Digital Young

Ifrim, Cheeta, Alfred, Solo, Mono, Ionut, Venom, Tzaky, Electro, Vladissimo, Tazz, Adriana & Piciu are Crazy Style Crew.

They are really extraordinary. High school kids, they are from Buzau. Buzau is a capital of a departement in Romania, at 2 hours from Bucharest. It’s a very nice town, and here I found these interesting teens.

They are a crew of break dance. I found them rehearsing at Youth Center because they don’t have another place for rehearsals, besides, of course, the park. Starting to talk to them, I found out more about break dance in general and what that means for them.

I was astonished that these youngsters, not having any local contact with urban culture, they make it and create it. They are connected to a global culture and they learn about it from other sources than local ones. For instance, about break dance, it was really chocking for me to see that they wanted to do break dance and no other thing (like a traditional dance or other dance) and they ways that they learned figures and elements from. For instance, they have sites like www.3w.style2ouf.com, www.100pou1000.com or www.breakersmove.com, where they download movies from and try to reproduce them.

As history of their crew, they are now formed from the ex-crew (Icstrim) and the junior one, MDC. They exist for about 2 years, but the ones that formed initially the group left Buzau and came to Bucharest, as students. Therefore they were replaced by juniors.

Talking to them about what break dance means for them, they told me that it is a sport for them and not a dance. And this is my first observation; if outsiders perceive this thing as a dance, insiders see it as a sport. And they told me why: continuous rehearsals (2 or 3 hours by day, at Youth Center or in the park, at Foisor), discipline (in time, way of moving), body transformation (more mobile, more flexible).

Well, when they do these kind of thgs, I start to think that they’re right.

Starting to talk about break dance, they initiated me in their know-how; so, there are styles like footwork, top rock and personal style. Inside of their group, they form themselves in time on different positions: powermover (force elements), tricker (flexible elements), styler (legs elements), abstracts (combining different elements). So, a break dancer has to have some physical characteristics in order to perform, like flexibility, but there are other that, they say, can be obtained in time: balance, force, agility, tenacity, imagination and creativity. The last two are of course mental characteristics. And, as Ionut told me, you cannot exist without them. Even if you’re a good performer and you do well your elements, if you don’t prove creativity, you’re nothing.

A powermover.

And a styler:

But, as they told me, each one of them can have different positions, so one can be a tricker and a styler, which is the case of the boy from the anterior picture. All you have to have, “is to catch the beat. If you have the beat, there won’t be any problem”.

The know-how and all these elements are learned totally informal; they teach each other, they transmit the knowledge from the big ones (seniors) to younger ones (juniors). They also learn the elements from videos that they find on specialized web sites. They do a lot of rehearsals and they are extremely determined. For instance, they dance in clubs, discos and they already have two participations at national competitions. Performing.

Audience reactions.

And again performing.

This sport gives them a specific life style. They improve physically but also mentally (in terms of discipline). Even if their parents are against their children’s involvement (as they say that “this dance is for street people”), teens don’t care very much about it. A teen told me that his parents changed their opinion when they saw articles in local press and reports on local media about their child’s performance.

In relationship to their peers, the crew is highly seen and they have a lot of apprentices who stay in line in order to be accepted in the crew. For example, there were two girls who wanted to be in the crew, but they had to learn first basic elements. Their learning practices and appropriating elements that they see on Youtube are done in an informal and creative way. In the sense that they appropriate these elements (on the hard way, in terms of time and physical effort) in a very creative and imaginative manner; they don’t imitate, they create personal styles in function of their physical and imaginative capabilities. Through continuous exercise, they master elements but after that it’s on them how to combine them and what to express through body elements.