Breakdancing Club attracts local following

By: Jessie Young

Posted: 5/1/08

It's 10 p.m. and the end of breakdancing practice, but club members remain on the floor in the SDS room of the Mattin Center as breakbeats blast from the speakers. The Godzilla Containment Unit, also known as the Hopkins crew of the Breakdancing Club, lounge around with other students who show up to practice to learn new moves.

Members of Hopkins Breakdancing Club were fresh from the Break-Off competition they hosted during Spring Fair last Saturday on the Mattin Courtyard. The club has grown to include members from local universities.

"We have people who go to different colleges who come, like people from University of Maryland College Park, Morgan State, Towson University and the Hopkins School of Medicine," club president junior David Harris said. "Most of our members started in college, and they're all growing really quickly. In a year and a half or two we're going to have a really nice squad."

The one-on-one battle attracted dancers from New York to Washington, D.C. as part of the club's efforts in developing the breakdancing scene at Hopkins, as well as Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Breakdancing Club is planning to host another competition next Spring Fair and also considering an event for Fall Festival.

"The battle experience is really fun," said Harris, who has been dancing since sophomore year of high school. "It's sometimes portrayed as a really dangerous culture, but it's actually really goofy. We compete against each other but also help each other out. It's a real teaching and learning culture."

"There's a big emphasis in breaking on hitting the beat, which sounds really simple, but you don't choose your music in breakdancing, which is something that I think is unique as opposed to other dances," Harris said.

The jam this past weekend was the first opportunity that the two newest members of the Godzilla Containment Unit, Marasigan and freshman Alex Yeh, have had to compete.

"I got blown out of the water, taken back to school by [eventual battle winner] Rapid One," Yeh said.

"But now I think I've become more relaxed and not as nervous about competitions in general. When you get schooled by somebody that good, it just encourages you to get better."

The competition, however, is only one of the events that the club participates in. The past year, the crew has performed at shows such as Culture Show and Hopkins Got Talent, as well as a performance outside the Recreation Center during Orientation Week.

The crew also performs at showcases alongside other campus dance groups, such as Eclectics, JOSH and SLAM performances that will take place this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The dancers start packing up the speakers and getting ready to leave. For a second, they stop joking around and turn serious.

"A lot of people have this preconception about breaking, like how it's still in the style that it was in the mid-eighties, but now it's actually lot different," Frison said. "You still have the old style, but you also have the new style, and really, that's just all types of styles. You have abstract styles, where people do crazy contortions; you have people who specialize in flips, and acrobatic moves, and then you have fundamental kids who focus more on the foundations. It's changed so much, it's just not the same thing that it used to be."

Marasigan nods. "You just have to keep it underground."