When I first started my blog, and even when I first started thinking about writing it, I had one post that I wanted to do in mind… A long rant about how much I hate the break dancers that come into our scene. Think about it, they are cocky, arrogant, and they take up space. They were using OUR club as THEIR playground and not showing it any respect.
At least, they used to. I’ve been keeping an eye on them since day one, and although I made friends with the liquid pop dancers of the group quickly, it was Deo Martinez, the break dancer of Chemical X that I loathed. A show off if I ever saw one, his method of dancing was doing as many tricks as possible, regardless of the beat. And regardless of the size of the crowd, even when the club was packed full he insisted on doing floor tricks. I got kicked by him that way once, which, come to think of it… may have sparked the hatred for him, more or less.
So you can imagine my surprise when I saw him flow-glowing last Wednesday at Circus. Never in a million trillion years did I ever believe he would ever pick up a pair of glow sticks and then dance with them for the entire night. And he wasn’t the only one, Chemical X members Colin Cousins and Andre Currie both armed themselves with brightly colored chemical reaction sticks that night, which is actually an ironically nice tribute to the name of the troupe. And they were also not alone. When I first walked in at 11pm the first thing I saw was 3 or 4 new girls glow sticking and flow-glowing in the back corner.
I had the pleasure to talk to the most skilled of the new raver-chicks, a short brunette with a killer body named Layla. Despite having such a small body, the greatest thing about Layla’s dance was her strength; all the power she controlled. Last Wednesday was only the second time Layla had ever been to Circus, but needless to say she is now going to be a regular.
Suddenly, last Wednesday, I wasn’t the only flow dancer, I wasn’t a novelty. And in an EDM club, that’s the way it should be! I walked into Circus and finally, it felt like home. The break dancer that I used to despise for walking into my club and ignoring or probably not even noticing all the amazing things that make it great, was dancing with glow and socializing and having a great time without feeling like he had to show off.
My friend David Terrill said the other day, “You do it to be with the music, you do it for you”. Finally, I sensed that Deo understood the value of that, and as it turns out he's a pretty cool guy :) Not to mention that there were at least four more girls with glow, three crew members and two more male poi dancers all intermixed with the rest of the crowd. The energy was super high and everyone was just keeping it cool. I felt a dramatic change that night, a true shift that I hope is permanent that tells me that we are accomplishing what we set out to do in the scene, that it is getting bigger and better and in the right way.
Editors Note: I have added a new feature "Rave Tips" located at the top of the page, check it out!
Have you felt the change in the scene yet? What do you think about the break-dancers?
