Me: Ronnie!! Great to see you here in NYC, this year as a Judge, and not a competitor! As someone who has been involved with the BC One since the beginning, since Switzerland in 2004, have you seen the competition evolve?
Ronnie: Hey! Well, definitely as far as the line up goes. Every year there’s always scepticism about some of the B-boys, like “How did that B-boy make it into the competition?” but this year, I think there’s a solid line up. If you know the B-boys you can see it’s a crazy line up, I mean they have Lilou, winner in 2005, and Wing, the defending champion, as well as B-boys who are holding it down and representing from all over the world, there’s no denying it.
For me personally as a judge, I feel that there’s less pressure being here. Every year, when I was a competitor, I was so sucked into the competition and , you know, being in ‘the zone’ but now I get to look at these b-boys and see what they’re going through and there’s certainly less pressure for me. It’s kinda cool, I’ll give them a little pep talk if they ask me, and it’s nice to be seen as a veteran.
Me: So, as a self described veteran and a judge, is there anything you are particularly looking for during the battles?
Ronnie: Well, of course there’s not really a points system, but there’s standards. We look for musicality, execution, well roundedness, whoever’s doing power and style together, whoever’s dancing on beat. But these are things that these B-boys should already know, this isn’t an amateur competition, this is the best of the best. These B-boys already know what the judges are looking for and just got to bring their A game. I don’t want them to over think it, just do what you do, what you’ve trained for. That’s the only advice I can give them.
When you compete, and when you’ve competed in big competitions like the BC One, do you have a strategy to prepare yourself? What do you think is going through the B-boys heads right now?
Strategy wise, I try to be tactical, I try to save certain moves for certain b-boys, but when it really came down to it I never really wanted to focus on the competitor, but that’s how you end up playing their game. For me it was a battle between me and myself, trying to hit all my moves and do my best, not really caring about what they’re doing, because they’re going to do whatever they got to do. They’ll either rip it, or mess up, so always focus on yourself and your moves.
Me: Awesome. My last question is about the evolution of B-boying, which is ongoing. We have a lot of b-boy history in New York right now, some live here, some have showed up to watch the battle, but we also have a lot of the latest generation of b-boys. In the last five years or so, the internet has begun to play a key role in B-boying, I personally ‘know’ most of the competitors here today through their videos and battles uploaded to youtube. Do you think the use of the web for learning b-boying is a good thing, or does it take originality away?
Ronnie: You know, it’s a very hard question. I’ve been b-boying for over ten years, and when I started I didnt have the luxury of the internet. When my crew got hold of b-boy videos, they would be about a year outdated, so whatever we were watching we would be ‘behind’ in some sense. So a lot of time’s we would train on our own or in the close bubble of our crew, which gave us a lot of opportunities to be creative and develop our own styles, unique to us and our area. But now, B-boys are constantly watching videos, and you can see a battle that happened last night in a different country. Now your overall level might grow faster, but you’re realising that you’re taking moves from other people and you are going to lack that originality, for sure. You’re being inspired by so many different b-boys; it’s hard to improve in an original area.
But I think that this is a journey that every B-boy takes, it’s something that you do in the beginning, but eventually there are certain b-boys out there that are going to find their own identity. Every B-boy goes through phases. You’re going to look up to someone, you’re going to break like them, whether you like it or not, it’s part of human nature. But eventually, you gotta break out of that shadow. It’s like a mentor teaching you his ways and eventually, you’re going to exceed it. At the moment it sucks because you see a lot of carbon copies, but it can be a good thing because if everyone is looking alike, and you’re that one smart B-boy that ends up taking yourself out of that stereotype, then you’ll be the one out of hundreds or thousands of other’s who’s going to stand out.
Tags: A Day in the Life of the Red Bull Music Academy, BC One, Book Slam, Red Bull Music Academy Presents 3-D Soundclash
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