Dance Masterz

If you are one of the people who got inspired by PBS’s legendary documentary ”Reckn’ shop Live from Brooklyn”, you must appreciate this clip.  Yes, it is Kito from Misfits.   He is the member of Misfits crew along with Prancer (dancer for Special ED also a member of Zhige), Peek A Boo, Rubber Band.   As I mentioned earlier in this blog, Kito has a very unique style of dancing. It is very hard to describe but he hits the beat in a very different manner.  or somebody else can describe his style better, please.  Although he didn’t appear in many music videos (maybe only Mariah Carey’s “emotion” and Lalah Hatherway’s “Baby Don’t Cry”, I heard he was very prominent at NY club scene in early 90s.   (By the way, I think a guy who is hanging around Mariah in her “Dream Lover” video, is Kito.)  If you know anything about him, (like other video he did or what he is doing now), please leave your comment, please. 

And I just want to talk about the background story of this clip.  This clip is so called “Underground Zoo video” among dancers in Japan.  What it means is that there was a Japanese pop group called “ZOO” and in 1992 ZOO went to NYC  featured  NY dancers like Link, E-Joe, Brian Green, Marjory, Marquest, Voo Doo Ray, and Tony (Saku)  in their music video that you see at the bottom of this blog.  During the shoot, one of the members from ZOO videotaped NY dancers dancing being videotaped behind the camera.  And the footage was circulated among limited dancers in Japan first.   It was a kind of video people talked about but never be able to see it.   Later, I was lucky enough to see the same video but the quality was so bad because the VHS tape I got  was copied after copied so many times.     So, I was so surprised to see this video on youtube, I mean in public.  Time really changed!!

Kito’s dance appeared at 3:00 in this clip.

No need to explain. Electric Boogaloos. I haven’t posted their clips because most of the clips are already well known in youtube.but someone pointed out that at least I should mention them since they are the originator of popping. Also, I am posting this because these days people tend to focus on “animation” and “Boogaloo” aspect seems to be less emphasized. But Boogaloo is very very important foundation of popping and I want people to understand that. Here is the information copied from their website.

The group responsible for the creation of the dance styles known worldwide as popping and boogaloo style. In the mid 70’s Boogaloo Sam created a set of movements, evolving each into their own style. He then taught these to the members of his group - The Electric Boogaloos.

Three decades later, the EB’s are still active, performing in shows, teaching around the world and spreading knowledge of their own and other dance styles that were created during the funk movement in the west coast.

The EB’s were born in 1977 when Boogaloo Sam founded the Electronic Boogaloo Lockers - Original group was:

THE ELECTRONIC BOOGALOO LOCKERS
(1977, FRESNO, CA)

BOOGALOO SAM: Creator of popping and boogaloo style.
SLIDE (NATE) : Co-founder of the group with Sam.
ROBOT JOE: OG member and robot was his main style.
TOYMAN SKEET: Originator of the toy man style
TICKIN WILL: Learned the style ticking from Sam.
TWIST-O-FLEX DON: Don was (R I P) the hardest hitting popper around.
ANT MAN: (Anthony) Was the locker of the group. Also popped.

THE ELECTRIC BOOGALOOS
(1978, LONGBEACH, CA)

BOOGALOO SAM: Creator of popping and boogaloo style.
POPIN PETE: Little brother of Boogaloo Sam.
TICKIN DECK: The other little brother of Sam.
ROBOT DANE: Became a member after Sam battled him. (SAM WON)
PUPPET BOOZER: Known for the puppet style that Sam taught him.
CREEPIN SID: Sid came from Arkansas to learn how to boogaloo.
SCARECROW SCULLEY: Sam taught him the scarecrow style.
DARRYL (KING COBRA): Creator of the style snaking.
GEORGE (KING RATTLER): One of Long Beach’s first poppers.

I just noticed that IBM dancers’ clip was deleted by youtube. So, I posted it again.In case you missed before, here it is

Remember New Jack Swing? New Jack Swing is a type of music which was popular from the late-1980s into the mid-1990s, which fuses hip-hop with rhythms, samples and production techniques with the urban contemporary sound of R&B. Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” is one of the biggest hit in NJS. Many dance steps were born in this era such as “Running man”, “Robo Cop”, “Roger Rabbit”, etc.. People follow moves from dancers like Big Daddy Kane’s backup dancers, Scoob Lover & Scrap Lover. I am trying to find out who these dancers in this clip are. Anyone??

This is the best documentary about house music so far. It is long but you love house music, it is worth watching.

As you noticed, I started uploading original clips from my collection. I will continue to do so. so, stay tuned. This is one of the most rare video clips. It is really interesting to see all famous NY dancers when they are young though Marjory looks the same! I can not identify some of the dancers. At 2:40, I can recognize Peter Paul, Calef, Link, who are the other dancers? One guy look like Shannon (a guy who does lot of jacking) is that him?

Just like the movie “Flash Dance” is so important for the history of bboying culure, this clip is extremely important when we talk about hip hop dance culutre. This clip you see here is actually edited sequence of several excerpts from a documentary “Wreckin Shop from Brooklyn”. This documentary was aired in PBS in 1992. Directed by music video director, Dian Martel, this documentary captured the vibe of golden age of hip hop era -early 90s. It features hip hop and house dancers in New York such as Mop Top Crew (Buddha Stretch, Peter Paul, Caleaf, Henry Link, E-Joe) and Misfitss (Rubberband, Marquest, Kito, Peek A Boo, Prancer). As many people consider this era as golden age of hip hop dancing, I recall music videos in this era featured lot of real hip hop dancers unlike today’s music video where you see the mixture of jazz and hip hop. One interesting dancer in this video is Kito from Misfitss. He has his unique rhythm in dancing though it may hard to see that in this video. But I saw him dancing in other video and he was different in a sense that he seems to dance off beat purposefully but still look fresh. The best scene comes at the end of the documentary which is the battle at club. In this clip, it starts around 7:20.

Dancers appeared in this video are

00:35 Kito
00:41 Marquest, Prancer
01:47 Buddha Stretch, Link, Loose Joint
03:42 E-Joe, Tony?
03:57 Caleaf, Ramier (Caleaf’s Brother)
04:51 Rubber Band, Prancer, Kito, Marquest

6:23 Kito
7:03 Marquest

7:25 Loose Joint
7:30 Caleaf
7:33 Loose joint
7:43 Peek a boo
7:49 Peter paul
8:00 Stretch
8:15 Rubber band
8:23 kito
8:27 Peek A Boo
8:36 Peter paul
8:47 Kito
8:51 Marquest
9:01 Rubber Band
9:10 Marquest
9:14 Ramier
9:19 Marquest

This is a scene from the movie “Flash Dance” in 1983 where Jenifer Beals run into kids dancing on the street performed by Rock Steady Crew. What this scene did was planting the seeds of so-called Breakdancing culture all over the world. (I don’t like the term “Breakdancing”, by the way. It was created by the media.) Many bboys from 80s ALL OVER THE WORLD often describe the scene as turning point of their life inspiring them to start dancing. The song played in the scene is “Just a Begun” Jimmy Castor Bunch. This song became one of the anthem songs for breaking since then.

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Speechless!! I have so much memory in this video. After this video came out, it set up the trend of hip hop dance in Japan for the next 5,6 years at least at that time -NY style. I think this video came out 1990. But in Japan, I believe we discovered this video around 1991. Around that time, Japanese dancers were paying attention to dancers in LA such as Soul Brothres, back up dancers for Def Jef and Scheme Team, back up dancers for Devine Styler. LA style was very raw, funky and energetic and I have a big respect for Soul Brothers. But the dancers in this video were very different. This may be partially because they were dancing to slow R&B. But NY style was smooth and sexy. Later we discovered that the dancers in this video were Mop Top Crew aka Elite Force, Henry Link, Caleaf, Voo Doo Ray, and I believe Kito and Marquest from Misfitss crew. Followed by this video, Alive TV’s “Wreckin Shop from Brooklyn”, Mariah Carey’s “Emotion” help Mop Top’s fame rising among Japanese dancers. Eventually, this movement took Mop Top crew to Japan in 94.

Thanks to youtube, I am able to watch this legendary TV show of UK Jazz battle. I first heard about this tv show back in 1994 from an article in Japanese magazine. I think I saw its freeze frame on the magazine but never be able to see the actual video. And at that time in Japan, dancers don’t want to share the video with others so that if they copy or inspire moves from the video, nobody can’t tell if it is taken from somewhere. Rare videos were circulated only among the certain people. That’s the kind of the mentality in early 90s in Japan. It was the time when how fast and many videos you get from overseas play a big part to become well known in dance community. Anyway, I finally watched this video after mora than decade since I heard about it. My reaction? Even though this is more than 10 years old clip and should be considered as old school, it is still super fresh!!

Part 2 and Part 3 of the same show is below.