Spotlight: Elite Force Crew

Sup everybody, it's Jasmine and Ben aka pSyk comin' at you with our first post for the revamped SGD!

As you know, we're part of the SGD team and we're going to cover anything that is under "Hip Hop Freestyle",
so we both decided that a great way to kick things off is by having our first spotlight feature on
the legendary Elite Force Crew.

Since both of us are doing this post together, we'll write it in a "third person" sort of perspective so it's easier for you, the reader, to see who's writing what.

If you guys don't know about who the Elite Force Crew are, they are, in a very concise nutshell, a group with a long history, and are the very people who helped shape the culture of "Hip Hop" as we know it today.
(talk about Living Legacies eh?)

On a side note, if you haven't watched Reckin' Shop: Alive TV,
then you're really missing out on a whole lot of history on the dance and the culture.

So on to the video(s) that we are highlighting on this post:

This footage is taken from a guest performance that they did earlier this year in Beijing, China,
at Keep On Dancing Vol. 5.

Ben spoke to Buddha Stretch and Bobby Mileage regarding this performance,
and so he decided to spread what he learnt here.
(For identification purposes, at the start of the video, from left to right: Buddha Stretch, Bobby Mileage, and Henry Link)



We'll start off with part 1, and then move on to part 2 as we progress.

They start things off with a tribute to Michael Jackson,
and maintain the "Who's Bad" theme throughout the entire showcase.
If you're wondering why "Michael Jackson" since this footage was before the King of Pop passed on, it was because the Elite Force were choreographers for some of MJ's music videos, most notably "Remember The Time" in which they invented and performed the move known as the "Bart Simpson". They actually perform a part of the "Remember The Time" choreography at 2:12, right after the trademark "Thriller" move.
The "Bart Simpson" is performed at 2:19-2:27. I'm pretty sure alot of you know this move but just didn't know the name of it. We'll talk about names and history of moves in another post!

Well anyway, just watch and enjoy as they display their vocabulary in Hip Hop and House. The amazing thing to note is that they build their choreographies around basic and foundational moves, without much variation.

Some of the House vocabulary they use are "Farmer" at 2:42, followed by "Criss/Cross", "Skate", "Loose Legs", "Salsa Step", "Jacking", "Tip-Tap-Toe", and even some toprocking!
It's amazing how much vocabulary we can learn just by watching them dance.

"It's very important to expand our vocabulary,
because not only do we aquire more knowledge, but it also helps to aid us in our freestyle. " - Jasmine

Sometimes we feel stagnant, or rather repetitive when we try to freestyle. It's okay to be repetitive as long as you have your swagger on and you know what you are doing. But if it's the same vocab in every stage of your freestyle, it just means that there's more vocabulary to be learnt!

The term here is "Swag" - the short form of "Swagger".
It's all about your swagger.

Swagger: to walk or strut with a defiant or insolent air.

It's not about how difficult your moves are, it's all about how you perform / execute them. How much swag do you have? It's about enjoying the music, enjoying the dance, and showing how well you can do what you do best: be yourself.

Most of the time, we tend to think too much when we dance to a song (especially songs that we don't know). We get so caught up in thinking of what we should do, and we end up forgetting to enjoy the pleasure of dancing. Usually we attend classes to learn new techniques, and we just keep practicing them. We can pre-plan choreographing techniques and steps but we cannot do so in when it comes to freestyling. Freestyle puts us to a test of skills in everything we have experience and learned throughout our dancing exploration.

Especially in freestyle battles, that's the time for you to get your swag on.



So after the first solo (Bobby Mileage), they come back together and perform a choreography to T-Pain & Ludacris's "Chopped & Skrewed". The beauty of this choreography is that it truly shows what Hip Hop is about, not conforming to any particular style or genre. It's all about drawing inspirations and falling back on different roots of dance, and putting your own swag into it.

Next is Henry Link's solo.
This solo is one of Ben's personal favourites of all time, simply because Link destroys a track that is labelled as a "Popping Track". Look at his swag... as Kanye West would say it, "Swagger on a hundred thousand trillion". No boundaries, and not conforming to any rules. Link dances with a myriad of influences such as Popping, Locking and House, but he puts that "Link Swag" into the dance, and tears the roof down.

After Link's solo we see a canon-type of routine (made very popular back in the day by groups like Medea Sirkas aka Demons Of The Mind). Simple yet effective. What struck me was that the Elite Force were bringing things back to the roots, not just in dance, but in the music. The song they performed to is "Universal Mind Control" by Common, and Common mentioned in an interview that he drew inspiration for his track from Afrika Bambaata's "Planet Rock". Really puts a spin on "Old Skool, New Style" haha...

Following that is Buddha Stretch's turn to perform his solo.
He, like Bobby, performs in 2 segments, which sees him start off in straight Poppin (because Popping is his favourite dance style), followed by Hip Hop. In Ben's opinion, he feels that Stretch is the most technical dancer out of the whole of Elite Force, because he's able to dance a handful of styles but he never "fuses" them.
When he dances hip hop, it's 100% hip hop. Likewise when he dances Locking, Popping and House.

"Every time I watch Stretch perform his solo, it strikes me really hard that he's able to dance a full-length solo based on only foundational and basic moves with very few variations, but 100% swag." - Ben

They end off their showcase with a "routine".
"Routine", because Stretch told me that they wanted to introduce 2 new moves
and this was how they wanted to do it.
(and of course, they picked the perfect song: "Swagger Like Us")

The last routine begins with a new move called the "Imari Stomp" (7:25), named after Bobby's son, who invented the move. at 7:36 we see them do the "Bad One". I'm pretty sure you've heard some tracks (especially DJ Webstar's tracks) with the vocals saying "Bad One, Bad One" or "Do the Bad One". This is the move!

We hope this spolight entry will fill you with some insight and inspiration.
Stay tuned for the next post... until then, remember, it's all about YOUR SWAG!