[bgirlprotean]

I'm writing a book about creative collaboration in hip hop and would really like to include a section on bboy/bgirl crews that reflects the innovation and creativity taking place. I want to reflect the communities views directly, so hoped some of you might be able to help by posting answers to these questions?;

How important is community and collectiveness to bboying/bgirling, especially in crews?

How do individual bboys work together in a crew to create a routine? Does one person choreograph or does everyone take part? How do crews decide on a structure? How is material made for the group sections?

Thanks so much if you can help with this - it's really important to me that I include the views straight from the community. Everyone included will be acknowledged in the book.

[FLOWREXsac]

Q. How important is community and collectiveness to bboying/bgirling, especially in crews?

A: Well I think the community aspect is incredibly important, and as time has gone on the community in the UK has been helped greatly by technology, now there are so many ways for people to connect.

Up until this point people have always found ways to connect with each other and have always had a strong community but now there are a wider range of ways for this to be possible. I think the theme of community is very important and core to the development of the culture not just in a UK sense but even wider scale when you consider the amount of people living the culture in whatever element worldwide, it is instantly possible for dancers, graff artists, Dj's and Mc's to share their content and work online with other people. I think that these opportunities to share, and collaborate make things even easier for people. This is however not a substitute for face to face contact, cyphers and activities though, hip hop as a whole to me has always been something which is best enjoyed live, the atmosphere and shared energy in a room is a strange kind of magic which doesn't always get conveyed well through digital means.

The community aspect relates to hip hop as a movement and a culture and without it what is the point of practising, training and learning these arts if we can't exchange, compare, influence or be influenced and taught by others. We all push each others projects and have fought to be recognised in the professional arts scene in order to create opportunities to enable to artists to train and perform as a viable means to live the culture. I think a lot of this comes from people within the culture working together and promoting what we are doing as a whole scene.

I have been lucky enough to have had some great experiences in the scene and have experienced people from other cities and crews promoting events I have run and travelling to be there, for this I am very grateful and humbled and I think this is an example of the community pulling together, I reciprocate this wherever i can and this can be said of most people in the scene, everyone gets behind castle rocks, just jam, attention to detail and many other events. I am proud of the scene here and how we pull together. I think this also goes for events where UK crews or dancers are in International events representing the UK, of course there are sometimes beefs and conflicts within the scene but this is a part of Hip hop and through this inherent competition we grow stronger and better, I think everyone would agree when UK crews rep at UK champs or BOTY or other events everyone is keen to get behind them.

Collectively we need to continue to push our projects and scene forwards as the level has obviously benefited from it and it is conducive to creating a strong future.

From a crew standpoint a crew should be an army of people fighting for each other in battle, a crew should be about family and unity, one of the best experiences you can enjoy is being part of a strong crew or crew who want to hang with each other not just in training or at the jams but actually contribute to each others lives as friends and family. You can end up travelling together, sleeping in some odd places like train stations, having to share food and resources to be able to afford going to jams. Crew is family. This translates when you see crews who are family in battle, cohesion and teamwork seem to be important factors in winning crew battles it is always easy to spot a bunch of high level dancers who have been put together for one jam but don't actually know each other. Of the crew doesn't know about each members style and skills how does the battle general decide who steps out to answer their opponents last set?


Q. How do individual bboys work together in a crew to create a routine? Does one person choreograph or does everyone take part? How do crews decide on a structure? How is material made for the group sections?

A. Many crews in the UK who are not creating pieces for theatre do not choreograph routines and rely on the dancers abilities through their solo sets, there are crews who do choreograph routines to use in battles and I think routines can be a great tool in a battle. Examples of UK crews who do this really well are Trinity Warriors and Bad Taste Cru. The other time where it is beneficial is for routines is shows and gigs and this in my experience is done on a job by job basis as each job may be different, the music can be requested or the bboys may need to slot into a show with other artists.

There was a time in the recent scene where it became popular to have lots of routines and commando's in battles which has had it's praises and it's criticisms, on one hand it is another element to the dance and to be able to bring creativity with lots of dancers in a battle is an amazing thing to do but on the other hand there were many transitions and blow ups which started to become worn out and a bit old hat or predictable. A good routine which got everyone hype and took the energy of the battle up seemed to be a good idea but much of the time some of the moves could be seen coming a mile off. Also when people crash in routines it undermines everything which has been done in the whole choreography. There was a time where people were using commando routines as a tactic to steal sets from other dancers or prolong the amount of time thier crews were on the floor during crew battles. I know this became viewed as a bad thing by many promoters as it sought to make the battle unbalanced and fair, it also sometimes makes it hard for the judges to score too.

Overall I am sure there are lots of differing opinions to mine, so please feel free to do with it what you wish. I prefer to see battles where there are strong crews full of individual bboys all with different vocab from one another which aim to cover and answer as many of their opponents sets, I think it is good to have a few good routines as it seems on the world stage of competition you will undoubtedly come across situations where an oppenent crew will bring a big routine out, not having one or two may seem like you are unprepared or not able to answer back. My favourite crews with routines were Bag of tricks (canada) and i used to like some of Ground zero's stuff with bebe and boorock. Spartanic rockers were always sick with the routines too. Vagabonds and the Korean crews have always had strong routines.