Dance Life I – Popping & Foundation

My dance life started in Middleschool when i had to do one of those lipsync spirit week hip hop dance competitions and I didnt really get into legit street dance until 04 or 05.  I was inspired in 2005 to really get into popping.  All throughout High School, popping was basically the center of my universe. I devoted 90% of my time into popping and aimed to become one of the best newschool poppers. Which was mad naive because I had closed myself off from many other things i couldve done, such as school work, and i didnt really have a good balanced life.  Apart from that, i was also very closed minded about my dancing.  Taiwan’s popping style was Boogaloo based back then, and I felt like I was at an advatage, or more like I felt that i was superior to them because of my exposure to the foreign popping styles on the internet.   I looked down upon many great poppers and refused to absorb what they had to offer.

Beatronic 2006 – The first competition i ever entered. It was one of the biggest ones in Taiwan, and i entered thinking i was going to smoke some fools…

It actually took me 2 -3 years to realize how close minded I was. This was after I’ve entered numerous competitions and came home empty handed every single time(more like I didnt even make it past the prelims). Although I did develop a decent style of my own over the course of trial and error, I still lacked foundation. I didnt really understand foundation until i met “Little Dragon” aka. PopYourSoul, who is one of the best poppers in Taiwan now. Pop wasnt really an epic popper back then, but he knew his shit and had all the basics down solid. Plus, he was also super open minded, so he gave me props for what I was doing, and showed me the correct way to pop.

PopYourSoul’s Judge Solo – He’s effing mosterous now…

After I met Pop around 2007, I knew that I had to strip away everything I was doing and work purley on foundation. This wasnt an easy process due to the fact that I was often impatient; I had too much passion in me that i couldnt hold in. Just imagine yourself as a serious runner and the only way for you to train and become faster is to practice walking for a whole year straight… that is not an easy task.

This is my popping close to the end of my senior year in highschool (2008) after i had worked on some foundation.  Still nothing extraoridnary… but you can see the base of my style before it developed into what i do now.

Lesson Learned: Foundation is important!

More will come later. Peace