Breakdancing and Science - Parallels

Before reading this post, watch a little bit of this:

My fellow dancers from back in Australia

Breakdancing IS a science. It is a collection of physics problems waiting to be solved, each with a complex set of variables which your mind has to consider and then instruct the body to interpret. Its frustrating, haunting, joyful, scary, painful and addictive.

So why do it? 

The ‘error’ in the trial and error hurts; and I mean really hurts. Sometimes all we do is get up again so we can smash ourselves into the ground again!

However, with refinement and perseverance we discover ‘the equation’. I tell you - there is no other feeling like achieving the move we have set out for. Its probably how Einstein felt when he published his theory of relativity.

Foundations

In the same way we build on previous scientific findings to produce new bodies of work, so too in breakdancing is there a logical progression of moves which build upon other foundational moves:

The baby freeze -> the windmill -> flare -> the airflare -> ?

Serendipity

In the same Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, many of the moves that you breakdancers do are the result of accidental discovery.

Findings

Here are some facts that I can reveal from my own trial and error that might be interesting to you:

• Once we ‘get’ a move, you often lose it soon after, and then once you go back to square one and get it back - it stays. This is because we tend to cut corners and forget those ‘foundations’.
• Sleep, smoking (all the best korean bboys smoke like crazy), stress from work, eating junk food -> doesnt really impact on the quality of the session. But emotional stability does. Whether you are depressed or ‘feelin the music’ impacts the most.
• Even though they say training everyday makes you good, sometimes when you’re stuck on a move and come back to it in a few weeks - you have it! (the brain must work in the background).

I’ve set myself the challenge of achieving the ‘Air Flare’. It haunts me to the point

where I cant sleep sometimes.

I Love/Hate Breakdancing…