Out of the Blue

Friday night--Wilson's birthday--a night of magic and wonder. As fun as hanging out drinking and busting phat moves on the dance floor with everyone was, the real earthshaking events that transpired that night for me actually occurred before heading to BRANCH. In the spirit of doing things I never thought in my life that I would be doing, I found myself on stage in front of a few hundred people, some with cameras, at NYU taking part in a Krumping battle. For those of you who don't know; Krumping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krumping), also known as Clown-dancing; is a variation of hip hop dance that is gaining popularity on the West coast and is featured in the movie Rize. I was told by my friend Diana after hip hop class the night before about some Rize thing at NYU. I thought this "thing" consisted of watching Rize and then a performance. I found out earlier Friday that it was a workshop and performance; okay, another hip hop class this week...no big deal.

We're loosening up doing whatever kind of dancing we want to. The guy MCing starts calling randomo people on stage. They're doing what everyone else is doing except on stage. We start working on chest pumping. I was dressed in basically all blue: blue jeans, blue shirt with white writing, blue bandana with white lines, blue armband with white writing, and white shoes. The MC all of a sudden looks at me (I'm standing right near the front) and reads my shirt to everyone: "To think is to create." He then calls me on stage to be in front of everyone. I happily go on stage. It was awesome. I got to stand in front of everyone and be an example for the class. I was actually excited about it instead of freaking out like I probably would have in the past.

The class eventually broke up into groups of eight and all of us on stage were one group. We all worked on our own stuff, and then we found out that we were a crew and were going to battle one of the other groups in the workshop. There ended up being two battles in which a couple of people from each crew went one at a time to show up the members of the other crew. I ended up going third from my group. A girl went before me and finished with a split, so naturally I had to show her up with a split of my own. After a series and movements and girations, I finished off jumping up in the air and landing into a full split. It was quite an experience--totally awesome and unexpected. It was cool when after the show people would ask me where I dance and if I've done B'boying before and stuff like that. What an experience!