Just to follow up on the L.X.D. post i had up, this is their performance on SYTYCD from Weds. It is absoloutely amazing.

Just see for yourself.

PSYCH!!!!

- Nick

“No Special effects. No Wires. Real People, Real powers.”

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD) is another project created by Jon M. Chu, director of Step Up 2 the Streets and the co-founder of the  Adam/Chu Dance Crew (ACDC).  Personally I didnt really like what Jon did with the Step Up series because the dancing wasn’t too amazing and  the storyline was corny.  However, Jon made a change a year or two ago and started recruiting a lot of underground dancers that are really dope! (or i guess “extraordinary”…)  From what i know, these dancers were all originally a part of the ACDC project, but i guess that was all just a preperation for the LXD.  Anyways, here’s the trailer that i wanted to show everyone.

A lot of my favorite bboys and poppers (Jrock, Cloud, Luigi, Madd Chadd, Bop’n Andre, etc.) are goin to be in this online series.  I have a feeling that the storyline is still going to be pretty cheesy, but hopefully the dancing will be good enough to make up for that.  I really hope that they’ll portray the underground dance styles correctly at its full potential like they say they will.  This’ll be another positive exposure of our underground dance scene if it is done right!

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers is suppose to come out in 2010… which is in less than a month! WTF?

Count Down till 2010 = 29 days.

-Nick

The bus ride over to NY took roughly 6 hours (my ass was exhausted after the ride).  I slept for a couple of hours, chatted with Shan and Hally, and played some Taiwanese Big Two.  I have planned to stay with my Bulletproof homie, Mitchell (for picture reference, refer to my previous post, handsome boy~), so we met up at the bus stop in China Town and engaged in the typical gay handshakes along with some hugging.

Shan and Hally sleeping on the Fung Wah.

Picture of Mitchell Eating at Vietnamese Restaurant.

I had no idea Mitchell lived far from the downtown area.  I always thought that New York was a smaller city, like Boston, where everything is within close proximity… I was wrong!  We had to take the train for at least 30-40 minutes to commute from, for example, Soho back to his place in Brooklyn every single day.  This reminded me of home, where i usually have to commute via a transport system for at least 40 minutes as well… Which reminds me of the time when i took the MRT (train system) in the morning right after a party and had fallen asleep (because i was so drunk), went past my stop, went all the way around the terminal station, and finally woke up at the stop after my stop lol. epic fail.

This is the main street of the area Mitchell grew up in.  It is amazing how much this place reminds me of Taiwan, or any city in Asia really.  They had fish markets, traditional restaurants, legit asian bubble teas, and all sorts of other things.  The disgusting smell of raw seafood was as awful as it has always been, but it was nice to get a taste of home, especially here in the U.S.  (By the way, I’m going back to Taiwan in less than a month, so let me know if any of you are going to be there!)
Mitchell and his family were very nice people and I had a great time staying with them.  We had dinner together a couple of times, the thanksgiving dinner was delicious, and i got offered beer by Mitchell’s dad, which was dope because i’m an alcoholic : >.  One thing that surprised me was the fact that Mitchell’s family speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese.  I learned that Mitchell’s family were originally from Xia Men, which supposedly is where the majority of the Taiwanese population migrated from during the Cultural Revolutions of China.  I was able to communicate with his family in my native language, which i thought was pretty cool.  (Though there are some slight differences in the way words are pronounced as the language has probably been altered after it was brought to Taiwan.)

The only thing i felt was mad awkward throughout the trip was that i had to sleep in the living room located in the center of the house.  This made me semi-uncomfortable because i was constantly self-conscious about my sleeping pose.  I felt like i was a piece of rectangle wrapped up in one of those flower-patterned Asian blankets… I dont think i have every slept as rigidly ever in my life!   (Dont worry Mitch, i still slept well)

Anyways, thats all for today. Previews for the next post!

Hope everyone had a nice break!

- Nick

I’m staying with my Bulletproof homie Mitchel Fung (as seen below)

This is my second time in NY and my goals for this trip are to tour the city of NY, go ape shit on black friday, chill with some friends, and hopefully get to go to popshop to dance.

I’m catching a Fung Wah bus tomorrow morning at 11 with Shally and Han (more bulletproof homies… more like homegirls), hopefully the traffic wont be too bad. I cant wait!!

Stay tuned for some posts from my NY trip,

Happy Thanksgiving!

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

In Taiwan, most new born babies have their name decided by a fortune teller because it is believed that a person’s destiny is determined by their given name. However, my name was special in a way because it was chosen by my grandfather, who was an incredible person both as a businessman and as the foundation of my immense family (maybe i’ll get into that in the future).

The first character of my name, 李, pronounced Lee, is obviously my family name that has been passed down through many many generations.  (If you really want to know, the top 木 stands for wood, and the bottom 子 stands for son or seed.) The second character, 昶, pronounced Chang, literally means eternal sun; the left part of the character, 永, symbolizes long-lasting and the right part, 日, symbolizes sun.  And the last character, 輝, pronounced Hui, stands for “shine”.  And if you put the two characters together, my name can be translated as “eternal sunshine”,  which sounds pretty effing gay, but I don’t care, its my name and i like it.

I guess when my grandpa gave me this name, he wanted me to become a optimistic person. A person that’d stay positive at all times, like the sun, and perhaps bring happiness to the people I encounter. Which seems like a pretty accurate interpretation of my personality. I’m generally a very happy person and i certainlly hope that i can bring happiness to people, especially through dancing.

Anyways, I just wanted to start off my blog with this post that’ll hopefully give you an idea of why I chose this chinese character as the name of my blog.  I used to have a private blog that i played around with for a minute, but i decided to start a more serious one just to see where i can get to with it.  I’m going to blog about the things i like, as you can see on the top, and the things i do in the U.S., Taiwan, and, if i’m lucky, other parts of the world.

Hopefully this wasnt a waste of your time. I’ll try to get better at writing interesting blogs, but at the mean time just drop by whenever you got free time!

peace.