Extract reproduced with kind permission of Time Out magazine.

Upside down you turn me…
PlayStation®2 B-Boy Championships

It’s appropriate that PlayStation® has been backing this event throughout its first decade because last year, as I craned to see the Crew Championship finals from the side of the stage – I had the weird feeling that I was watching a computer game. Like most of the audience, I actually watched the action projected on to a screen above the DJs. Even so, the athleticism all seems so unfeasible and the air moves so radical that you wonder whether it’s actual flesh-and-bone people throwing themselves about up there.

Promoter Hooch is always excited about the event but he’s more up-for-it than ever: ‘It’s strange but after ten years it feels like we’ve just started.’ He cites all the big hip hop acts who uses breakers on their show, and the ground-level support for breaking (‘There are between 35 and 40 full crews across the UK now,’ he says. ‘A couple of years ago we could barely get eight to compete’). And that’s not to mention all the ads featuring B-Boys, like VW’s ‘Singing In The Rain’ commercial.

The Championships will emphasise dance battles more than ever this year. It’s the unpredictability that people come for and there will be fresh styles to be amazed by, including the return of the (body) popping battles – an updated version of the ‘80’s style robotic moves – a dynamic new ‘locking’ battle (explanations of the dance styles are on the ps2bboy.com site) and a beatbox competition where UK champion Faith SFX takes on D.O.A from the USA.

All that is in addition to the individual and crew B-Boy battles which form the main attraction. It’s not like ‘Time Out’ needs to big-up these contests, though, because these two-day events always sell out. In the long run, the biggest impact this weekend could be the unveiling of a B-Boy game for PlayStation®2 and PSP™, which Hooch reckons will be, ‘The “Tony Hawks” of B-Boy games,’ (you read it here first). Is it art imitating life or the other way round? Go figure for yourselves.

Dave Swindells

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