Sky’s the limit for B-boys at City Spectacular

B-Xtreme bring their spectacular breakdancing moves to Cork this weekend, writes Don O’Mahony.

It goes without saying that street performers are required to bring a lot of energy to their performance in order to capture the attention of the wandering public.

But if Anthony Rosa’s demeanour in an interview is anything to go by his actual performance levels as part of break dance troupe B-Xtreme must be off the chart.

Speaking in a sing-song rhythm of street patter and New York attitude, Rosa introduces himself by his street name. ‘My name’s Ready, like you’re ‘Ready To Go.’”

The other two-thirds of the B-Xtreme crew making their way to Cork for the Laya Healthcare City spectacular Christopher ‘Cuba’ Munoz and Jose ‘Mini’ Colón.

All hailing from New York, the trio have known each other for close to two decades through dancing competitions, or in Cuba’s case, from dancing on the street.

“We call them hitters,” says Ready.

What we do is street performing but when we break dance, they call it hitters. When we’re going downtown to dance we say we’re going to go hit.

The dancing competitions, or “battles” in the argot, involved crews matching up against each other in small groups or in one-on-one jousts.

“Those are the ones you really get to get your name out there and people get to know who you are,” says Ready of the latter.

“But I’ve always been dancing since I was young. I’m Puerto Rican so we came out dancing,” he laughs.

Ready always had a love of sports and dancing but, compared to Mini and Cuba, who were at it since they were young children, Ready came late to break dancing, starting at 14.

After doing it for three years he began taking part in competitions before eventually finding a sponsor who flew him to competitions around the United States.

The development of sponsorship played a huge role in popularising the sport and has changed the complexion of it enormously from the more underground activity it was when Ready became involved n the ‘90s.

“Now it’s oh my gosh!” he gasps.

“I’m talking about when we were going there we were flying to places to do a competition to win not even 600 bucks. Now they’re doing $10,000 first place. They’re doing $6,000 second, third place money.

“So it’s like what the sponsors do is they basically sponsor the event now. So they have their own event instead of sponsoring people.

We were just at that time that they knew who we were and they knew that we were just going up so they just wanted to jump on everything with us. And yeah, it worked out.

Now sponsored by energy drink companies taking place in huge venues and set to make its debut as an Olympic sport in 2024, break dancing is a huge business and a far cry from the spontaneous street level movement that grew up hand in hand with hip-hop in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and pushed by pioneers like Rock Steady Crew.

It’s also become very much business for B-Xtreme. A lot of their domestic engagements are on a corporate level.

Says Ready: “We just don’t do the busking stuff over here. We do a lot of corporate gigs and festivals and fairs. We’d rather busk outside of the States. Everyone’s so much friendlier and they understand busking.”

In contrast, in Europe and Canada they get treated like artists.

“Like we get treated very well,”observes Ready. “But in the States it’s just like they’re just paying you to do your job — just entertain and go. They’re like ‘Do your job!’

“When we’re doing corporates it’s the same exact thing over and over like a cookie cutter. But when we’re busking we can joke a round and play. We can go off script for as long as we want. It’s more fun, more playful. In Europe it’s different. That’s why we love going out there.”

Naturally they are excited about returning to Ireland, particularly as the last time they played the Street Spectacular in Cork five-years-ago Ready was carrying an injury.

“I snapped my achilles tendon so I just MC’d. I didn’t get a chance to dance,” he says glumly.

However, he didn’t let the fact he was wearing a cast deter him.

“We had a whole gimmick. Because I had the cast we had a wheelchair and I came out on the wheelchair with the leg out and I started MC-ing. And I would get up, but I was doing flips and everything with the cast.

I was doing simple stuff for me. Like I was doing handstands, push up, little freezes, so I was doing moves but to the people, they were like, ‘You’re so crazy.

"You can’t be dancing like that!’ But to me I used it more like it was a prop. You got you keep the show going.”

Laya Healthcare’s City Spectacular takes place in Cork’s Fitzgerald Park on Saturday and Sunday.

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