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.

I know there’s a bit of history to Battle in the Boonies & the Nervous Breakdown Crew. Why’s the competition moving from BU this year?
In past years there has been an official club at BU, Nervous Breakdown. There were pretty high numbers, around 30-40 people, coming to practice, but no one really was there for bboying and bgirling; they were there to say that they were breakdancers. Because there were so many people that were there just because it was breakdancing, there wasn’t such a need to make a club again this year.  Right now we have a core 7 people that session all of the time, with about 7 or 8 other people that show up a lot. Since our crew is so different than previous years; we thought it would be a good idea to distinguish ourselves from previous years.

Your Facebook invite says, “Free water; Working on getting the Red Bull now”—as if energy drinks are key.  Part of the culture?
Yes and no; they are very closely related to breaking because of the energy that the energy drink gives you. The specific company isn’t overly important. Like if a jam was sponsored by Coke or Pepsi, it would be the same as having Red Bull sponsor it. It’s just an extra perk per say of the jam. Red Bull specifically has been sponsoring events for years; they’re people that really support the culture. The only other companies that I have seen that sponsor jams are Tribal Style Streetware Clothing, Vitamin Water, Pepsi, and Coke. If anyone one of those companies were to come, it adds a little something to the jam; it’s also a good way for people to meet, as silly as it sounds. You grab a drink and there’s that pretty girl you’ve been eyeing all day getting a drink too. you now have an opportunity to talk to her. Haha.

How’d you get into breakdancing?  Is it a pretty typical story?
Honestly, I was at one of my friends’ house welcoming party; there we’re a bunch of people throwing down sets, and I thought how cool it was.  I went and jumped on YouTube and started searching for how to learn to breakdance. It’s a pretty typical story. As far as I know, it starts one of three ways: a friend is bboying and wants someone to dance with him or her and they recruit their close friends; someone see’s it on TV or watches a street performance and goes home and starts; or lastly, they’re looking for something new and unique to do to meet people or impress people at parties and then falls upon breaking and they start learning. Once they start it, ends two ways: they either continue it and love it, or they get tired of it because it’s hard work.  It takes a lot of dedication.

If somebody wants to go YouTube the best of the best—your BBoy/BGirl heroes—who should they check out?
There are a lot of crews out there. For the international bboy scene, I personally watch Rivers Crew and Gamblers Crew.  They are a very good team as a whole. American-wise, I would have to choose Rock Steady Crew or Floor Masters Crew. Those cats definitely put their time in and it shows. Now if I were to talk about individual bboys, my favorites are BBoy Born, BBoy Physix, and BBoy Beast.

There’s a lot of people reading this blog who might not be into the breaking scene—but think it’s real important to support any sort of culture that will keep 20-somethings in Binghamton.  Anything they can do to help?
Show up, show support, spread the word. The more people know about breaking in the Tri-City area, the easier it will be to continue bringing these people in. The more they come here, the longer they stay; we have some bboys who come from Rochester and stay for a week or two and hang around Tri-Cities…  We have breakers from Syracuse and Cornell who come and hang out here all the time.

I know that the Battle’s still searching for a venue, and that you have a few ideas but nothing definite.  If you could choose the dream venue.  Any place in the Southern Tier to hold the competition—and you’d own it for a night.  Where would it be?
Ideally, if I could have any venue I wanted, I would hands down take the Arena with the Harlem Globetrotters setup. Nice wooden floors.. the arena is generally warmer when the Harlem Globetrotters come to play. But unfortunately the arena is way too much money. One day though… We have about three more jams this year. Battle in the Boonies, Breaking For A Cure (a charity event), and two more which we are waiting to be named. So maybe after a couple jams we’ll be able to afford that venue.