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Breakin' the Law @ Memorial Union's Great Hall

hastings | 4/16/2007 8:24 am | Emcees Without Voices

Breakin' the Law was originally conceived to protest anachronistic cabaret licensing regulations that effectively criminalized dance across a variety of innocuous (alcohol-free ones at that) contexts. The current ethos might've been best summarized at the outset of Saturday night's 4th annual breakdance battle, as the judges rattled off what they were looking for:

Toprocks, footwork, power, finesse, musicality---if you know what the other crew's gonna do don't mimic them... this is hip-hop culture at it's purest--let's live it, let's respect it.

Some notes:

**Well before the final battle ended (around 1:40 AM) organizer Jarius King--aka b-boy "Man of God"--informed us that over 2000 people had come through the Great Hall.

**I was pretty zoned-out, found the instructions to the audience re: the giving of props hilarious. It had been a while since I'd considered the similarities between that and the wrist-fluttering of a co-op "sparkle". Uhh, moving on.

**The first round was a single-elimination, call-out-style battle. Before giving way to the relative order of the second round's bracketology, crew names drawn from a hat, and they elected whom to challenge, 6 minutes a side.

**A judge: "If you don't want to step up and battle you'll be disqualified." Naturally, the judges were called out by the second group to emerge from the hat.

**This is the MySpace of one of the MCs (not the beatboxer) who performed during an interlude

**Excuse me for not knowing the technical terms for this sublime maneuver: the b-girl on one of the Rhythm Attack (from Hong Kong, split into two crews for this battle... Dane 101 tells you more about the geographical representation) squads, leapt and scissor-kicked a few inches from someone's face, landing in a handstandish thing, to open an early battle (think it was the 3rd of the 1st round... all very hazy).

**[UDATE] Check Emily Mills' post @ Dane 101 for another recap and to see light, captured by people, with cameras.
**The UW breakdance club, entered as the "JB's", bowed out early--and did not have a chance to break to the James Brown spun in the final round...

**Which was between Rhythm Attack (#?) and Motion Disorderz. King reminded the crowd that they'd met in last year's second round, and the consensus was that they should've squared off in the finals in '06. Motion D of Milwaukee won.

**Since my camera/phone is not cooperating, here's YouTube of that '06 battle. Let's pretend it's from Saturday.

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UPDATE #2. Again, there were many cameras present, some of which captured moving pictures. Below is Rhythm Attack vs. the Warriors (spotted via yet another Dane 101 post, which has an additional two vids embedded. None of '07's final battle, so we'll keep pretending the above placebo is acceptable).

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To echo a colleague:

It's always a little strange to see an event like this encircled by an audience cross-legged in chairs. Given the physical exertion, bruises braved by fat dudes named Crumbles more nimble, rhythmically gifted, than 99.99% of the audience*--it seemed like the least we could do was stand. After a couple hours on a ledge, though, the chairs were damn welcome. I'd been more or less awake for 36 hoursp; it's not like I keep a stash of Shabu and Modafinil in my backpack--and the coffee was wearing off. Whenever I was primed to nod off, though, something jolted me alert, even if it was as simple as DJ Woodo cutting up "The Mexican." Yeah, my feet fidgeted under my seat.

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