By Carly Stagg
Four Canadian b-boys took on some clowns in Florida; there were no teeth lost but things did get a little funky.
Last month, Buddha, Ben Jammin’, Crazy Smooth and Dazzle, members of a local breakdancing crew, ventured to Orlando for a two-day workshop where they gave members of Cirque du Soleil a few lessons in hip-hop.
The workshop included some history about the origins of hip-hop and dance instruction that would allow the cirque members to develop their own style through dance.
“We taught them the foundation dances; b-boy, electric bougaloo and locking,” says Stephen Leafloor, a.k.a Buddha, who prefers the term b-boy because he says breakdancing is a “media term.”
“We tried to get them to concentrate on self-expression through movement,” he says.
Coming from any other 44-year-old father of three, words like “b-boy and crew” might seem forced and unnatural, but when uttered by one of the founders of the Canadian Floor Masters, Canada’s oldest b-boy crew, even the most skeptical listener becomes enviable of his passion.
Some of the Cirque performers were not so enthusiastic; prior to the crew’s Orlando arrival, Buddha says a few of the Russian trapeze artists went to the physiotherapist to get pink slips indicating they were injured so they wouldn’t have to partake in the workshop.
“They were nervous and intimidated because they thought they didn’t have rhythm,” says Buddha. “But we broke down the barriers right away.”
The crew was working with about 40 performers from the Cirque du Soleil show, La Nouba. The show’s theme is a hip-hop inspired 1920s circus in which the colourful cirques clash with the monochromatic world of the urbains.
Former Centretown resident Matthew Sparks has been with the Cirque since 2000 as a dance captain and acrobatic coach.
Sparks, one of the original members of the CFM, called on his old friend Buddha because in the five years the La Nouba show had been running there had been a lot of performer turnover. And many of the new members of the show were from countries that had little understanding of modern hip-hop .
“It was overwhelmingly the best experience of dance in my life,” says Ben Jammin’; a.k.a Benjamin Davidson, a local DJ and CFM member. “Meeting people from all over the world and being able to share your part and share a synergy between the different worlds.”
After seeing the La Nouba show on their last day or their trip, Ben Jammin’ says they met a Cirque fan who had just seen the show for the second time. The woman didn’t know who she was talking to when she told the crew that she thought the show had changed.
“She told us it was more funky, more hip-hop,” says Ben Jammin’. “The performers had added things they learned from our workshops so people who had seen the show before immediately noticed they had implemented new things into the show, that was amazing.”
The hip-hop workshops were such a success that Buddha says there is talk that the Cirque might offer them an ongoing contract.
“Last year, the cirque brought in one of the most famous choreographers in the states to do a similar workshop and no one liked him,” says Buddha.
“That is proof that it is not just about choreography, it is about listening to the music, feeling the beat and developing your own expression.”