There’s something about being from New York City that makes you pretend you’re impressed by absolutely nothing.  It’s true; I imagine it comes from years of watching mid-western tourists gawk up at 10 story buildings as if they never realized the atmosphere could support life at that height.

And when you’re from a Jersey suburb just outside the city (like me), the “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt” attitude is magnified.  Because we’re all just trying to fit in with the uber-hip city folk.

But there’s something about Cirque du Soleil that crushes that instinct.  The old back-of-the-DVD-box cliché about “making you feel like a child again” actually applies: you get the sense that you’re seeing something truly fresh in which every moment is filled with the unexpected.  The amount of imagination and athleticism necessary to pull off a Cirque show boggles the mind:

These are people who take Olympic gymnasts, practice with them for weeks upon weeks, and then throw them off the show telling them that THEY’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE ACT.  The making of a Cirque show was documented in a 2003 reality series “Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within” which I was once forced to watch on a dreadful date that I’d prefer not to remember (only party because of the documentary).

Never seen a Cirque show?  It’s basically an artsy circus with live music.  All of the acts in the show are drawn together by a common theme (which nobody really understand but the artistic director) and the gymnasts involved do things with their bodies that surprise and delight the audience (but will probably cause them to spend thousands on physical therapists later in life).

Now HERE’S the confusing part.  The big touring arena version of Cirque: “Cirque du Soleil: Alegria”, played in Syracuse last week.  You can also check it out in State College (9/30), Rochester (9/23), or Philly (10/13) if you’re willing to make the road trip.  BUT there’s ANOTHER company doing Cirque-style shows in smaller theaters—and one of those tours will come to Binghamton on Feb 14th of next year: “Cirque Dreams: Illumination.”

So get it?  Big Cirque show was just in Syracuse.  Little Cirque show is coming to the Forum.  But they’re not connected.  Except in terms of style.

Now when Alegria came to Syracuse last week, the PR folks for the show gave me a ring and asked if I wanted to speak with artistic director Michael Smith.  I agreed, hoping and praying that he’d be really, really, really eccentric. He had a disappointingly firm grip on reality, but it was a fun interview nonetheless.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

PS, I STRONGLY recommend you check out the Broadway Theater League’s Cirque Dreams Illumination when it comes to Binghamton Feb 14th.  That and Avenue Q (Oct 18th) promise to be the most interesting shows of the season.

Honestly, talking to Mike Sherwood of the Nervous Breakdown Crew makes me feel like a bit of a loser.  I didn’t know Mike until last week, when I got an invitation on Facebook to something called “Battle in the Boonies”.  I was intrigued—intrigued and clueless.  Mike calls himself a “BBoy”.  Yeah, I had to Wikipedia that too.

“A B-boy or B-girl is a person devoted to hip hop culture, more specifically, bboying/breakdancing. The term originates with the first hip hop DJ, DJ Kool Herc, who, noticing the reaction of some dancers to his playing the part of the record with a drum break, named them beat-boys or B-boys.”

Thank God for Wikipedia.  “So, you’re a breakdancer?” was the gist of what I asked him over Instant Message after tracking him down a few days later.  Breakdancing, he responded, “is a term the media invented”.  God, I’m so lame.  Then, he patiently explained the difference between “B-Boying,” “Popping/Locking”, and hip hop—all three of which you’ll be able to see at the Battle.  I responded with a smiley emoticon, as if to say, “I totally understand what you’re talking about”.  Even though I didn’t.

Which is exactly why I’ll be checking out the Battle on April 3rd at… whatever venue they eventually settle on.  They’re still scoping out their options.

I wanted to know what the vibe would be like at the event.  “At a battle, it sounds just like the title: it’s a battle. People are there to win, it’s almost like a sport.  You train, you practice, you make a strategy to win; and at the battles you implement what you practiced. People come in very intense during the battle. But, after the battle they shake hands hug and hang out and talk. Once the jam ends, there’s a lot of hanging out, playing, and even more dancing then there was during the battle. People you have never met before will help you with moves you were having problems with. The culture in a whole is very friendly; there is an almost unspoken rule that violence is a no.”

He makes sure to tell me that families and newcomers are welcome.   Although, talking to Mike makes me wonder if, at 28 years old, I’m gonna feel like a senior at an event with his kinda energy.  (I’m out of breath after having just typed that last quote, BTW.)

But even cooler than the event itself is the way Mike and company are bridging the gap between Binghamton University and the Southern Tier.  The Battle began at BU; but they’re now looking for a more city-friendly home to open it up.

Mike stopped “toprocking”, “downrocking”, and “freezing” long enough to answer an e-mail interview… (Yeah, I had to Wikipedia all those words too; what’s it to ya?)

OK, first things first.  Before we talked over IM, I knew almost nothing about breaking.  So what’s the basic difference between the three types of competitions you’ve got going on: Hip-hop battles, Popping/Locking, and BBoy/BGirl Battles?
They are all related, but with their own differences. Like hip hop is considered a good exercise. It helps the dancers to improve flexibility, to develop body balance, and to coordinate the muscles. This dance allows the dancers to improve their own style and to remain in good body shape. It also leads the dancers to a state of spiritual wholeness. Popping/locking is a style based on the technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in the dancer’s body, referred to as a pop or a hit. Bboying/bgirling is a style of dancing that grew up around hip hop music during it’s early stages stretching the human body to its limit.  They dance on their feet, hands, arms, head, everything, to the rhythm of the song, hitting major and minor beats.

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