If you just happened to be at Port Authority at 7:30am this morning, you may have been surprised to see some of the best bboys in the world performing. As a promotion for Samsung LED TVs, they acquired a cast of exceptional bboys. They will be performing throughout NYC today. This is just half the cast in the video featuring, Cikmode, Richie Rich, Beastmode, Luigi, Flipz, and more….
I just got back from NBL, and I have to say, it was different. (In a good way, don’t worry.)
Congratulations to Supreme Beings for winning, and good luck at the Nationals in Arizona.
National Breakin League is different from other jams, mostly in the way that the judging works. They had a scoring system, as opposed to a system where the judges pointed to the winning side. I feel this works better than simply pointing (if you guys disagree, feel free to talk on the forums about it) because the judges are pretty much judging each round. After each round each judge gives you a score based from 1-10, and they just judge you from that round. A lot of judges only remember what happens the last few rounds and they don’t really recall what happened in the first rounds, that’s why most bboys save their best moves for last, but this makes it fair, they can do dope moves around any time in the battle now, it doesn’t matter, they’ll be scored the same number if they did it in the beginning of the battle or at the end. And because it’s a number system, most judges won’t really look at other judges to see what they put, so it’s kind of like a blind system going on, which I like a lot too, since at other jams some judges might base their decisions on what the judge next to him(or her) points at. And with the point system, crews could see how well they were doing, and it was like, “Ah shit I only got 12 points for that last throw down? I gotta step shit up next round!”
Bboying as a “dance sport” was what NBL tried bringing to our community, but the phrase I thought was kind of contradicting, but I get the message that NBL is trying to bring. Bboying is probably one of the most competitive dances out there, it’s not likely someone’s going to get cocked in ballet and the only salsa jam I’ve ever heard of has come in a jar. (ha.) But yeah, a lot of bboys need that national coverage going on, but at the same time we need bboys to make this happen, we can’t have some corporate fathead who doesn’t know shit about breaking being the person to make this happen, bboys as a community have to be responsible for the culture’s uprise this time.
DP One was keeping the jam live on his turntables, Cikmode and Kid Glyde hosted and kept the crowd hype, and the cyphers were going off!
There were 15 prelim battles with 30 crews and one round each battle, and by the time that was over the top 16 crews were chosen. By the time it boiled down to the finals, it was Supreme Beings and Breaks Kru (you can catch the battle on BreakerNYC’s YouTube Channel http://tinyurl.com/nblfinals)
Thanks to all those that let me interview them, until next time, peace!
Here are the finals from the NBL in NYC. The NBL is using a unique scoring system, where each judge rates each round 1-10, and the scores are added and posted just after the persons round. I was initially skeptical or a “scoring” system, but after seeing it in use, I can’t help but like it. It is easy to understand, and it is comforting to see a close battle reflected in the score. It also takes some of the pressure off an individual judges.