Spinning on your head, battling with opposing teams, upper body strength and a sense of rhythm: all traits needed to be a breakdancer, of which there is an increasing number in Cyprus
As my heels click clack along the floor boards, I am relieved to have found a spot to sit down and keep under the radar. This is a dance studio after all and I didn’t want to be the one making all the noise. But the beat from the CD player that began pumping through the walls and floors got me off the hook. A dozen young, pierced, baggy-trousered, bandana-toting men bound towards me to perform a breakdancing show that is, rather incredibly, exhilarating.
Teenagers sit around chatting, laughing and occasionally screeching their sneakers along the floor boards, exchanging new moves, giving each other fashion tips and moving around the studio with a grace normally associated with ballerinas; it is pretty evident that these guys mean business. And before long, they are scattered around the room striking poses and spinning on parts of the body that really were not designed for the purpose. As Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love’ pumps through the stereo, everyone starts moving rhythmically, synchronised, not only do the moves look anything but doable, the overall atmosphere is fired with passion, sexiness and an undeniable amount of talent. Boys and girls together, grinding and moving as one showed exactly what breakdancing is all about.
You might think breakdancing died with Michael Jackson’s career but the truth is, this form of dance has been around since the early ’70s and has never really gone away. The media’s attention has been distracted by more modern hobbies, making us believe that breakdancing belongs in the ’80s and is therefore dead. Right now, in Cyprus, not only is breaking (as some like to call it) making a massive comeback, it’s also the main reason for some excitement as two Cyprus teams prepare to head off to take part in an international event.
The Battle of The Year is held in Germany annually with over 10,000 spectators watching artists from all over the world. The competition is highly regarded on the breakdance scene and elimination events are held worldwide, culminating in World Finals. The term Battle reflects the fact that breakdancing is generally unstructured and highly improvisational, often involving two teams that literally battle with moves; the one with the best and most complicated wins. Although countries from all over the world enter this competition, they aren’t national teams. Teams from different dance schools fight their way to the top.
Cyprus recently held a national competition to choose two teams to go through to the Battle of the Year Balkans preliminary stage in Thessaloniki in two weeks’ time, attended by eight teams from around the island. Although this was the first time the event was organised in Cyprus, a Cypriot group already has experience of the contest. Michalis Varnakytis, owner of Rebel Dancers studio in Nicosia, and his Breakdancing team, Liquid Fire, won fourth place in the Greek contest last year. “It’s not easy when you’re up against other teams from other countries but this year we managed to win first place in Cyprus and we’re hoping we’ll do better in the elimination round in Greece and make it to the finals in Germany.”
Evi Hadjikyriacou, one of the organisers and owner of the dance studio Street Beats in Limassol entered her team for the first time this year. “We had always been interested in attending due to the popularity of breakdancing in Cyprus right now but we wanted to wait until we were on our best form. So, we put in our application for this year, sent a DVD with our choreographies and got in.” They were successful and so The Godfathers will go through to the next round along with Liquid Fire.
Why The Godfathers? It’s a breakdancing tradition for each team to give themselves a name as well as for each B-Boy (a person who practices breakdancing) to have a specific name. Apparently, older B-Boys don’t even go by their real names, using their nickname instead. King, 21, has been practising for six years and is a teacher and head of the Godfathers. “I first started practising at the age of 15 and it was video clips that urged me and got me interested,” King explained, catching his breath after what seemed like a painful head-spin. “It just looked like such a powerful way of expression and such a different form of dance from anything else I had ever seen.”
Although breakdancing is considered improvisational, there are moves and basic routine elements that need to be followed. For instance, there’s the top rock, which refers to any string of steps performed from a standing position, relying on a mixture of coordination, flexibility, style and most importantly, rhythm. Power moves require momentum and physical power to execute. It is here that breakdancers need upper body strength to dance, using their hands to move. “This is why there are few women in this field,” says Evi. “Breakdancing requires a lot of muscle power and men have more.” Another part of the dance are the freezes, which halt all motion in a stylish pose, again using upper body strength. “The breakdancer needs to suspend himself off the ground, locking the pose,” Evi says. But perhaps the strangest types of this dance are the suicides. “A suicide is when breakers appear to have lost control and fall onto their backs, stomachs, etc. The more painful the suicide appears, the more impressive it is but they are trained to execute the poses in a way to minimise pain,” she explains, as a 13-year-old performs a hand-spin in the background.
Breakdancing first made a formal appearance in Cyprus through the Rebel Dancers, a Nicosia-based dance group that specialises in all dance styles of Hip Hop music. Established in 1991, Rebel Dancers is now an organisation with over 500 students in addition to being one of the two teams that won the Battle of the Year in Cyprus. 100 of those students practise breakdancing and have done so for the past five years. “It was a single, independent group in Limassol that started the breakdancing phase in Cyprus in the late ’80s,” says Rebel Dancers’ Varnakytis. “We would practise it too but it wasn’t very popular back then and I don’t think it really is right now. It’s growing though and we’re hoping that with so many dance studios inserting it into their curriculum, it will reach the point it deserves.”
When breakdancing was first introduced in Cyprus, parents and others expressed their concern about its safety. “Everyone thought it was a dangerous hobby and we had difficulty convincing parents who wouldn’t accept it,” explains Evi. Of course, as with every strenuous activity, some sort of risk of physical injury does exist and this is why breakdancing should always be performed and practised under professional supervision. Teachers also see it as a way to keep teenagers away from more dangerous activities such as smoking and drugs. “Some say that it can be dangerous but that’s not true. We are keeping children off the street and away from drugs by giving them a motive to be cool in another way and I think nothing can compare to that,” Varnaktis says.
Just watching the breakdancers perform made me cringe. But although I love my neck to much to put it through that sort of strain, I sit in awe of these teenagers who are able to do something, many people can only dream of. It needs dedication and passion, rhythm and perfect coordination but somehow they make it look easy and fun. They are acrobats without a net, ballet dancers but tougher. It is easy to picture them walking down a New York street untouched by any sort of danger. But they’re just here to dance and what a magnificent job they are doing.
History of break dancing
Breakdancing started on the mean streets of New York, its rawness making it groundbreaking.
It all began i
n 1969, the year James Brown recorded ‘Get on the Good Foot’, a song that inspired an aerobatic dance based on the high energy moves that Brown performed on stage. Soon, kids in New York were doing the Good Foot, which is the direct precursor of breakdancing as we know it today.
1969 was also the year Afrika Bambaataa, a legendary grand master DJ, began organising ghetto youth into one of the first breakdance crews after realising that there was potential for acrobatic dancing. They were called the Zulu Kings. It wasn’t long before the Zulu Kings were challenged by a rival street gang; a ‘tradition’ that originated in the South Bronx, where people say breakdancing was born as it was here the first battles took place. Instead of fighting with weapons, rival gangs would dance over turf or simply to gain each other’s respect. It was creativity and style that would give the winner what he wanted. This is also one of the reasons breakdancing is particularly well-suited for competition.
The Good Foot, soon to be called B-Boy and shortly after that breakdancing or breaking was very different from the breaking we see today. In some ways, it was simpler. There were no head-spins, no windmill, no hand-glides or backspins. It is what is now referred to as old-style breaking, which consisted of floor work only and it was more complex than modern breaking due to its fast and complicated leg moves.
Breaking started to gain more of a following in the early ’80s as a lot of the top crews began to attract media attention. Early performances and battles of crews like the Rock Steady Crew and Dynamic Rockers were aired on national TV and by 1983 movies such as Flashdance and Buffalo Gals, which featured the Rock Steady Crew, broke the scene wide open, turning breakdancing into an international trend. Over the next few years, breakdancing featured in commercials, on TV shows and in movies. When the summer Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984, the closing ceremony featured a performance by over 100 B-Boys and B-Girls.
Although this rhythmic dance form went belly up in the early ’90s, it looks as though it’s making a vengeful comeback with more and more people taking a liking to its original style. The coming together of fashion and music has been accelerated and so has Hip Hop culture, which is one of the wealthiest businesses of today’s music scene.
If you want to try
Streetbeats, Limassol, Agia Fyla. Tel: 25 732700
Rebel Dancers, Nicosia. Tel: 22 316137 or 99 635453
