bulletproof funk

its been over a week since attending my first bboy jam in taipei, “all the way live.” i dont have a camera and i am too lazy to steal pictures so i will give a short textual discourse about my experience and impressions. first of all, this was the first weekend (not counting the friday i flew in on) i spent in taipei and i didnt really get to practice much with other local bboys so i scouted the event by myself. of course, i met up with Jun from florox/problemz who is currently in taichung (third major city in taiwan) but more on that later.

from what i gather, events here (and in asia in general) are in a much different format than the ones i am used to in america. usually when i think of a jam i picture some dingy high school gymnasium where everything is on one plane: the cyphers, the spectators, the dj, the judges, and the main battles. however, this event was outside in the plaza in front of a metro station. there was a huge stage for the main battles and two smaller stages for what i thought were cyphers but what turned out to be other areas for smaller battles. people just sat and watched in front of the stage. the benefits of this outdoor format is that it was free (which was awesome since it was a relatively large scale jam, but not all of them are free) and that passerbys who would normally have nothing to do with the bboy scene were stopping by to watch. there were tons of old hommies and business people watching and cheering along which i thought was awesome. the negative side is that there is less cyphering and its more of a “competition” than a “jam.”

i wandered around from area to area watching and observing the local scene, and from what i saw, all i have to say is wow. there are tons of bboys in taiwan, and the technical level here is really high. everyone can airflare and i saw nice power and tricks being executed with perfect form everywhere. i wanted to cry. the main stage battles were pretty cool too, a lot of good musicality being mixed in with technical stuff. However, my main gripe is that everyone seemed to be borrowing from the same bag of tricks. roll backs, air power, airchairs were thrown at least 20 times in every battle, it was kind of ridiculous. hopefully people will start to develop more unique styles but i cant really be too mad, people train really hard here and it shows.

jun competed in the 1v1 and crew battle competitions and beasted his way through to the semifinals of the crew battle and the finals of the 1v1, but it proved to be too much as he was pretty burnt out by the last battles and wasnt able to go all out anymore. he ended up losing to cheno from thailand in the 1v1s (he was sick, a lot of originality) and his crew went on to lose to HRC, who is one of the main crews in taipei and who would eventually go on to win the whole thing a few battles later. i was pretty tired from standing around all day and definitely burnt out so i headed home, but i was left with a favorable impression of the bboy scene here.

-ak