wanted to become good as them. And I knew that it was going to take hard work, but I knew I was going to make it, somehow. Yeah, and I loved it so much. I dwelled in it so much that of course I got really bad in school, bad grades, but I didn’t care.

20:17 Because from that minute on, from that moment on, I knew that I was going to be happy until the end of my life, if I just wanted to dance. And what were the 80s like to you when you look back on it with your journey with hip-hop and with dance? Were there competitions? Were you traveling? What was the evolution of you those first five or ten years?

20:39 It was pretty tough. I mean, 1984, as quick as it went up, and breaking became the big fashion. It went down again. Downfall was deep. And it was not like some phoenix out of the ashes.

20:55 It didn’t happen like that. It was a long, long journey. So after that, everybody, that saw us dancing still in 1985, 1986. They were like, you’re still spinning on your head? You’re still doing that? Well, we still had shows.

21:09 You know, people saw that we did something good so when there were fashion shows, when there were some clubs, they still booked us, but it was by far not the same like in 1984. The new thing was Lambada. So it was a new fashion dance and from one day to another, everything stopped. Man, it took a long time. Well, we tried to revive or resurrect dancers too all over Germany. You know, it started in North Germany that we connected and we found out who was still dancing. Then more and more people stopped because they had a job or some of them, they only danced because they wanted to get girls. So when they got their girlfriend, they stopped. Things like that.

21:57 And then, yes, I got a new partner. His name was Swift Rock that was by mid-1987 and I just finished school. He dropped out of school. He just said, look, let’s try this. Let’s try to become professional. These people here in school, they don’t like me dancing.

22:19 So, you know, I know what I want to do. Like you, let’s start to become professional. We have this one shot, you know, so let’s try this. And I did not want to with my school diploma, the jobs that I could have gotten with that, I would have been really unhappy, I think. And so we tried. And we tried hard. We realized, okay, we might be able to do this if we’re going to work eight hours a day on our dance and this is what we did. So we found some other artists that were other people also who said you can’t make a career out of playing hacky sack or frisbee or things like that.

22:59 So we got connected with those guys. We got connected to different agencies. We got our first show so that we could pay rent first of all and then after it developed slowly. And then we became part of the few people that kind of like resurrected the dance all over the world. Also we went to New York in 91 after we won the Battle of the Year, the International Battle of the Year back then.

23:27 Is it true that you and Swift, the two of you, beat big crews at Battle of the Year? Okay. So people that don’t know what is Battle of the Year and had things started coming back a little bit in the early 90s as far as could you see that there was getting some critical mass now for breaking? 1989, 1990 I think was a very important year in Germany where things really started happening again. I blame Peter Kreutzer who was the head of the Euro Graffiti Union in Germany. He was from Munich.

24:11 He was a professor, I think he was an art professor. I don’t really know. I never really met the guy. And he started organizing hip-hop jams in youth clubs in Germany. First one I think was in Munich but I wasn’t there.

24:25 Second one was in Dortmund. Third was in Mainz. Fourth was in Hamburg. So he started organizing these things. So now since he had this Euro Graffiti Union there were all these graffiti writers that wanted to get connected with other graffiti writers. But of course you know us b-boys. We heard hip-hop jams so this is our thing. So it started happening again. With this also there was from the German railway company they issued tickets. They were called Tremper tickets.

24:53 Still have something similar called Interrail for all over Europe. Back then we had a ticket for Germany. Tremper ticket it was called like Hitchhiker. And you could take any train you like for an entire month. So we bought this ticket every month from 1987 until 1994. Then the German railway company they dropped it I guess because they had too much trouble with the graffiti guys because now they were going all over Germany and they couldn’t sort out anymore.

25:25 Who was coming from where and so on and on so damage was done big time. Spray painting trains. Yeah. Okay. Going to some layups and yards somewhere in some farmer country where they didn’t have security and so on and on so just to paint trains and stuff.

25:43 But with that ticket and because of the hip-hop jams everything started growing quite quickly. So the whole of Germany became like one subway map basically because we didn’t have to pay. And already one or two hip-hop jams they paid us the ticket. So now imagine there’s like eight hip-hop jams a month. It was perfect for us.

26:01 So that was our forum. That’s how we grew. And then by 1990 the first national breaking competition organized by the community was happening in Hanover by Thomas Hagenreuter who then a year later started battle of the year. And that was then in 91 and then 91 first battle of the year we won and we bought our tickets to New York from the prize money. So we went to New York, tried to find the last Mohicans. The last people that were still doing it and kind of like what happened was that the New Yorkers that were there they were pretty much out of shape I would say.

26:43 You know we met Quickstep who was the in my opinion who was the only really active guy still doing it. Training it and living a b-boy life on how we knew it. Like philosophizing, talking about b-boying all day and hanging out and spending time and yeah but also we met part of Rocksteady we met Crazy Legs we met Mr Wiggles, we talked to them and they were looking at us like what there are more guys like you? What’s happening in Europe? And when we told them how big it’s become in Europe again, that’s I guess also that kind of like it woke them up and they were like look how is that happening? That it’s so big in Europe and here there’s nothing.

27:31 Because it had died in America at the same time, mid 80s probably. Yeah, same thing. And it just never got revived. All over the world. And when we were in New York too people were laughing at us.

27:41 Everywhere we went, when we went to clubs, I remember we went to clubs with Quickstep and Quickstep, it was like you really want to break in and we were like yeah. It’s like alright, go ahead. So we started to throw down and people were laughing. What are you guys? What are you guys? Yeah, absolutely.

27:57 Does that ever bother you? Not really. I mean we were used to it from Germany too but we were so selfish sure that what we were doing was good. So there were always a few people that liked it and they gave us more confidence than anybody else that said look guys, you know like what are you doing? We somehow, we were so sure about what we were doing and that this this is our way. Yeah, that we didn’t care. That was a funny incident.

28:25 I remember this one time I was with Emilio, one of the guys from our crew. We were on a train and we also dressed like in Beat Street days, alright. So we had this Puma Beat Street suit you know, we had Kangol you know, so and we were on the subway train and we were just going through Harlem going to the Bronx. And there were these guys sitting there they must have been like 15, 16 or something and so we were standing on the subway and they were looking at us and I was looking back and I was like, what’s up?

28:57 And they were like, yo, you guys just got out of the joint? They thought that we were in prison because we were wearing clothes from 10 years ago, you know it was so funny. Yeah, so but we really lived it like that. For us this was our uniform but also in Europe it meant a lot more. In Europe when we were looking for cold breakers, when we were looking for B-boys and other hip-hoppers in cities we’ve never been to now don’t forget we had this Tremper ticket, we didn’t have to pay for any trip. So we would go to cities where we only knew like we had names but we didn’t know where they were. So we went to the city, we went to the first McDonald’s because we knew hip-hoppers like McDonald’s. We sat down got our French fries and maybe I don’t know, something to drink. And we would wait until the first person would come in with Adidas superstars or some gear from back in the days that was straight hip-hop. And then we would just go and ask the person and usually it was a graffiti writer, an MC, or a B-boy and that’s how it was. That’s how you did it.

30:01 That’s how we got connected. So you would just stalk and wait and watch and then go talk to them. Or even like we, like in the summertime also we did street shows all over, all over Europe wherever we went we did street shows, we made money and even if we didn’t make money we had our mission to find other B-boys. And it always happened. Even if they were out of shape and they didn’t do anything anymore, they got connected or they could tell us, oh but they are these young guys. So you’re searching out, looking for your tribe. And there’s no internet there’s no social media. So you’re doing it the old school way. We did it the same way also in New York. When we went to New York we only had the price money from battle of the year.

30:41 That wasn’t enough money. We had enough money to pay for a hotel for maybe not even a week. After 3-4 days we realized like we needed to dance on the street. So we asked Quickstep, Clown another guy if we could join them and if we could dance on the street with them and then we told them as well like, yeah and like that we probably, we bump into all these old school guys and Quickstep always, oh nobody’s breaking anymore it’s not gonna happen. So but yeah, we met about 100 guys but they all went on with their lives and they all quit. For people that don’t know why you went to the Bronx and don’t know names like Crazy Legs can you just give them a quick introduction to B-Boy culture breaking and what it is and why it started there?

31:33 That’s really a lot for me to to to mention here I think, why it started there I can’t even tell you. I think basically it’s the same way on how we started even though we adopted it but it was kids. Kids just getting into a new dance, they liked it and this is how it developed but if you look at the Bronx back in the days, we look at the Bronx in the 70s it was a place where you don’t really want to grow up or want to live. It’s funny when people are mentioning there’s always some people that say oh but hip hop culture comes from the US where I always say like hey hey it comes from the Bronx and back in the days, nobody in America wanted to associate the Bronx to the United States.

32:27 They wished that the Bronx was somewhere outside the US because it was not a pretty place. Crime, urban jungle just destroyed lots, destroyed buildings, drug use, poverty. I always refer to it as a concrete jungle. Almost like you put it. This concrete jungle mentality built the stance.

32:51 So now imagine you’re going to a club you see the woman that you would like to take home, what do you do? This woman, she wants to be safe. So you have to show in some ways, going back to Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, you want to show her in some ways that you’re the right guy. So by throwing down and showing that you can handle yourself it leaves an impression. Throwing down meaning dancing.

33:17 Yes, throwing down, sorry, the term. Building a circle in the middle of the dance floor doing all these acrobatic moves, showing that actually you’re like a superhero. You own the place. And if you do that whether you pop, you do the dance popping or you break it. When you pop think about it. It’s like you’re showing you like the six million dollar man.

33:45 You like the terminator. So by doing this play you create an image that through this play in play you create something better than actual life. So not just that it makes you happy doing what you’re doing, but also you create a world within the world. That’s what this play is about. And so now everybody that is in there, so you have that shared bliss of course, but also it helps you to step out of your reality and it does something to you.

34:28 That’s also what has driven me to practice even harder because I realized that a long time ago I realized that this dance and to do this dance and practice this dance is my therapy. It’s my therapy. So you find out about yourself. You find out about so much more than if you would have done just something regular. If you are creative and you have people that share the same vision it’s beautiful.

35:00 And just to finish up on the breakdancing culture, it did start in the Bronx. And so what was it about it that was kind of endemic to the Bronx? I mean we were talking earlier about we did some signs and we took some pictures and you’re like well this is so you can’t steal my chain. This is so you can’t stab me in the heart. Going back to this concrete jungle, philosophy right? So now you grow up in the Bronx you don’t want to look like a victim. Everything that you can everything you can do so that you take the trouble away from you that gets the trouble away from you or that you don’t look like a victim you engrain. So these poses and so on and on. So people that do poses like that that stand like that or even just a simple thing that you wear your baseball cap to the back. Those are the tough guys. They do that. And it’s in breaking the same way. So now when you break when you you know like with all the bruises, bumps and you know like all the burns and you know that you get from training from being on the floor it’s the same training that any martial artist is going through. That’s why even if you look at hip hop you look at Wu-Tang Clan and so where do you think those names are coming from? They all want to show look you know we are tough guys don’t mess with us. We know how to handle ourselves. Wu-Tang Clan comes from kung fu movies and so on and on. So if you know how to do kung fu nobody would want to mess with you. All the army

36:32 Look in hip hop when you look at like the baggy clothes and you know like khaki colors and so on and on. If you look at hip hop if you wear an army you know how to handle yourself. You might even carry a weapon. Nobody would want to mess with you. Simple signs you know just so that you can live in that concrete jungle. And I think especially for guys being a tough guy or look tough something attractive especially for young teenagers.

37:04 Definitely. And for me for me in particular I just you know I grew up in the superhero world. Every day I came out of school I had half an hour to go to go home you know and this half an hour was always very very long so I fantasized about being Superman, Batman, Spiderman or whatever. So when I saw breaking or popping for the first time I was my first thought was oh it’s possible I could become a superhero you know I saw these superhero if you look at a windmill or a head spin or something you see the same like flash when he’s spinning around he’s taken off or something like that it’s a superhero move. Nobody has done that before you know if you see the footwork on the floor when I saw crazy legs for the first time of Rocksteady Crew in Flashdance and he’s done footwork on the ground the first thing that came to my mind was Spiderman you know I wanted to look like Spiderman when that’s how I described it too when people were asking me well what are you trying what is this? Yeah I want to look like Spiderman running in a circle on the floor that’s how it looked to me.

38:10 What part did the music play in the starting of breaking you know in the seventies and the Bronx and even the graffiti like when you now that you know more about it. I have my own vision about it they call it breaking because of the break of the record of the funk track. Usually when you listen to a funk track especially from back in the days there’s this one section where all the instruments they pulled out and you only hear percussion and maybe a bass or a little funk guitar to it but most of the instruments are getting pulled out. This is what’s called the break. That’s why it’s called break in. That’s why later on you know the commercial term break dancing came out or B-boying stands for break boy.

38:54 So the the motive was when this track was played to me now right and how it made sense to me and I witnessed it too before I even knew about breaking. Before I even knew about the dance. When I listened to certain records when the break came on I always had the feeling as if I wanted to fill the vacuum when all the instruments were dragged out I wanted to fill that vacuum with the visual instrument basically. But that’s my philosophy. But it’s very possible that other people felt that way in the past and so that’s when the B-boys would come out of the club.

39:42 Even James Brown did it on stage. That’s when he did his dancing right? Because he wasn’t singing. Exactly. He wasn’t singing so when the break came on James Brown went down. He also went on the ground, did corkscrew split and so on and on. So to me naturally you know like when James Brown was a big icon you know in the days. But let’s talk about icons. When I describe breaking I always want people to visualize it a bit more with back in the days who were like big heroes for the for those people that lived in the Bronx back then. So I mentioned that I grew up with superheroes so did they.

40:20 Same thing. So people were reading comic books it was I think today still. When I’m looking at my son he’s ten years old. He loves his mangas and stuff. He loves Naruto and all those.

40:34 So back in the days it wasn’t any different. It’s just that we had different characters. So on one hand the superhero in you and you have to develop. You know like in X-Men that you know you have superpowers but now you have to develop them. So that’s typical B-Boy to me. Now secondly James Brown who created the music, that rough beat where you hear and you feel the you feel the rage in his music.

41:04 So there’s rage in B-Boying. Definitely. So going back to Concrete Jungle and that people, I would have been angry. I was also angry when I was growing up. Angry young kid with lots of energy so now I could canalize that energy and I went the creative way. Other people from my neighborhood they didn’t.

41:26 Then you had Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was very remarkable. And not just because it was Bruce Lee and we know him from the Kung Fu movies but also every time I’m looking at like I’m looking at Kung Fu movies or other movies from the late 60’s early 70’s I realize that Europeans always won. Now there’s this one movie that came out where Bruce Lee is fighting Chuck Norris in the Coliseum. And for the first time you could see that for a Saino-American it was possible to win.

42:08 It’s heroic. It’s something all of a sudden people see it’s possible. Not just for that but I think it was a very significant sign for people to see, look what this guy did. And so Bruce Lee and Kung Fu anyway every B-Boy from the Bronx from back in the day would confirm that they always went to Times Square to watch all the Kung Fu movies. And like I mentioned before, you had Wu-Tang Clan and other terms also from the Kung Fu days.

42:46 In Dance and so on you have the Ninja Freeze and so on and on. In B-Boy that would confirm that Kung Fu played a very very big role in it. And as last person, so now we had Bruce Lee Bruce Lee, we had James Brown I mentioned superheroes like let’s say Spider-Man or something and one more that is very important in my opinion is Muhammad Ali who was also the first in my opinion he was the first heavyweight champion of rap as well. The way he was rhyming in the press conferences and telling people how he was going to knock down in which and what round his opponent and so on and on, it was perfect. So you have the rhyming and when you look at Muhammad Ali in the ring and the way the quality it was just looking pretty.

43:42 Muhammad Ali was not just a great fighter I think he was the most beautiful fighter as well. He could move. His footwork, his dancing, he was dancing. And so all of these heroes are in the dance somehow. All these heroes, so if you would personify if you take these or connect them, merge them all into one and you would have the perfect B-Boy in my opinion and that could describe it more than anything else. And this is also from the, like these are all people from the starting era from way back in the days.

44:20 I really prefer you ask something else I mean I started in 83 and I studied it all and also to me looking back this was very significant. This is what I say to people in my dance classes so that they have an easier way of getting into the culture and looking at things. You have to ask somebody from the Bronx really, you have to ask somebody from there that could give you another description as well because we’re looking at a culture and we’re looking at people at a very young age, 13, 14, 15, that started a dance and it started very innocent.

44:56 It started innocent, there was no big philosophers back in the days that could tell you exactly why they were doing it. It came from the inside and people just wanted to express themselves with whatever they had and this is it. For breaking you need a pair of sneakers, you need music that’s it. So this is how it started and when you look at hip-hop then still what spawned it is the need to repair and this is still to me also when I’m teaching class and people ask me, so how do you work creatively? How do we come up with new moves? I realize for myself that the concept of repair was always very evident.

45:40 When I’m looking at something a lot of my dance partners back then they could never understand how I could when they asked me how do you like this guy? How do I like how do you like that guy? I was always very positive about it and I could say yeah, I think it’s great where they thought that they suck. But it was more because I think that no matter how bad somebody was dancing, in their opinion it will always inspire me in some ways where I would look at them and repair them right away where I see oh but if I would have done this or if I would have done that and twist this move a little bit there and you could do this out of that move so in my mind I already saw the evolution or I already saw something that I could develop out of what they did.

46:30 It stayed like that until this day. Can you get inspiration out of anything? Even if other people think it’s whack you’re like oh I could do this with that. Yeah but I also did it in regular life. So if I had a bicycle that wasn’t as pretty as somebody else’s bicycle or it wasn’t functioning the way I wanted it to be then I had the possible change of repairing it in a way where I would either restore it I would put something extra to it or I would just take it all apart and put it back together in a different way.

47:06 So rejig it. And I want to talk about how you create moves and some of the things you developed in just a little bit. But I appreciate your take on breakdancing and I know it’s not the take of someone that was there and luckily I’ve got crazy legs here tomorrow from the Bronx so I’ll ask him the same question. But I think it’s just as important to get your take on it as well because it’s fascinating to see what you’ve seen because you’re in that culture. So let me take you back then. You’re 91 you’re in the Bronx. You hook up with crazy legs and a few of these guys that were really there back in the day. 20 years earlier when this started or 15 years earlier when this started. And yet they haven’t seen a revival.

47:46 So in a weird way, it’s reviving first in Germany and they’re like, what’s going on? I wouldn’t say just Germany. I mean in France also Paris, you know, they continue. It’s just that Paris was for, somehow in Paris it was only happening in Paris. We were moving out.

48:02 We had that tramper ticket and because of the tramper ticket also it made it so easy for us to travel. Again, the urban setting changes the memes, right? It changes how it’s adopted and how it moves. You know, because you go to New York, you tell them, okay we’re doing this over here. What did you take away from that trip in New York and what were the next few years like? Oh, so much.

48:26 I mean, of course, you know. Of course I got schooled about what happened in New York back in the days. And every time I go to New York, it’s still like that. I always learn. I always learn. In my opinion, here’s I always say that about learning English as well. If somebody wants to learn English please go to England, learn English.

48:44 And it’s the same thing about hip-hop culture. If you really want to learn about hip-hop culture and if you want to get deeper into it, you have to go to New York. You have to go to the Bronx even though it doesn’t look the same way anymore. But there are so many people from back then that you could just still grasp and get the chance and speak to the guys and hang out with them so you find out how life back in the days really was and why this whole thing happened in the first place.

49:12 I think it’s very important. That’s why I pushed it. So what are some of the things that you learned on that trip and that you brought back with you? And how did it change you? And did you start relationships with these guys?

49:26 Most important for me was I think that we lived in a multicultural way and racism never existed for me. It didn’t make sense from the very first beginning when I heard about it. Also talking about me as a German in German history. I couldn’t understand it, what happened back in the days. And now meeting all these guys in the Bronx and so on and on, realizing that they think the same way.

50:03 That I think in hip-hop we look at things a lot more in a meritocratic way. Where ever like when you find out that somebody has more competence than you in something, you hand it over. That understanding I think is very necessary for society to function right. And I wish that in normal life or in the rest of the population that it would wear off a little bit. More like that.

50:46 And it’s based on very simple communication in hip-hop as well where we form circles like dance circles, rap circles or whatever and people just throw things in. And nobody has a preferred position in a circle and you just throw things in and then there’s this dialogue happening and at the end of this dialogue when the circle is over you know exactly what you need to work on. It’s very simple, very basic. It doesn’t work with everything in life but it could. Especially when people would practice it a little bit more then they would have more understanding about it.

51:26 So that’s one thing I took from there because I think that hip-hop would have never grown that big if people from the Bronx would have literally or would have behaved like everybody expected those people would behave. They formed something and they found a way of communicating through a very simple way. Like also you look at Indian tribes, you look at King Arthur and the Round Table you always see these circles. All of a sudden you see it everywhere, like different forms of government and they all start in a circle so I don’t really understand how we could have a different form of government today.

52:12 Maybe it’s more complex but for basic solution I think this is the way it works best and it has proven to us that it really works well. Well that’s one thing so I got from that. Because in the Bronx it’s Puerto Ricans and black people and white people and everything. And the culture, like you said Yeah but also the Bronx was left alone there was, you know, police wasn’t really there. You had gangs taking over, you had the drug dealers there. It was anarchy.

52:44 Basically it was anarchy. They were left alone so now you have to find a way on how you communicate with everybody so the diplomacy, the diplomatic skill that needed to be developed that needed to be developed in the Bronx it was tough grounds and if you always have everything that you want, like today where we just buy things left and right and if something is broken you just throw it out and our intact society or whatever people think that is intact we got to be careful that people still learn how to communicate face to face in society if we lose that if we lose that I see a lot of danger in that big danger in that Well, okay but that’s that It’s a great observation Communication, here we go But of course, hey when I came back from New York also for the first time I got confronted with this concrete jungle mentality in the Bronx I realized these guys are a bit tougher than in Europe and what’s wrong with these guys? I remember Wiggles used to make fun of me because he said no matter what, you always smile and you always laugh and in the beginning when I met you I was like when is this guy gonna stop laughing and I realized that I was pretty fortunate to grow up where I grew up and how I grew up and that concrete jungle mentality was a big part of how the dance grew so what it did to me so now back in the days of course we all kind of like strived for a wealthy life and to make money and you know basically make as much money as possible maybe

54:42 But I realized that that definitely didn’t make me happy and I kind of like found out the hard way that I have to stay hungry in order to be happy yeah so I kind of like moderate everything down live a modest life be happy with what I have and as long as I can pay my rent and have a full fridge that should be enough of course every now and then I treat myself with something good you know but I think that if you’re fed up or if you’re fed too much then you lose your passion and yeah well I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m still here and why I’m still doing this thing and you think you got that from the hip hop culture that was kind of born out of that concrete jungle sure okay definitely what were the 90’s like now that you look back I know a lot happened there you were winning competitions creating power moves all this other stuff but if you had to tell me what happened to you how would you describe it to people that just don’t know what was it like?

55:55 I was very cocky in those days I think well I mean hey I don’t know if there’s any b-boy like from back then that wasn’t I won’t say ignorant but arrogant yeah I think that I broke a lot of bridges as well because of my cockiness but we really worked hard we worked hard and in certain ways I also thought that we deserved our spot to be recognized then there was a breaking point when in 95 when I herniated a disc in my upper spine and I realized I had to rethink of what I was doing so there was a moment when I dropped all power moves when I said I’m not going to practice them anymore I still did them in showcases and so I just didn’t want to practice it anymore and it decided for myself that I was only going to do I was only going to practice things where I knew I was going to get better in the future because with power move I really there was a certain limit and it would destroy me so I was thinking more about the aesthetics, the rhythms the timing, and how to communicate with movement so that was a breaking point for me so since that changed my reality of course it changed the reality for everybody else too how so?

57:21 How so? how did it change everyone else’s reality? no since I was teaching a lot already I realized that it would be good for a lot of other people in the breaking community to maybe have a look at another way as well especially since it did me good and I felt really like that those power moves would destroy me like muscles everything for people that don’t know breaking culture the power move is these really acrobatic almost gymnastic moves no you could say gymnastic moves well you’re spinning on your back and on your head and moving at high speed and it’s injury prone but it’s also impressive very much but of course if you only do power moves then it’s not really impressive anymore because then there’s something missing in the dynamics of the dance so you have to find your way on how to find the difference playing with the amplitude which leads me to this question what makes a great B-Boy?

58:27 Wow well I could just throw it back to what I described before when you personify like B-Boying and you take the different characters that I described earlier from Superhero to James Brown and you inherit all this like the music so I think I always thought that the B-Boys they were the knights in hip hop culture because also they always held the flag up were all the MCs you know like when when rapping became big they dropped B-Boying, they dropped Graffiti they did not want to talk about it I remember L.L. Cool J on New York radio I was taking the Taxi Cab in 91 with Quick Step and we heard an interview with L.L. Cool J on the radio and he said something like it’s not like back in the days anymore where people were spinning on their head we were like, what is he trying to say? Because they dropped breaking so they were the first ones to say, okay everything else you know, but the rappers are the number ones in hip hop and then when everything went down they were the ones that were screaming for help to the hip hop community oh but we all hip hop and yeah you B-Boys and yeah you guys are alright and Graffiti, it should be all in one you know the B-Boys, they were the ones standing up they were the ones holding it up and they formed the worldwide community more than any other discipline there since they were connected to the music there was a lot more and then also so they kept hip hop alive before rapping became big Graffiti writers of course too

1:00:23 But they kept it live before rapping became big in the 90s I would say that the B-Boys were the ones that connected the elements in hip hop more, they held it together a lot more when we were talking about the elements of hip hop they kept it together where most of the other elements, they were rather doing their own thing okay, that’s an interesting observation yeah, well the observation doesn’t come from me yeah, I just, like I don’t know I don’t know where I heard it first or where, I think it was Mr. Wiggles who scolded me on that also Rocksteady and then from there of course I saw the same thing happening and I think that he was right and so I’m going to ask you again you’re going to be judging some of the best in the world in the next couple days here in London what are you looking for, or what makes a great B-Boy, like what is it because we just talked about power moves but it’s not all about power moves we just talked about the influences whether it’s martial arts, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, James Brown some angst, some anger some caveman mentality we’ve got to perform to get the cavewoman and take her back so there’s a certain state of mind, right?

1:01:37 I mean there’s a certain state of mind you inherit it and it becomes your posture so a B-Boy does not look like a ballet dancer a B-Boy does not look like a typical I can’t even say ballroom dancer, or something like that so there’s something where you already see that a B-Boy looks more like a martial artist when he steps into a circle that’s something that could describe the state of mind already because he’s getting, probably like when we’re talking about UK championships UK B-Boy championships there’s a stage and people are stepping into a ring they step into an arena they have to battle against each other so just the name already battle they have to dance against each other so the approach is agonistic so you have to dance against somebody you have to show that you can handle yourself better than this guy that your moves are stronger than the moves of that guy, right?

1:02:33 But how do you show it? you show it through performance so now you’re performing so what is important in a performance? I mentioned it earlier, so people that really want to get into it, they have to get into performativity, getting into performativity you find out that it’s not really about what you’re doing but how you do it, the same way as in the debate so now let’s say we have a topic and we talk about Donald Trump, right? and you have to bring forward why Donald Trump is good or bad and I have to argue it’s the same way in a battle it’s an argument, there’s something where you show your phrase or you show your text or your performance and then the other guy shows his and now you have to compare now this is how it’s done and it’s the best way on how it’s done there’s no grades or there’s nothing where you could say okay I give this guy a 5 or I give this guy a 7 which is a stupid representation because what does it even mean?

1:03:35 You know these numbers, so you just like you give somebody a number and now you have to define what that number means it’s already hard enough to try and where something is very self-referential because every move should speak for itself it’s a dance, it’s a body language, so every move is self-referential if I call it a windmill, I know what I’m talking about, but you might not know so even putting that in words is hard, now giving it a number would make it even worse so a lot of people, they tend to give it numbers which might work for yourself if you put a number between one and a thousand or something, but in most cases it gives it a ranking among everybody in the competition, because you also what is it like, what if you have a beginners battle tomorrow, then also how would you rank that or if we are speaking of using numbers, doesn’t matter, so the typical b-boy phrase consists of top rock, down rock and freezes and it creates a dramaturgic arch like a day is creating a dramaturgic arch you wake up in the morning, you have breakfast it’s the introduction, then you go through your day, and then in the evening you have dinner, you slow down, this is the outro, and you go to bed it’s typical, and the same way you should look at a b-boy phrase, at a b-boy performance at everything performative actually also in a debate, if you are forming your sentence, that sentence has to make sense and you end it with a dot you end it with a dot

1:05:27 Which means, okay, full stop, that’s it that’s what a b-boy freezes at the end, you need this stop so everybody knows performance is done, I’m finished and a freeze is when a b-boy will stop and literally pause and freeze in a specific pose, a lot of times looking at the opponent, not necessary you could also in the middle of a performance it’s the same going from chapter to chapter it’s possible that you freeze in between and you continue there’s even a style, it’s called freeze in motion, but if you stop, if you stop, it’s just again, speaking of dichotomy, it’s just building a nice amplitude to a lot of movement, so the stronger and the harder and the faster the movement is before, if you finish it with a very good freeze, what we call a freeze, then it creates the dynamic, and it creates the Jesus Christ effect in the audience, where you go, the Jesus Christ effect?

1:06:25 That’s what I call it and if you can control a fast move and then stop it with a freeze look at it as like in a debate the more literate somebody is and the better his terminology is, the more possibilities that person will have to win the argument, and it’s the same thing in a battle, so in the B-Boy world, if there’s a battle, these two guys they’re going at each other the one with the better argument is winning to compare it with language, I think it’s the easiest for the audience. And it’s not quantified, but there’s a winner and a loser, and that’s what you’ll be deciding in the next couple of days Battle, why is it a battle? I can’t think of any other form, except a martial arts form, where two people actually fight, there’s no battle ballroom dancing, there’s no salsa battles It goes back to the concrete jungle mentality, right?

1:07:21 So, arguing or talking about exaggerated terms if you would just go through the Bronx in the 70s and you would say, tomorrow we’re going to have this interesting dance challenge, nobody would listen to you, so you have these terms in hip-hop that are always a bit over-exaggerated but they make sense, because it’s attractive Alright, so like a superhero battle Also, if you beat somebody in a battle, you don’t just beat that person, you smoked him or you burned him that’s our terminology Does it ever come to violence? And is there violence in B-Boy culture? It’s not allowed Of course it happens It depends where, how and why but in official battles at these tournaments like World B-Boy Championships there’s no violence, no It shouldn’t be there, it’s the wrong place and what’s really good is that in the past, I would say 20 years a lot has happened When I look at Berlin in the late 80s, early 90s we had a lot of gangs I had a big gang problem there and well, it was all of a sudden we all became youth workers going to the youth clubs because what’s funny is that the B-Boys the dancers, they were the ones that were accepted even by other gangs I guess it had something to do with the fact that we we trained everybody we didn’t care if they were in a gang if they were living in a different neighborhood or whatever and the bigger brothers that were in gangs they looked at it and they appreciated it and the youth workers the social workers in those youth clubs

1:09:19 They recognized that first of all, how quickly how much people from those neighborhoods how they jumped on hip-hop and how much they liked it and how they dwelled in it same goes back goes back to the concrete jungle mentality and also how positive or the positive side effects or in total the positive effects it had on the community I mean, not the B-Boy community but the neighborhoods in those areas because it’s an alternative to violence and other things drug use and all that stuff it’s an alternative to all the bad stuff you could think of because people now they could get deeper into personal development and find out within this hip-hop society where they have a stand it really helped so when I watch it it might look like it could get violent and confrontational, but it’s really not that’s all part of the show the battle you know a lot of people they kept saying back in the days that B-Boying wasn’t alternative to violence but I saw it happening I was in it a couple of times when people were battling and then when somebody wasn’t too happy about losing, then it continued outside the club but that was back in the days I haven’t seen that in the past 20 years and I’m really happy about it so I would say that it really matured and that it’s it’s not part of it anymore Have you seen some violence?

1:11:18 Oh yeah, sure in Germany Yeah, everywhere How so? It’s like a lot of times too what happened was that let’s say you have a young crew this is just an example you had a young crew of dancers 13, 14 years old and another crew on the other side but all the big brothers and all the bigger guys the gang leaders and the members they’re in the back one of these guys starts to insult one of those guys then if it doesn’t have anything to do with dance anymore if it’s a middle finger or a certain gesture where it’s not about the skill but it’s it’s a personal insult then you step out of it it’s not part of the dance world anymore, you step out of it so people are taking it somewhere else as well and as long and this is something I found out very early as long as you keep it dancing it’s not a problem it will never be a problem but as soon as you start to insult somebody personally where it doesn’t have anything to do with technique or your skill anymore then it becomes dangerous that’s the line tell me about your training you’re known for training a lot and I was wondering how you got this work ethic why you train so much how you train to be the very best when Swifterogamy decided that we wanted to become professional we realized that we had to treat it like a job and that we really have to dedicate ourselves every day like it’s a professional job to it so that we had to become the best otherwise other people would have gotten the jobs so that’s why we started practicing

1:13:23 And when it becomes a habit even if you miss out one or two days you become you feel the guilt it doesn’t feel good and when I realized how positive the effects were of training every day and training a lot then of course I kept on going What would a typical day look like for you in Swifterogamy? A typical day there were no typical days of course we had a structure somehow but first of all I think in my most productive training days but I have to say I’ve been traveling since I’m 14 years old so I finished school and after 87 I was on the road constantly only because I have a son since 10 years it calmed me down I calmed down and otherwise I think I would travel even more what’s hard is to keep that rigor practice or to keep that rigor training that’s during travel days but if I was at home I would have breakfast in the morning and I would eat only fruits just because half an hour later I would be ready to start practicing physically then regularly I would get up around 9 o’clock go to practice at 10 practice till 12, 1 o’clock taking it easy like starting with stretching and just trying things out not a hard practice it was more like sometimes I would lie on my back for an hour just staring at the ceiling visualize movements and then every 5 minutes you would try something and that’s it so usually in the morning I would practice a lot more creatively lunch time around 1 o’clock usually then I don’t know watch videos organize next travels

1:15:27 Next trips, professional work then at 4 o’clock go back to practice at the youth club that was open in Berlin every day there was another youth club where we would go into from 4 to 8 usually and then after that from 4 to 8 that was the hardcore practice so you would go in your corner for the first 1 to 2 hours to really just work on moves you wanted to accomplish the hardest moves possible then after that still some creative practice usually dance in ciphers with other guys working on new ideas working on new vocabulary trying things out also in between discussing what could work and where to improve where do I do things wrong can you take a look at what I’m doing here do you see anything that kind of stuff and then dinner usually among other guys that were there with you at practice usually in Berlin the restaurants are so cheap but good food that we would all go to a restaurant and we would have our cipher in a restaurant still philosophize and then after that you go home still watch videos or still read or you know anything that could bring you any further it’s you can’t really say that it was regular like that because every day was different I would say it’s immersive, it’s a lifestyle something that today that’s like 20 years ago, right?

1:17:05 So now 20 years ago it was still quite hard to we didn’t really have video cameras and all that, you know and nowadays that everybody has video even on a cell phone and everything I had a moment that was, let me see that’s already like 10 years ago for a couple of months I tried to film myself every morning right after getting up, before I take a shower everything I would just film myself dancing for 5 minutes it’s the worst moment and it’s the worst, you cannot think of a worst situation when you wake up and you have to dance right away so now that could also be compared to a moment where you get into a club and somebody calls you out to a battle if you’re not ready, if you just come from the outside or you’re with your girl, you’re not really prepared you wear clothes that, you know?

1:17:59 It’s the worst situation, so it could be compared to that so in the morning when you just wake up and you feel crusty and everything then 5 minutes you put your cell phone somewhere film yourself, put the music on film yourself for 5 minutes, then after that you take your shower, you prepare breakfast and then you take the video while you have breakfast and you analyze everything you do in that video, so you look at it and you find out right away you find out for yourself what you can improve on moves that you haven’t done right where you can work on your dramaturgic arch or whatever, so there’s always something you find out, but whatever it is it swings with you throughout the entire day, so wherever you are standing in line, in the supermarket, whether you’re waiting for a bus for, you could dwell into that again, and you could even try the moves whether it’s like if it’s on the floor, if it’s on the ground then not really, but you know like if it’s something that you can practice there and then you can, this is the moment, so since it works with you the whole day for muscle memory, for everything, even to ingrain that thought that maybe you should connect things in a different way, it works so much better, so I would say in those 2 months that I did that I did some major steps and improvement and that could go for other things as well that one does like any hobby or any passion that somebody is doing, if you do it in the early morning already when

1:19:35 You’re like well awake, or maybe not yet, but when you’re ready for it, so that the first 1 or 2 hours in the morning you have that possibility to really get deep into it, it’s going to stay with you throughout the entire day, and to improve there, it gives you much better chances than to go like in the evening, oh, and now you still have 2 hours practice where you’re tired and your mind is already all wasted because your big muscle in your head has already been used through all these different decisions that you had to make throughout the day. That’s a good technique. What about creativity?

1:20:15 Can that be taught, can it be engineered, or is it something you’re either born with or you’re not? I think it can be taught, for sure, definitely. You can teach people how to open their minds or how to think creatively about moves, about anything. We all are creative every day, we have to be, but most people don’t really realize that they are. That’s the problem. Once you point at it, and you show them look, you’ve just been creative, you’ve just done this, you’ve just done that, then you will find out.

1:20:51 It goes back to the repair mode. This is what I teach most of the time. That everybody, whenever you need to be creative, because something happens, you use that repair mode first. Something does not work how it’s supposed to work, you have to think quick to find a solution. That’s what it is.

1:21:15 A lot of times people think, oh, but I’ve just done it intuitively. Where does that intuition come from? That means that you already inherit something that at first thought, when you first thought about it the first time, it wasn’t a technique, it was just an idea, but you developed it. It became that intuition. Now when something happens, you do it automatically.

1:21:41 You recently had a battle with Crazy Legs. That’s a year ago. That’s a year ago, which is a crazy thing, because you met him in 91 and had that connection. Obviously, you both developed much more after that. Before we talk about 1991, he was the reason why I really started breaking. Like I said, I did this robot dance already for a couple of months, but when I saw his footwork in Flashdance, particularly in Flashdance, in the clippings.

1:22:13 It was like a superhero. I can see it in my head now. It’s amazing. Also, when I got ready for the battle last year, because of course, I had to study him again. I had to study my opponent.

1:22:25 When I studied him again, it all came back. I got way back. I got cut up, back to 1983, and all these thoughts came back. Why I started, how I started, my thoughts back then, and what people were telling me back then. I had a whole wall in my room. I had a messed up 70s wallpaper in my room.

1:22:55 It was really ugly, so I grew up. I wanted to improve my room where I was practicing every day. We had this youth magazine called Bravo. Every week, every time, a new issue, there was rock-steady crew posters and pictures and stuff in it. Since a lot of people in school, they knew that I was into breaking so much.

1:23:19 They always gave me the rock-steady crew posters and crazy legs here, baby love, back four. All the guys are rock-steady, so I had a whole wall just with posters. Every day when I was practicing, sometimes I was totally tired, and I looked at the wall. I was like, I’m going to become like them. That was back then. That battle really meant a lot.

1:23:43 How did that happen, and why did that happen? To make it a short story, the first idea was for the organizers, Russians, top nine, a crew from Russia, the most known crew in Russia. They wanted to organize a battle where crazy legs would battle Ken Swift. Ken Swift is an ex-member of rock-steady crew. The two, I wish that they could become friends again, because I think I saw them grow together for so many years.

1:24:23 We danced together in the same dance company back then. It was called Get Original. After I went to New York for the first time, I came back and returned. In 1992, they asked me if I wanted to become part of a theater dance company, the first hip-hop dance theater company called Get Original. We were dancing together for almost, kind of like two and a half, three years.

1:24:47 I knew them very well as partners. There were conflicts. They split up, and ever since then, they went separate ways. I think that the community, they would have liked to see them go at it. Usually, when it’s a battle like that, where it’s not judged and people just battle each other, there’s peace after.

1:25:15 I think that was my biggest interest. These two guys, they would battle each other, and after the battle, they would give each other a great big hug. Ken Swift turned the battle down for his own personal reasons. I’m sure he has good reasons. So then, there was I don’t know, I think they made they made a little online questionnaire of who could be the next opponent against Crazy Legs and I came out, so they contacted me and I said, yeah, let’s do it.

1:25:55 I’m looking forward, sounds great. And who won? I won. I won. But that’s really not important to me.

1:26:13 I look at the way he danced, and I remember the first round. It’s not that I got scared, but for me, I looked at it with pleasure. So when he came in and he started, I was like, oh, shit. This is nice. This is nice. So we battled, we danced six, seven rounds.

1:26:33 We danced seven rounds, and at the end, between us, there was more peace. Crazy Legs than me, we were not friends or anything. But I have to say, it’s grown towards friendship. Already before, more and more, we got closer. And I’m really happy about that.

1:27:00 I’m really happy about that. Even like, before the battle in St. Petersburg, we met twice before, once also at UK Championships last year, and it’s just nice. He was working out, he was getting ready for the battle. I was working out, and already there.

1:27:20 To share that way is something really positive. And I also think it was very important for both of us to send out these signs to the community, how positive our lifestyle actually is and how it could be. So it was really, in that matter, it was really not about winning or losing. It’s also when I got into it. Of course I would hope that I could win, and otherwise I wouldn’t have even gotten into it.

1:27:50 That’s part of it. It’s part of a game. Whether you play a society game, like flipping Monopoly or something, or chess or whatever, at the end you want to win. When did you decide to retire? And when did you?

1:28:06 I never retired. And I don’t plan to. I want to be one of those examples where people could say, look, you can do this until a very, very high age. So I think I’m going to continue until, yeah, until maybe, no, even now, until maybe, even in the wheelchair, I could still do my robot. Trust me.

1:28:36 Tell me about what your life’s like now because you’re doing all sorts of things. You’re teaching a class at a university in Austria. I saw this amazing clip called The Theater of the Mind which talks about you performing on a stage and talking about how you look at street dance versus formal dance and how I think you’re trying to bridge the gap between those two. What’s a typical month like for you these days? I mean, you’re everywhere, right?

1:29:06 It’s not just about breaking. Let’s get into that. You call it street dancing. A lot of people are not aware why it’s called street dancing. And it’s only because back in the days they could not find the opposite to academic dancing or formal dancing.

1:29:30 What would it be? So now you have these guys that are always dancing in the studio. They learn in the studio. They get drilled in the studio and then you have these guys that are actually dancing everywhere. And that’s where they just couldn’t think of a different term than street.

1:29:48 And that’s where it came from. So also for the people that were dancing everywhere, they called it street dancing because that’s where people were talking about it. But they were not necessarily dancing or practicing in the street. Everybody was practicing at home, in the living room, in their room, in the garage, in the parking lot, on the sidewalk, in church, in a club. Those dances were invented and developed in clubs, at parties, rooftops, and so on and on.

1:30:18 Not on the street. So we always danced everywhere. And that’s still how it is today. If you would hang out with me during a day, sometimes I think you would get into embarrassing moments where I would just go with you through a shopping mall or something like that, and I would do some moves just because I see a reflection of myself, so I would try something. Typical thing, elevators. You know, all elevators have mirrors. So automatically, if I’m alone in an elevator, I always dance.

1:30:54 I dance every time I have a free minute. Every time I try on clothes in shops and I’m going to the dressing rooms I close the curtain, and I dance for like five minutes to find out can I dance in these clothes. There’s no clothes in my house that I wear that I won’t be able to dance in. And that’s something very important to me. So I dance everywhere. And if dancing is your passion, then also your thought goes that way. So every time there is a moment where you feel like dancing, you should. And I have no restraints. I learn how to live with it, that people look funny at me when I’m standing at the bus stop and I’m trying some moves. I don’t care.

1:31:38 I don’t care. It’s even like that, it happens a lot of times that people recognize me because of it. That I’m standing at the line at the register and they are not sure is it him. Then I start moving and they come over and they say Storm, I knew it was you. It happened to me at the airport a week ago where I lost my laptop on the plane. I left it there. I traveled with my son. I packed all his stuff forgot my laptop behind the seat so next day I had to pick it up. So I went there and I was so happy that I got my laptop back.

1:32:14 When I got out of the office I started locking just a little bit. There was this guy, he came running after me. He was from Greece. I don’t know where he was going. He was like I knew it was you. So happy to meet you. At first I was like is it him? But when I saw you locking, and that’s how it happens. And I think it’s okay.

1:32:34 It becomes I think it’s good especially when people know that you’re an artist. You become aware of it and I think it’s best advertisement too especially if you show quality in your move. A lot of times when you practice on the street or in the airport or wherever, you’re not necessarily doing moves that you’re very good in but you’re working on the moves that you’re training on at that particular moment. That’s another thing that I wanted to say earlier. Like, I think one of the biggest problems with most of the guys that just want to impress that they go to training and they train on moves that they already know.

1:33:17 I think that’s one of the biggest problems. So once you inherit the technique you will never lose it in your entire life. It will always stay there. What’s missing sometimes is that you lose timing. That could happen. But other than that, muscle memory is there and you could move on.

1:33:35 And most guys, they get too comfortable with what they know so they stay there at that level. Throughout all these years I’ve seen too many people just always dance and doing the things that they know how to do. And it could become very trivial as well where they would always every time, instead of trying something new, they would go back to what they know and then they become repetitive and so on and on. But that’s just something for the topic that we had earlier.

1:34:05 There’s no learning unless you’re in an uncomfortable place and without failure there’s no learning. But it’s easy when you get that windmill that’s super fast or the halo or something you do that the rest of your life and then you don’t learn. You get into that comfort zone and that’s it. But also you don’t grow without resistance. And again, it brings me back to where I said that I try to keep myself hungry.

1:34:29 I think that resistance is necessary for me. I like to argue sometimes. I like to push myself somewhere and you know like when people ask me for battle or for call out or something like that or they want to dance against me, sometimes I feel very uncomfortable so I’m like is there a possibility we can’t, we don’t do it now but maybe tomorrow or something? So most of the times they react happy. Oh so you’re willing? I’m like yeah but just not now.

1:35:01 So I like to do it just sometimes it’s an appropriate moment. For people that are listening and are watching right now, tomorrow at the event is like oh my god what did I say? But I think through improvising in dancing all my life this is something I like. I always tell people when you learn how to improvise you’re always in a crisis because you never know what’s going to happen next. But you know it schools you like that and like that I have the feeling as if you’re prepared for any moment in life because nothing is you always predict the unpredictable and it’s nice.

1:35:48 You can make your own decisions you learn how to make decisions and you’re also even like no matter how deep you fall there’s always a way to get out of that swamp again. And you were talking about dance earlier, this whole concept of street dance you don’t accept that idea because all dance comes from the street. Well the problem is that a lot of people they use the term street against us. Right? They use that term as in like oh these guys they learned in the street.

1:36:18 You know when you hear street strasse in German or rue in French in English you might look at it as the American term which also like you go into a shop in America and you say like I’d like to buy some street clothes and they go they show you this action. If you say you want some strasse in Clermoten in Germany they go like what are you doing in my shop go to the Red Cross. It’s more like that. In German it’s a lot the term strasse is much harder than it’s used in English or in American English.

1:36:54 And so you say our dance isn’t any different than the ones you learned as a ballet artist. A lot of people you know like especially from the from the theater world they prefer to well since get original since 92 so it’s not since yesterday it’s been a long time and they prefer to use the term urban which is funny cause in America that’s more connected to like dirt yeah so in America they prefer street to say street where in Europe they prefer to call it urban. It sounds more sophisticated where I would say well I came up with it like a year ago that I would like to call what we’re doing to call it real dancing which is of course it’s provocative and I’m not calling it that way I just wanted to provoke, right? I call it real dancing because there you have contemporary dancers you have contemporary dancers that always ask us they always ask us why we dance to the music but in a way we should be in the position to ask them why they do not dance to the music or why they would leave out the music cause every dictionary on the planet if you look up dancing it says movement to music so just because a post-modern era somewhere with post-modern ideas somebody said I want to emancipate myself from the music and I want to be in the foreground and the music is secondary so they took the term dancing and they created something else out of it which I would prefer to call physical art or something like that but now they took our term they change it and they say

1:38:54 That we might do something wrong because we dance to the music which I think is a is a bit weird but that’s my opinion right? So that’s why I’m saying like well let’s call it real dancing but also because a lot of the judges in these tournaments like well not at UK B-Boy Championships there’s some real good judges that I’m really happy about right? But some other tournaments you have judges that are not really so literate about what people could improve on or you know like when some participants they asked them okay so now you kicked me out I lost the battle but why?

1:39:32 Please tell me I want to get better and next time maybe I have a chance to win this contest and a lot of times I heard that the judges are saying well in my opinion you weren’t really dancing and I’m like look you have to tell them a little bit more than that because what is dancing in your opinion you have to tell them so what moves were missing what is dancing to you and most of the time then when you pick a little bit harder then they tell you well yeah but the way he played with the music or the way she moved her feet there and you know like the form to it and the swing there it always applies to how you move in cohesion with the music and that’s why I say well if you all call it well you weren’t really dancing and it has something to do let’s call this real dancing How’s that going over what people say?

1:40:32 It was a joke. It was a Facebook status a year ago. I didn’t pick up on that afterwards but it’s just to provoke a little bit and to raise the awareness also for the judges that are just saying that but also for the contemporary dance world I mean like you said it I’m covering all worlds I’m dancing everywhere and in my opinion also our dances should be shown and they should have their stage everywhere whether it is the church, the clubs, the streets the theatre, the Olympic games Whatever, you know I wish that our dances could be seen everywhere because that’s the right place. We do it everywhere so why shouldn’t they be seen everywhere?

1:41:22 Tell me about the Olympics What do you want to know? I want to know is breaking going to be in the Olympics Well it starts in the Youth Olympic Games in 2018 in Buenos Aires. We’re working on the pre-selections and the whole organization we’re working with it right now for UDSF they got granted to organize the whole thing for the IOC so we’re working with them to organize it right and the whole community is part of it so when you look at competitions like Battle of the Year they are organizing it with it then you have Silverback which is a competition from the United States then in Taiwan there’s another pre-selection happening then it goes to Japan and then at the end when everything is over it’s going to be in Buenos Aires and it’s going to be a big thing and I think it’s going to be another step to establish our dances at its righteous place I think it’s very important and I’m really happy that it’s also one that it’s a generation like we’re talking about the Youth Olympic Games it’s the younger generations that does not have a chance in the community world yet because we don’t have the differences you’re good, you’re good no matter what age everybody participates and at UK Championships and Battle of the Year itself usually it’s the people between let’s say 25 and the average, right? Between 25 and 35, those are the ones that always get in the best ranks but also what’s very important is that we have two different genders so we have B-boys

1:43:12 And B-girls and I think it also gives the B-girls the dance B-girling it gives it a big chance to also develop develop further as now there’s to give a forum like that it’s like a big push into a direction where I think that in the past years it kind of like it filtered out there are moves that look so much better on women, right? there are certain things that look so much better on women and the aesthetical point should be as recognized as also the difficulty right? so now not everything is about difficulty, right? But when somebody is doing a movement that is really beautiful, it has the same weight but somehow most of the cases when a lot of B-girls are dancing just because they can’t or they don’t do so much of the hard moves they always get like lower in ranking, right?

1:44:27 So now here there’s a big chance there’s a big chance to develop B-girling further and to develop the notion within the entire community where B-girling aesthetically also is getting recognized more. That’s exciting So will we see it in the Olympics? Well, first in the youth Olympic Games in Argentina and hopefully everything goes the right way I’m sure it’s going to be very exciting and my opinion is that the Olympic Games, they really need something like that of course, with my passion and my life, how can I say anything else right? Yeah, but I really hope that it’s going to go further You mentioned some competitions earlier you mentioned Silverback, obviously B-Boy Champs, Red Bull does competitions What’s the state of B-Boying today? Where are we at today and is it where you want it to be and where are we going in the next five or ten years?

1:45:28 I prefer to look at the entire hip-hop culture, actually There’s always a new step to take, you know Actually, we’re starting a hip-hop party in Germany Political party? Political party So that’s my next big step as well This is very interesting right now Are you going to run for office? Well, yeah, let’s try If the pirate party can elect people, the hip-hop party can elect people Have you heard of, there’s a Dutch philosopher, his name is Heusinger Sociologist, philosopher, Heusinger He came out with a book it’s called Homo Ludens and the book is talking about how all culture has actually started in play That’s how I see hip-hop as well We started in play Explain what that means Culture started in play Well, I mentioned that people were pretty young People in hip-hop right now So people were young when it all started And it was all teenagers And they weren’t really too serious about what they were doing So they just got into it through playing And then you have seriousness in play as well But when we’re talking about, let’s talk about Heusinger there, so he’s mentioning in his book that the reason why we use knife and fork when we eat is because people started playing with it on that’s the best way how to eat And cooks in the kitchen because they were playing with the food they found out how to make things taste better with playing with spices and cooking it in the right way And all this is part of play Music We’re playing instruments

1:47:11 I don’t know why dancing and singing is different because I use my body as an instrument but still I’m dancing It’s the perfect term for it But when I’m playing an instrument I’m playing So everything, all of this, no matter what you look at in culture, fashion it started with play That people wanted to look good and wanted to look better and they started to change things and their appearance, why? Because they wanted to play with going back to Stephen Freud wanted to play with the other gender, to get together So you see, everything when you look at everything in culture it started with play And that’s how we want to start our hip-hop party as well Non-serious in the beginning It’s getting more and more serious of course because we have elections in September in Germany I hope that we’re going to be ready by that But let’s see So we need to encourage play in all aspects of life Oh yeah, definitely Definitely, definitely Because that’s where the new ideas come from Yeah, yeah Yeah, you lose the series Every time you have to make a decision and you look at it too serious it becomes harder But if you look at a decision you make in play you know, of course there’s levity in it as well But if you if you start with small decisions if you start with small, this is what we do we start with the easiest decision the smallest decisions and from those decisions we learn and the decisions get bigger we learn more And then at some point we made so many decisions

1:48:51 That we’re ready to make the big decisions That’s how we should go up the ladder Of course I’m not out of the blue I’m going like, hey, let’s see So I have the red button and the green button The red button destroys the world The green button is peace So Storm said Let’s go through it, let’s take it easy Play! And I take the red button It’s not going to be like that So of course, decision making is a process But incorporate more play is what you’re saying Now, you still didn’t answer my question Where are we the state of current B-boying in the world? Where are we going?

1:49:25 Where are we? Are we better than we were say 5 or 10 years ago? I would say so Because of internet there’s no chance for the media anymore to call us dead Something that happened in the 80s Something that happened, you know, like the way it happened in the 80s In 84, where the media decided from one day to another, this is the hippest thing, and then half a year later or a year later to say like, now it’s totally played out, now let’s get into Lombarda It won’t work like that anymore Because of internet, there’s a strong community, a very strong community that that won’t be influenced that easy anymore about what’s hip and what not But it’s like that with other things as well, of course So, that’s very important, also for the survival of all the events that we have We know exactly who we have to address in order to fill up events and to find people that are working with us Then I mean, look at it The Olympic Games are interested in having b-boying as one of their disciplines We form a hippo party that has never been done before So you see, I think that it’s already it’s already part of our society since more than 30 years now It’s just that people haven’t really acknowledged it, and now it’s grown a lot out of its infancy, because a lot of the culture makers from back in the days, from the 83, 84, from their generations, they’re getting older and with them, there’s a lot more people getting into key positions that could push the dance and the culture

1:51:26 Into its righteous place And they’re getting wiser, and they’re getting to be better speakers, and you can put it in perspective, and then school I mean, there’s a lot of people watching right now as we speak, in their teens in their 20s, and you’re dropping things on them that they’ve probably never heard of and they might have been b-boys or b-girls for years, so you know, maybe it takes this time and this perspective from you to make people kind of take that seriously What’s it like being a father? What have you learned? Your boy’s 10, right? Oh, it’s nice My whole life I anticipated travels and when he was born, I said, no, I have to cut down I just wanted to stay home from that minute on, plus he was two months old and I had a production in Vietnam, and I stayed away for six, seven weeks I stayed in Vietnam and back in the days, you know, internet and so on and on, wasn’t really developed and it was pretty hard to stay in contact with my wife and after coming back, you know a little one, you know, that was just two months old when you left him, and all of a sudden he’s four months old, he’s almost a different person that’s when I really realized I need to change life I never even knew that I could develop that kind of feeling you know, that like that father feeling you know, it’s like I always thought I had a lot of love in me you know, like loving your father, your mother, your parents, you know your family members, your friends and

1:52:56 Your wife, but loving your kid is just it’s immeasurable it’s something, I mean at least with me, right my boy means everything to me everything and I wish that he could be with me every minute of my life yeah, he’s does he move? yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s full of energy he’s a very happy boy everywhere we go, he’s very pretty too yeah, he’s like a real pretty boy like his father he’s wherever he goes, you know the women, they look at him and he’s like oh, he’s so cute you know that it starts to cause a little trouble here and there cause crowds no, he’s really cool does he break dance? he’s playing he’s his father and he’s playing he’s playing I witnessed too many bad examples as bad examples of parents that tried to drill their children into dreams that they could never fulfill so I just let him be like my father did with me yeah I’m very happy about that too my parents they kind of let me do whatever I wanted to do whether it was their wish or not, I don’t know yeah, but that was my fortune I think and that’s the reason why I developed the way I developed my brother did the same thing he also started breaking like around the same time just not seriously but then 3 years later he got into it really well, he’s part of my crew and he also developed very well as an artist he’s got a lot of graphics now he’s illustrating a lot of children books so he got his children and through that he started illustrating children books and he really developed into that

1:55:04 So when I’m looking at him when I’m looking at myself and as happy as we are with our lives I could say that we went the right direction when I’m looking at other people and see how unhappy they are because their parents put them into certain positions like when fathers want their children to take over the family firm or something like that they suffer they really suffer because of the decisions of their parents and I don’t want my son to feel like that in any sort of way I want them to have the freedom to develop the direction that he wants to take so he’s playing soccer he’s playing soccer one day next day he has a punching bag in his room so he’s punching that bag he wants to do kung fu box in jujitsu then another day he breaks, you know also I take him a lot with me so I’m travelling a lot with him last weekend we were in Rome and he was about Roman legionnaires and he was about all this, then gladiators and so on and on then at the event he was rapping in Austria two weeks ago he really surprised people because there was a rapping workshop they had a rap cypher they all could rap he wasn’t part of the rap workshop but he was in the cypher rapping and everybody was surprised how good he could rap he popped to the core hanging out with me of course when we are in the car and it’s boring as hell for children to drive for more than five minutes you know if it takes more than ten minutes they ask you every two minutes they ask you daddy when are we there?

1:56:58 So you have to start up with some entertainment program so freestyle rapping is one of it that’s nice, that’s really good can I ask you a couple quick questions about your success and maybe some things that we can learn of what you adopted something like 20 or 30 years is there something that you changed about your daily routine that you noticed had a big change in your success? like when I started doing this in the morning or when I started thinking this way or behaving this way my results improved these success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars bonus content, meetups live events, an amazing community, and much much more. Now back to the rest of the show. You’re teaching a course in Austria right now at university crazy legs is I think teaching at Cornell. What are these street dancers doing teaching at universities? I’m kind of messing with you there. And what would I learn when I go to this class?

1:58:09 It depends what he’s teaching it depends what he’s teaching one for us you know one topic is that we teach the teachers but also we want people to go on stage so we provide them with the knowledge the performance knowledge they need to have in order to go on stage it’s not I would say it’s not necessarily discipline based well we call it urban dance forms or the reason that we do not agree with calling it just hip hop because some of the disciplines that we have they come out of funk so they’re called funk styles but then there’s also styles that come out of more or less house which is house dancing or even like when you look at voguing and so on and on so we just put it all together and that’s what we teach that’s what I teach there what keeps you awake at night? at night?

1:59:11 It’s an expression my family mainly future partly I’m very worried about the future especially like in the past two three years of development in the world I’m not really happy with it but then recently also the Olympic Games because it’s mind robin I want to do I want to do what’s best for the community it’s very important I think there’s a reason why I’m in this position and I want to I want to use that position to really make the best of it it’s difficult very difficult because of course you know like certain people do not agree with the dance going to the Olympic Games so you gotta fight that battle? yeah I think I’ve got some pretty good arguments I was in Kazakhstan last week and there were a lot of young guys that at first they were confused they didn’t know which side to take and after talking to me actually I only had to say one sentence I was like look when I was 14 I would have dreamt to get acknowledged position to win a medal for my country it would have been so easy for me to tell everybody I want to become a professional b-boy the struggle that I had in the days just to tell people this is what I want to do for a living they were all shaking their head nobody believed me, nobody you know we became before we became professional dancers we became circus attractions we were people dancing on the street for money we call it variety theaters in Germany which is like an indoor circus which is like a theater circus we were dancing with jugglers

2:01:39 With magicians and so on on the same stage we were circus attractions and only years after they acknowledged that we are dancers that this is a dance form and nowadays to have that possibility to win a medal to win a gold medal for your country the position, the possibilities you have with this and what a lot of people sweat is that they say that it grows so far away from its original form but I don’t see that it’s just another way of performing dance, that’s all it is and it’s not even another way we have this format of competition we had it all along I think what a lot of people have in their mind or what they fear is that that format changes and they look at other formats that they have at the Olympic Games like let’s say figure skating and how it functions and how a dance does not work that way we cannot give moves those numbers I was talking about earlier we cannot say this move has more value to that move it’s impossible because it’s a freestyle dance and it’s like I said before it’s about performativity it’s about how you do it not what you’re doing and it’s about the argument that you bring forward at the end so when people look at figure skating or they look at gymnastics then it’s pretty dried up and you take the fun out of it and hiphoppers and b-boys they want to play Storm I always ask everyone a couple questions at the end, I’m going to ask you if you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Storm and give that young man a bit of advice

2:03:31 I’m guessing you’re still in Germany at this point what would you tell him? Drink water drink water and well maybe drink water and in 2017 January 2017 don’t use the wrong paint for the doors that you just sanded in your apartment that’s what I was saying because I made a big mistake in January I painted the doors the wrong paint and when it all dried up I realized it didn’t match with the rest of the apartment so I painted everything white again I’ve never heard the painting one so that’s good yeah alright on that same note second part of that question what’s the best advice you’ve ever received might it come from one of the OGB boys in the Bronx might it come from someone you train with in Europe or maybe just someone you met in all these crazy countries you visit but what’s something that sticks in your mind or maybe from your father hmm that’s a tough one that’s a hard one I could say again from my wife that she told me drink more water but that’s getting boring if I just repeat it like that what about something as far as dance or hip hop or culture well Mr. Wiggles Mr. Wiggles when I when we started the when I started dance with Get Original with our theatre company in 92 he mentioned something to me like once we went to the Bronx to practice together at his house and he was saying something that doing theatre is the stage where maybe that’s also in my fantasy that’s something that I wanted to hear I don’t know if he really said it like that

2:05:23 Or if that’s something that I developed after but it came from his advice that for sure but he said that well doing theatre is the best pedestal or is the best way on where we could express our true art form it’s like when you look at any other job when we are doing performances somewhere else even if you look at a battle you look at the battle format you don’t really you don’t really dance for yourself and do your own thing that you are happy with you have to outshine the others and convince the judges and the audience depending on who’s voting or who you’re voting but in a circle it’s more the audience but at these competitions like UK V-Boy Championships it’s the judges in order to win you have to convince the judges so you’re not really you’re not a hundred percent yourself there’s always something that swings with it where you know like oh I have to give it a little bit extra because I know they’re looking for this yeah there’s a b-boy format I have to fit within the cultural values of the dance where when you go into a theatre you could be you there’s nobody that tells you anything just do whatever you want and then the people book you you know the theatre they book you or whatever organization to show exactly that because they think oh you have something to say you have something to show other jobs we don’t have to talk about industrial jobs music videos or whatever you know like all this there’s this guy that says I want you to do exactly that

2:06:58 And back in the days I struggled hard when Swift Rock and me when we were doing shows and there were guys well I want you to spin on your head and then maybe you could still do a little bit of that robot stuff but that stuff where that you’re doing like before you go down they were referring towards the top rock which was very important for us this stuff where you’re doing these stepping left and right please leave that out and we had to listen you know to make that money so once I stepped into the theatre world I totally went that way and this is also part of me where I became more and more proud to actually chose that route go that b-boy route you know b-boy, pop and lock in that I really developed in these three art forms and where it assured me that it was the right way and now still I created dance pieces within these languages these body languages and I could express myself exactly the way I wanted to and there was nobody there the jokes that I was pulling the way I put this you know like of course sometimes you know like some people told me ok this is what what did you think about why did you do that I was like look this is me people booked me because I had the idea and I did it yeah but look chill out it was my decision it’s my piece yeah so they could say whatever they want it’s still my piece and whatever criticism they had I was hoping that always the way I say it use your repair mode now you know what you would have done different

2:08:32 So I hope the next year when I’m going on that same stage again I hope that we perform together and you show me how to do it better you know and this is where it goes this is where I think you know like you respect me I respect you we’re going the same way I do something different you do something different and then still you know we could we could develop in this culture no matter no matter what way we choose last part of that question to that 20 year old or that 12 year old that’s out there watching us listening to us right now who wants to be like Storm wants to be like Crazy Legs wants to be like Issei wants to be like Victor all those people what do you tell them? what’s the advice you give them? hmm also one thing that I always tell my students I don’t think I really I don’t really think that I have to tell him because I think that the way I chose was pretty much right for myself the way I function and the way I think

2:09:43 I always did whatever made me happy I had a pretty tough childhood and when I started dancing I realized that what really made me you know like crucially what made me happy was that I can do whatever I want to do all my thoughts all the bad thoughts even like when you know like your whole world falls apart if you break up with your woman or something like that you know that’s how it was back then yeah if your family is already apart and now you seek for something in that woman that your family can’t give you then of course if you have to break up with her long fights stretches forever when that is falling apart then what else is there? and so dance was my parachute and every time somebody told me well if you do that then your dance would become better and I followed that advice but it became work for me I mean like felt work then I had the feeling as if I would lose my passion and I definitely did not want to lose the dance as my passion so I prefer to just think like well okay that might be his opinion it’s not my opinion and I know exactly where I want to go to I did not care whether I became the best dancer I wanted to be happy through dance and because I was happy through dance I became even more passionate and I danced even more and because I danced more of course other things fell in the background but because I danced more and I got better and I wanted to become a professional dancer and I became that professional dancer and still while I was professional

2:11:40 I also got to choose the jobs that I wanted to do it’s not that somebody pushed me into certain directions I was I was always a freelance and I could choose which job I wanted to do there were times, there were parts of course you know like where sometimes Swift Rocky said no I don’t want to do it and I had to get my brother as a partner or you know like where there it was on the edge where I’m not really happy with that job but there are many jobs I turned down where the money was enormous I could have been rich by now, maybe yeah but then again if I would have done those jobs I wouldn’t have had the credibility in the community that I have now like there was a cigarette brand they wanted to book me for a cigarette commercial and we negotiated for the price because at first I was not familiar with the cigarette brands because it never interested me so the cigarette brand had the same brand name as as like a furniture brand in Germany so I thought I was dancing for couches and tables and furniture and then I found out it was for a cigarette brand and then I turned down the job so the guy offered me even more money a large part more money no we really want you I said no I’m not gonna do it and then my ex-wife she was like are you crazy?

2:13:07 You turned down that job we could have survived or we could have lived off that money for you know for a long time I said look imagine I would be on the poster over there like that would work I’m telling everybody to not smoke don’t do drugs don’t do this and then you see a poster I won’t be able to live with myself yeah so really I won’t advise that to me as a 14 year old because I think that I already had that path in me but to everybody that wants to start and to want to do anything and develop in it I think it’s much more important that you and yourself that you’re happy with what you’re doing then that you become better at what you’re doing because that happens eventually and especially when it’s something like dance there’s nobody that could tell you anything because it develops with you and also here you have an example you know me that you know like in the days or in the times from 85 to 91, 92 until there were enough other dancers we were mainly like developing in a self inspirational way we had nobody after like 85, 86 we had all the videos the you know the TV clips you know like all the stuff from New York we had all this we sucked it up we knew how to do it and how it looked like we chose okay this is what we want to do this is what we don’t want to do so there was a moment where we had to develop and we had to inspire ourselves and that was very vital to us to find out again coming back to this five minute morning practice sessions

2:14:55 Where you learn you watch yourself and you find out what you want to improve in you don’t have to ask anybody else if you ask other people you want to please them or maybe you find out through them maybe you find out something that you never thought of, of course but a lot of the guys today they like you know like back in the days in school when the teacher is giving you some I don’t know okay on Wednesday we write the English test Wednesday we write the English test and then the students are asking usually they ask oh is this going to be part of the test instead of realizing it’s necessary for you to develop they ask if it’s part of the test and it’s the same thing a lot of times when people are asking me what can I do to develop better that they want to please me instead of pleasing them in order to grow further and be happy yeah?

2:15:50 So I think the strive to happiness is much more important than anything else powerful message storm okay good I just want to say thank you so much for coming on here and just walking me through this history and I didn’t even know some of the bits as far as what was happening in Germany and in Europe you know kind of after the peak in New York that you could argue pulled you know breaking culture forward when it was dying and is really slowing down in America and you’ve really been there and done that and whenever I ask anybody about you know the OGs in Europe it’s your name coming up and your name coming up and for the last 10 months Mr. Ziri from Team Schmetta here has been saying this is the guy to have on this is the guy to have on and so the more I learn about breaking the more I get into the movement and the culture and the music the more I understand the history is so important and you know I was in Israel last week doing a documentary with this guy Edo Portal and they do a lot of movement they’re into human movement and they do animal moves and they’re on the floor doing movement and I was doing my breakdancing movement and every kind of a move I’m doing a bit of this and a bit of a this and they’re looking at me like what is he doing and I’m like what am I doing I don’t know why I’m doing this so now I’m learning from you why I’m doing that because these are memes we’ve picked up and this is an attitude that I now have in my dance

2:17:14 Because of Bruce Lee because of Muhammad Ali because of Crazy Legs and the Bronx it’s weird there’s a piece of them that’s in me now and when I go and dance and maybe my son learns how to dance all of these memes in history will like be carried forward and it’s pretty trippy to think about all that culture the meaning behind those moves the meaning it’s so incredible that every, you know like through all my travels through all my travels especially in the 80s when we had this Trevor ticket Swift Rock and I when we were traveling sometimes let’s say from Kiel where he lives to Munich which was a 9 hour trip so you sit there with your bread or something whatever you prepared at home and now you sit there face to face for 8 hours what do you do so since you can’t dance on the train you know we will always talk and philosophizing and that’s exactly what we like that was one of our biggest interesting what do you mean what are you trying to express when you do this yeah and I’m you know like when you’re talking about this I want to see that I want to see those moves and I’m sure it would inspire me to also go into a certain direction and get something out of it and to develop that and put it into my breaking and you know because it’s always there maybe you can repair me see my stuff yeah of course we’re gonna do a training session one of these days okay I hope so deal and you can get me on some locking and popping culture because I don’t know enough about that

2:18:44 Awesome Storm super excited to have you here good luck this weekend with the UK championships judging it’s gonna be crazy up there a lot of talent you got the battles on Sunday night with all the crews so you got the best seat in the house yeah no way and that’s that’s one of the reasons why I still love this you know it’s like when people ask me why do you judge all these events I always tell them look I love this love this I’m getting so excited when I’m sitting there and things are happening right in front of your face I have the best seat yeah you’re in the middle of it right I’m really curious about tomorrow crazy legs yeah so I’m definitely gonna tune in good tune in we’ll be streaming it live as well so yeah I’m pumped cool well I just want to say thanks to DJ Hooch for hooking us up with you and hooking us up with crazy legs tomorrow and the whole B-Boy Champs we’ll be actually streaming it on our YouTube channel as well the whole thing just to let all of our people know about it and yeah I’m just saying anyone out there you know I’ve been doing this now for 14 months it’s changed my life you know and before that I was doing the tough guy things I was lifting the weights and punching people in the face and all that stuff and for me it gives me a way to express myself through my body which is like the original form of human communication it’s not through our mouths and it’s changed me a lot and I love it and I look forward to every single session in the gym

2:19:57 And I always surprise myself with some new move and it’s frustrating and it’s challenging and it’s fun and I recommend everybody to look into this have you heard of crawling? uh no crawling it’s a new fitness craze coming from the US another idea okay right it’s called crawling and what’s funny is all of a sudden all these ideas you know that are defended and breaking where people before where they were always saying oh but this is not good for your spine your spine this is not good for your knees all of a sudden watch it’s going to come here of course within the next two, three years it’s going to be a hip thing um if you look at it everything all of a sudden you know like it’s like it vaporized all these bad habits or you should only bend your knee like 90 degrees and all that kind of stuff that we learned or people were telling us in the 80s and the 90s now when you look at crawling it’s like b-boying it’s a lot based on b-boying on breaking and it shows me again that we are doing a good thing yeah you guys are right cool I’m going to look into that as we say on London Real it’s about the journey I wish you well on your storm and we’re going to get that training session okay good cool thank you very much the critics who always speak behind my back maybe I want to hear them remind me he’s back the great pretender I hope this time he gets hurt I love these guys they give me fuel if you want him to reach your objective if you want to achieve it

2:21:47 You’re going to have to be obsessive you’re going to have to be obsessed feel what you do feel it if you’re not feeling it it doesn’t matter it’s Chris Eubank Jr. how do you explain he is prowess in the ring Junior has that obsession that genius that magic genius is obsession but it’s in one area you studied the sweet science for so much of your life how do you walk away from it do you miss it you can’t walk away from it I am it and even when I dance really I’m boxing the credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood the one who strives valiantly what was the worst day of your life and how has it shaped you as a human being? when I fought Nigel Ben I stood like this it was to mask this risk must be taken that’s why you are London realist that’s why we’re here we’re tired of sitting still watching it happen happening for others let’s do it