Happenings: Unity Charity 3v3 BBOY, 3v3 ALLSTYLES Dance Battle Preliminaries

The Unity Charity Battle Prelims hosted by Dave Baring was a huge success! Held at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO, we thank them for sponsoring the space) for FREE on Friday June 8th 2012, the turn out was amazing. It started off with many cypher circles (mostly breaking and a few hiphop and popping/ locking ones) and good hiphop music and breaking beats to get everyone warmed up. This was about to be my first dance battle ever and it hadn't even kicked in yet.

Many familiar, and even more new faces showed up as the night progressed, the all styles battle prelims happened first. When it began, that's when my heart started racing a little bit. When Mariano and Dave Forteau (MC's of the night) actually called out our team name "Team Roshi" (Don't ask what it means... Vinny made it), I went into panic mode. I'm pretty sure it was a mild panic attack I had there, I could feel my heart pumping like there was no tomorrow, my limbs were numb, the music was hard to absorb, what the opponents were doing right in front of my eyes were a BLUR. Thank goodness Pyro was by our side to calm us down, told us to focus, and listen carefully to the music. And here it is... footage of our prelims!

I dont know what I was doing... I need to learn how to control it a little more... not let my nerves get the best of me when I freestyle.

I really want to thank everyone who has been supporting me and pushing me to do this. I know that I am an instructor and I should be fearless, but when I felt weak and nervous, I was glad to have so many people out there who had my back and kept me going. Even if they weren't there at the AGO, or even if they didn't say "good luck" I know that if they knew they would be happy for me and would cheer me on too, and just that thought alone was really powerful in my head to push myself forward. And especially to those that stood by me and were at the battle hoping for the best for our team, I thank them for their presence and their words of encouragement and even more grateful for their words of advice after it all happened.

Well that was a super fun experience!! I feel like battling is like getting tattoos.. it gets addictive after the first one.

Inspire Each Other,