Lecture at the HipHop Ecologies and Politics Symposium in Finland

In October i travelled to Finland to present my new lecture "cypher - space, meaning and movement in Breaking" at the HipHop Ecologies and Politics Symposium at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku, organised by the research network "HipHop Finland". I reflected on the role of the cypher in urban dance cultures and especially in Breaking, the cultural meaning and the possibilities to use the cypher for teaching dance. Keynote speaker was Jeff Chang and it was great to meet and exchange with him - he is a very well known and respected HipHop researcher and wrote the famous book "Can´t stop, won´t stop".

The symposium was very interesting and combined various subjects in the research of HipHop music and culture in finland and abroad. Next to interesting talks we had a good time at the dinner and in funny named bars like "the bank" or "the school".

Of course i met up with the local Breaking scene and went to practice with BGirl Ramona and BBoy Pluto, and made a sightseeing tour through Turku and Helsinki. It was a great time!

Judge @SM Breaking in Helsingborg

On the weekend of 29 & 30.09.2017 i was invited to judge the Swedisch Championships of Breaking, called SM Breaking, in Helsingborg. I was very happy to go, because next to me, there were good friends of mine invited to judge this event: Lil Zoo (Morocco), Hurricane Ray (Netherlands), Paulina (Poland) and Jurskee (Netherlands) and we had a great time at SM breaking. DJ Smirnoff was the official DJ, and he joined us for the judge demos and made a cool recap of our rounds: 
Recap Judgeshowcase @ SM Breaking

The event started on friday with the 1on1, powermove and +35 1on1 battle preselections, and continued on the next day with the crewbattle, kidsbattle and all ko-rounds of all battle categories. It was a lot of work to judge so many categories, but it was great to see some really good and individual dancers participating. 

In my free time i got "fika" - coffee and cannebulle (hmmmm!) and had a great exchange with Jurskee on the topic of judging, teaching dance, and the young generation.

On sunday, we had a discussion round on teaching Breaking with Ray, Jurskee and me for the online Swedish Podcast. Ray gave an insight about his danceschool Fresh in Weert, Netherlands. He developed special teaching concepts to build a new generation of bgirls and bboys. Very interesting! 

judge demo

here is the full RECAP trailer: