And a lovely MLK holiday weekend to all. A lot of people get excited about these kinds of weekends because they get an amazing 3 days off instead of the usual 2. Well in my world I don’t really have any days off. I usually just go from one class to the next, and then one rehearsal to the next. This last weekend was no different. The issue with me is that at some point in my life I thought it would be a great idea to be as busy as possible with the things I love to do. As a result, I am currently on 4 different dance companies. There is DTSF (Dance Theater of Santa Fe), which doesn’t really count since its just a school organization that allows you to perform at Santa Fe. This is sort of an unwritten requirement for me since I am currently on a full dance scholarship at school. What they didn’t tell me in the fine print was that I would be slowly paying back my tuition with hours and hours of grueling dance rehearsal. But it’s cool- I like dancing at school. The next one is the DanceCompany of Gainesville through Cameron dancenter which lets me live out all of my jazz dance and partnering. The other cool thing about this company is that it also gave me an opportunity for a dance job- so now I teach hip hop there. The third company is one that I joined just last semester (I clearly wasn’t busy enough) through school and my eccentrically brilliant modern teacher called the Brown Dance Project. And finally, for the purpose of my blog, is Apocalypse Dance troupe: the only all-male hip hop cru based out of UF.
Apocalypse (or apoc for short) is a team that has been around since 2000 and has kept a strictly all-male clientele for hip hop choreography the entire time. We do some crazy wacked out hip hop and it has kept me on my toes since I joined the team last spring. We’re exclusive, talented, and (as of last semester) pretty well known in the dance community. From a personal level, we’re also a really tight knit group that have dance in the male world as a common bond. Guys usually don’t aspire to be dancers in the same way that women do and for that reason we are unique.
This last Saturday we had tryouts for the new spring semester and added 5 guys. This is an obscene number of guys to add since they were 5 quality doodes that new how to dance well enough for us to say ‘yes, we will take you to the next level.’ Of the new recruits, we added 2 bboys, and 2 white guys. This is especially exciting because white guys in hip hop are even fewer and farther between. Its not a question of race so much as it is a question of culture. Traditional white families just don’t rock out to music in the same way that black and latino families do. The result are grown, white adult males that have little or no interest in rhythmic movement generally speaking. These 2 rare gems that we found are still a little rough around the edges but they have potential to become great commodities. I was proud to welcome the new guys to their first practice on Monday night and I even wrote a little something on our facebook group for them:
“Ya’ll boys (old and new) need to remember that being on this team is an honor. We all share a very close and rare bond through music and dance. Theres not a lot of doodes out there with the rhythm, talent, or balls to do what we do. With that said, its not easy to be on apocalypse. We work hard to be the phuckin best, and there will be times when you are tried. But this team is a weight that you dont carry alone. We are as much a brotherhood as any other fraternity on campus. Together we will stand for the last word in hip hop—> an apocalypse.”
I’m excited for the new semester with these guys. Hopefully I can still find some time to get away from my other groups to hang out with Apoc. Here’s the tryout video that I made for them- it includes some random highlights of the last year:
[myspace]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=102129353[/myspace]