Really this begins last night at Devon's crib, we got the heavy drink on and Matt Limm and I got fadski fresh. Matt Limm got wild on the funk and Charles and I tried to outsmart each other. Can't tell you how fun chilling with them is. Devon and I went ten rounds on a really ill tops battle. Musicality son, we knew most of the songs or we could guess. The session outside was not nearly as good. I thought it would be a bit cooler out, but whatever. I was supremely hungover. So I didn't do too much. Couldn't hit power runs completely but I had fun chilling with the homies. Kim and Ming came through that was tough.
Got a chance to vibe with DJ Selecta. Shit was official at New Amsterdam. I got to hustle/partner dance with two fine ladies! Liana is sooo fine. But anyways, really good dancing. I think I'm ready to pull the dancing where girl and guy are back to back. It's real simple from the holding both hands position. I wish I didn't have to be faded to realize it :) I mean really, it got serious. Don't care the level of my partner, we dancing as best we can with a few drinks in us. I wish I could dance with Teena Marie, but she can groove soooo ill on her own. Just nasty stuff, she's on the same tip I am and better. I mean that's really all you can ask for! The other girl Ruthie wasn't on the same tip, but she was very mallable. But with her I was able to get my groove on to Roy Ayers - Everybody Loves The Sunshine. FUN!!!! Straight fun nigga, I definitely tried the "I'll lead into a forceful lead, then you adlib out of it" and it was cool. Teena Marie might murder me on that, but it may be heaven. If I was dancing with Liana on that track it would've been magic. This is probably all to say that Selecta and his homie from San Fran were on the decks in a full way. More partner dancing!!!
Friday
Well I thought Selecta would be there, but maybe I missed him. The K-OS show was pretty tight, local heads were showing some good stuff. Billy Pilgrim and the very first dude were tight. Alas, no dancing. :( I am determined to go hard today. I'm not going to go into this practice with a real plan.
Gymsport Returns
Going out to Bridgeville to the gym. I guess it's air power time. I'm so tired after prac (Tuesday) shit doesn't even sound appealing hah.
1. airflare x2
2. pick up some elbow airflare
3. round off > backflip with twist
4. pick up flips grabbing an ankle or two (that's what she said)
5. pick up continuous flips
Well, I guess this will get tabled until people are less busy. Probably a win for my body since been going daily for a while, but still weaksauce on my part for going along with taking a day.
1. airflare x2
2. pick up some elbow airflare
3. round off > backflip with twist
4. pick up flips grabbing an ankle or two (that's what she said)
5. pick up continuous flips
Well, I guess this will get tabled until people are less busy. Probably a win for my body since been going daily for a while, but still weaksauce on my part for going along with taking a day.
Tuesday
Jazz is to popular music as being faded is to normal existence. Everything is sooo much slower and predictable. Ummm, ok so I got some power and I'm in shape what now. Well, I will work on air power, but I need to close the gap in movement between footwork and power.
1. applejack > applejack 180 (to stab) > flare
2. shoulder roll > (pop to) headspin drill
3. back handspring > mill
4. step under step through > headbridge > 90 *
5. side flip > applejack > 90 > mill ... why can't I get this?
6. out in spin > (rollback to) head left foot down right in hand > mill > 90 **
* movements predicated on the small jump style
** need to stop bullshiting and get this.
Pretty dope practice. I did 1 clean once and dirty 2 times. The problem with 2 is keeping composure when trying to drill from no momentum. I forgot 3, but I can pretty much do that one. 4 is never ever clean, I did headspin drill instead of 90. 5 and 6 have the same problem, I'm thinking waaaaay to much once I push into handstand. Which is a similar problem to 2's, not being focused in a no momentum situation. If I'm relatively fresh I have swipe > flare and mill > flare down pat. Same thing with halos, did a couple halos > halo spin out like it was nothing. I need to sure up mill > 90, and learn flare > 90. Good vibe this practice too, both Warren and I were not faded for once. That's like some planets in alignment shit lol, I'm taking the month off to cake up.
1. applejack > applejack 180 (to stab) > flare
2. shoulder roll > (pop to) headspin drill
3. back handspring > mill
4. step under step through > headbridge > 90 *
5. side flip > applejack > 90 > mill ... why can't I get this?
6. out in spin > (rollback to) head left foot down right in hand > mill > 90 **
* movements predicated on the small jump style
** need to stop bullshiting and get this.
Pretty dope practice. I did 1 clean once and dirty 2 times. The problem with 2 is keeping composure when trying to drill from no momentum. I forgot 3, but I can pretty much do that one. 4 is never ever clean, I did headspin drill instead of 90. 5 and 6 have the same problem, I'm thinking waaaaay to much once I push into handstand. Which is a similar problem to 2's, not being focused in a no momentum situation. If I'm relatively fresh I have swipe > flare and mill > flare down pat. Same thing with halos, did a couple halos > halo spin out like it was nothing. I need to sure up mill > 90, and learn flare > 90. Good vibe this practice too, both Warren and I were not faded for once. That's like some planets in alignment shit lol, I'm taking the month off to cake up.
Monday
Yeah, there was sessioning and shows all weekend, some drunk bboying too! So now it's like repetitively smashing through bricks, body is getting calloused up n shit.
I just wanted to get loose and hit some footworks since it's been alot about power. Sooo much easier to kenjutsu in the tops with music I really don't know. It's a struggle for me to put together meaningful combinations in footwork. *note* What that really means is my footwork vocabulary is limited. So I tried doing radically different things and trying to keep in time. That translated into peppering footwork with freezes and trying to come out of them in footwork combinations ending on parts of the music (most often in a fake split or leg gimmick, eh). Not quite kenjutsu, but I was glad to be doing something a bit different. Stealth turned me onto some new jams and sessioning at his crib this time was cozy instead of claustrophobic. Let me get off this computer, Jay Malls be spinning jazz and musicians sometimes appear at Ava. First time trying it out, holla! Oh yeah, gotta remember applejack > applejack 180 (to low stab) > flares.
I just wanted to get loose and hit some footworks since it's been alot about power. Sooo much easier to kenjutsu in the tops with music I really don't know. It's a struggle for me to put together meaningful combinations in footwork. *note* What that really means is my footwork vocabulary is limited. So I tried doing radically different things and trying to keep in time. That translated into peppering footwork with freezes and trying to come out of them in footwork combinations ending on parts of the music (most often in a fake split or leg gimmick, eh). Not quite kenjutsu, but I was glad to be doing something a bit different. Stealth turned me onto some new jams and sessioning at his crib this time was cozy instead of claustrophobic. Let me get off this computer, Jay Malls be spinning jazz and musicians sometimes appear at Ava. First time trying it out, holla! Oh yeah, gotta remember applejack > applejack 180 (to low stab) > flares.
Thursday
Airflares! Power and tricks! Flying through the air. Fuck it, I'm not even going to pretend I'm dancing.
1. Warm up - time to man up, I can handle warming up with tops and then going straight into combinations of three to pose.
2. Drill - do power combinations in sets of five (i.e. flare x5 > swipes x5 > halo x5).
3. New flips! - I need to be able to twist from normal flips (not gainers, try it with round off). Also need to wholeheartedly try that super wicked reverse swipe > head bridge!
That may be all my body can handle. Completion no matter what, crash? Keep going fool. Try: halos > fakeout baby pose shoulder spin > pop to halo
Aww man, sooo much crashing in David Lawrence. Got punked hard by Ming for April Fools. Hit some good stuff and came up with shoulder spin > 90.
1. Warm up - time to man up, I can handle warming up with tops and then going straight into combinations of three to pose.
2. Drill - do power combinations in sets of five (i.e. flare x5 > swipes x5 > halo x5).
3. New flips! - I need to be able to twist from normal flips (not gainers, try it with round off). Also need to wholeheartedly try that super wicked reverse swipe > head bridge!
That may be all my body can handle. Completion no matter what, crash? Keep going fool. Try: halos > fakeout baby pose shoulder spin > pop to halo
Aww man, sooo much crashing in David Lawrence. Got punked hard by Ming for April Fools. Hit some good stuff and came up with shoulder spin > 90.
Sweat Wednesdays
I hope this all goes smoothly. I'd like for people to meet up at Club P and not sure what kind of turn out but I'll remind people tomorrow around 12. I'm just gonna focus on footwork and some ground freezes since I didn't at last practice. Some ideas:
1. Step inversion - like if you are doing 4 step (steps front, out back) then hit a combination to out front and then do the inverted 4 step (steps back, out front)
2. Chair freeze right side > head invert > chair freeze left side
3. Make slow look good. I think it's about selling an intention of movement as opposed to the movement itself. If I can figure it out physically then I'll dedicate a page to it. This is inspired by Matt Limm showing me Don Campbell (sp?) doing that style in popping. I would think the bboy equivalent would be Abstrak, but I wanna freak it in a Ynot style/Roxrite speed + bounce. Haha yeah I like disco music so what.
Haha so I didn't do 2, but tried to do poses and pose changes on beat. Teena Marie is a beast, an expressive beast. I did 1 a couple times, but like all footwork I'd need to drill it. 3 really didn't work as well as I thought it would. I got more thoughtful movement sometimes but I was still a bit lost out there. Maintaining my style is becoming more natural, riding the rhythm in different ways.
Pretty much just fun, we played our music 6 - 8pm and Thickframes took over and the music was great, heard some Haven't You Heard! Lots of other jams. I had a fun time, played massive amounts of pool. It was kinda ridiculous, but I got to chill with the homies. Not too faded, but faded enough to do some poppin. My hits are flacid.
1. Step inversion - like if you are doing 4 step (steps front, out back) then hit a combination to out front and then do the inverted 4 step (steps back, out front)
2. Chair freeze right side > head invert > chair freeze left side
3. Make slow look good. I think it's about selling an intention of movement as opposed to the movement itself. If I can figure it out physically then I'll dedicate a page to it. This is inspired by Matt Limm showing me Don Campbell (sp?) doing that style in popping. I would think the bboy equivalent would be Abstrak, but I wanna freak it in a Ynot style/Roxrite speed + bounce. Haha yeah I like disco music so what.
Haha so I didn't do 2, but tried to do poses and pose changes on beat. Teena Marie is a beast, an expressive beast. I did 1 a couple times, but like all footwork I'd need to drill it. 3 really didn't work as well as I thought it would. I got more thoughtful movement sometimes but I was still a bit lost out there. Maintaining my style is becoming more natural, riding the rhythm in different ways.
Pretty much just fun, we played our music 6 - 8pm and Thickframes took over and the music was great, heard some Haven't You Heard! Lots of other jams. I had a fun time, played massive amounts of pool. It was kinda ridiculous, but I got to chill with the homies. Not too faded, but faded enough to do some poppin. My hits are flacid.
Tuesday
Pumped after Boston hit me with this funk blog. So what do I need to do:
1. airflare... still no excuse, i'll just try to combo it in and out of the regular
2. all previously mentioned get downs
3. work on ground freezes going both ways
This may be my focus for the week. Damn, this mix is good.
Werd, another bomb practice. Kept messing up the get downs but I got to the 90 in the rollback > headpose one. Also got to the mill in the sideflip > applejack > 90 > mill > [something]. I should have both of these, but my body is out of position in one or more of the previous steps so finishing the combo is tough. Couldn't combo out of air flare but I could get into it from swipe. I can keep my legs together now when doing baby mills so I can use them now (after adjusting the height of my bounce).
We went over the choreography for the SuperCrew show. Fun to learn some of the LG set.
1. airflare... still no excuse, i'll just try to combo it in and out of the regular
2. all previously mentioned get downs
3. work on ground freezes going both ways
This may be my focus for the week. Damn, this mix is good.
Werd, another bomb practice. Kept messing up the get downs but I got to the 90 in the rollback > headpose one. Also got to the mill in the sideflip > applejack > 90 > mill > [something]. I should have both of these, but my body is out of position in one or more of the previous steps so finishing the combo is tough. Couldn't combo out of air flare but I could get into it from swipe. I can keep my legs together now when doing baby mills so I can use them now (after adjusting the height of my bounce).
We went over the choreography for the SuperCrew show. Fun to learn some of the LG set.
Sunday Dolce
Going to practice, my achillies is sore. Doing too many damned flips, wack.
Got a good hour of practice in. I learned that I can't count my windmills while doing them haha. Did this drill doing increasing number of windmills > backspin > freeze (phat drill, i know). My achillies was even affecting my windup for power. Decided to go hard on my sets. If it wasn't a drill then I was going to do the set to completion. Get up clean! It hit some cool shit, pretty good practice really. Highlight: halo x5 > freeze.
Me and Dev forgot about Mr Streets performance, but he reminded us with an hour till. That's good enough for me, I'm out. Apparently I cooked and ate a steak in 15min. No raw job either, it was done medium. Plus a salad while it's cooking and I'm out the door. We had to be there at 10pm for a tab that was one drink long. Then, we waited an hour for a DJ not to play our music and not give a cue for the ending. Well whatever, I hit some sets. Smiles, Streets, Mike, Chuck, [insert random dude], Tommy were there. Some good wholesome fun on a Sunday. Ending on measure is the shit, especially with DJ sets cause that's when they do the fast cut in.
Got a good hour of practice in. I learned that I can't count my windmills while doing them haha. Did this drill doing increasing number of windmills > backspin > freeze (phat drill, i know). My achillies was even affecting my windup for power. Decided to go hard on my sets. If it wasn't a drill then I was going to do the set to completion. Get up clean! It hit some cool shit, pretty good practice really. Highlight: halo x5 > freeze.
Me and Dev forgot about Mr Streets performance, but he reminded us with an hour till. That's good enough for me, I'm out. Apparently I cooked and ate a steak in 15min. No raw job either, it was done medium. Plus a salad while it's cooking and I'm out the door. We had to be there at 10pm for a tab that was one drink long. Then, we waited an hour for a DJ not to play our music and not give a cue for the ending. Well whatever, I hit some sets. Smiles, Streets, Mike, Chuck, [insert random dude], Tommy were there. Some good wholesome fun on a Sunday. Ending on measure is the shit, especially with DJ sets cause that's when they do the fast cut in.
Circles
Going to Circles to rep and battle.
Fun times. I got alot of cyphering in with a Vagabond head and people who are where I want to be power-wise. I dunno, Stealth wasn't feeling the jam at all. Admittedly, Skeme was spinning repetitive breaks and the other DJs almost had no concept of maintaining proper sound levels. *note* You always control how you approach a situation. If something is a bit wack, work with the good in the situation and flip it so that the situation serves you. In this situation the music wasn't so great during the battles, but there were some gems in the cypher material (when the sound was correct :P).
For example; RAH Band - Messages From The Stars was played. The song is my second favorite from RAH Band. So the song is nowhere near danceable as a break, but you can sure as hell hustle to it. So I found this cute girl Hannah that did tops like she knew house dancing at least. Much fun, dance-wise she is on my level or above it. First of all, when I was clearly going too fast she said, "Are we doing salsa? [The steps should interchange] What style are we doing?". (that's a lday) So we dance and at some point out of a turn I fuck up the count (doing a 3-step to electrofunk I think of in 4 fucks me up). She remained poised, that goes really wrong normally.
At one point there was five people including me in a cypher. One guy is nice with it (flare > airflare x2 shit but mostly air power and some ok style). So I start going hard with him, like trying to best his last set or at least throw down something serious and kenjutsu. More people join in and I still try to go hard, now with whoever throws down. Then it's a cool cypher and I'm tired. Sorry I'm late to the game, but that is repping. Repping isn't paying your entrance fee and getting ousted in the first round. *note* If you can't make it to the semi-finals, help build a cypher or keep one going. Teena reminisced about the times when you didn't need a cash prize to get anyone to come to your shit. A jam was a jam and not a competition with judges. She made a good point, "[If it's a jam] then you're really being moved by the music [as opposed to the cash]."
Fun times. I got alot of cyphering in with a Vagabond head and people who are where I want to be power-wise. I dunno, Stealth wasn't feeling the jam at all. Admittedly, Skeme was spinning repetitive breaks and the other DJs almost had no concept of maintaining proper sound levels. *note* You always control how you approach a situation. If something is a bit wack, work with the good in the situation and flip it so that the situation serves you. In this situation the music wasn't so great during the battles, but there were some gems in the cypher material (when the sound was correct :P).
For example; RAH Band - Messages From The Stars was played. The song is my second favorite from RAH Band. So the song is nowhere near danceable as a break, but you can sure as hell hustle to it. So I found this cute girl Hannah that did tops like she knew house dancing at least. Much fun, dance-wise she is on my level or above it. First of all, when I was clearly going too fast she said, "Are we doing salsa? [The steps should interchange] What style are we doing?". (that's a lday) So we dance and at some point out of a turn I fuck up the count (doing a 3-step to electrofunk I think of in 4 fucks me up). She remained poised, that goes really wrong normally.
At one point there was five people including me in a cypher. One guy is nice with it (flare > airflare x2 shit but mostly air power and some ok style). So I start going hard with him, like trying to best his last set or at least throw down something serious and kenjutsu. More people join in and I still try to go hard, now with whoever throws down. Then it's a cool cypher and I'm tired. Sorry I'm late to the game, but that is repping. Repping isn't paying your entrance fee and getting ousted in the first round. *note* If you can't make it to the semi-finals, help build a cypher or keep one going. Teena reminisced about the times when you didn't need a cash prize to get anyone to come to your shit. A jam was a jam and not a competition with judges. She made a good point, "[If it's a jam] then you're really being moved by the music [as opposed to the cash]."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
