This is the fifth anniversary of InspireDANCE but it’s the third year of the InspireJAM.
One of our students, Smon, she loves breaking and so she was really the founder essentially
of the InspireJAM.
About three years ago when John, my crewmate, he took me to a JAM in Passaic, New Jersey
and I had a lot of fun there being a spectator and I thought this should be a part of InspireDANCE
Festival and so yeah, it got its start here.
In the media you see all these the wrong influences of violence and drugs and sex and that’s
completely not what hip hop is all about.
We have people who are coming in as guest artists as well as our University students
and this morning we had um hip hop dancers here teaching classes and also students coming
in from the high schools from around the area.
We had ninety high school students here participating.
You’re seeing two different groups working here.
One has a beginning workshop going on and the other one is more power workshop and they’re
doing inversions and things like that.
This year I think we have more people than we have ever.
I’m a junior at Ithaca College representing Ground Up Crew.
Toronto and I’m battling with my crew.
I’m from the University of Buffalo.
I’m part of the break dance group there.
We were the Nasty Three Crew.
He came up with the name though.
We have maybe like fifteen, sixteen people here.
Like around that.
So, yeah, it’s pretty cool.
If a crew wants to participate they can battle, um, but we’ll like be around, cipher, a
continuous dance in a circle.
Yeah, it’s like raw original movements that are not really choreographed beforehand.
I want you to give it up for DJ.
DJ Homein.
You got anything to say.
I want to everybody to have fun, leave it all on the floor and for those of you who
have been doing this for a while you realize that you are participating in something that
is a deep, important cultural heritage.
I want everybody to recognize that while this is going on.
Alright, let’s start this up.
BBoying or BGirling is also synonymous with break dancing so it’s like the spinning
on the floor and you know a lot of floor work.
Great eye opening event for me when I started and I think that it brings a lot of values
to the community for people who like try to find themselves or perhaps like maybe this
is perhaps an interest.
Or if they never tried it out, they’ll give it a shot.
What I like about it is the freedom of it.
People are able to express themselves and just to be there um without like judgment,
like too much of self-consciousness.
Um, people are there to have fun, mingle around.
Um, this is all like for fun and for just people to come together first as a community.
Um, yeah.
I’d love; I’d like to shake everyone’s hand that’s right here because they love
hip-hop and they’re willing, they want to come and learn more and some of them just
like the music or they like the art and now they’re putting the movement to it.
So, it’s, you know, they’re all saying yes, I want to know something and that’s
what Inspire’s about.
Oh!
It was really good.
Uh, first of all it was our first battle together as a crew.
Um, we just kind of got together.
It was really good.
Um, there were something’s that we wish we did better on but other than that it was
really good.