eXtremity Games 2

So now that its been a few weeks since the x2 games in Orlando, my procrastination will finally allow me to write about it. So for anyone that didn't know, two weeks ago I performed at the awards ceremony of the 2nd eXtremity games. For everyone who doesn't know what that is, basically its an extreme sports competition for physically challenged individuals, especially amputees.

I was really excited about this performance as it would be my first solo performance ever. When I learned that it was going to be a solo performance, I was freaking out. Who in their right mind can dance their hardest for 5 minutes straight?! When I told my friends/mentors about this they were surprised too. 5 minutes seems like such a short time, but dancing is more exhausting than people think. House suggested that I break the performance up into sections, so I did. Instead of just being a bboy, and performing for 5 minutes and dieing, I decided to showcase all urban dance styles, bboying, popping, locking, and house.

While bboying is my specialty, and I'm pretty good, the other styles I'm not so good at. Thankfully my friends helped me out. Big Big thanks to Russ, House, JC, Rashaad, and Gwo for helping me get ready for the other styles. Theres no way I could have done it without them. I think my biggest fear was by far popping. I trained with Rashaad a few times and took his class for a month, and after some special training I felt I was ready.

The next preparation was the mix. Music is so important, and for this endeavor, Russ was the man....well at the last minute anyway haha. I guess its part my fault for just asking for 5 minutes of music and not really giving him songs. We ended up making the mix at 3 in the morning the day before I left....and I left at 5:30am....so ya, it was really last minute.

So Friday morning I arrive in Orlando and get to the hotel without any major incidents. That night was the first event I went to which was the pool party. I was being a little shy since I didn't really know anyone, and it felt a bit awkward. I get really nervous around big groups of strangers for some reason. So after a bit I left the pool party and went to chill in my room for a while. I decided it would be good to practice before my show so I tried to find if they had any space for me to rehearse, when they said they didn't, I just took it back to the oldschool and brought my boombox to the parking lot. Ya, thats how I do! After I got all dirty from the concrete I decided to go for a late night swim and there were a few people just chillin around the pool. So I did get to meet some people. I'm pretty sure small groups are more my style.

The next day I went to the actual competitions. I was just checking some of them out, I didn't make it to the early competitions cause it was really really early, and you know how early I get up on weekends lol. I did get to see the skating competition which was really awesome. One of my old skating heroes Jon Comers was there as the Judge, and the skaters were really good. Better than I ever used to be. It kind of made me wish that I had brought my bored so I could fall and hurt myself lol. After that I went and watched some wakeboarding. That looked really fun, and I really want to get a swimming leg now so I can try out some water sports. We'll see how that goes...

Fast forward to that night, the night of the competition. I was starting to get nervous. They let me into the room where I would be performing so I could test out the floor. I threw some power for about 10 minutes to warm up. The floor was really good. Then I went to chill for a while until the ceremony started. The food was ok, but I was too nervous to be that hungry. I asked them to give me a 10-15 minute notice to when I would perform so I could warm up a little bit. Apparently they forgot, so it was straight to the stage for me. Once the music started I was starting to get too hype. The first track was my power song, I did pretty good on it, did my 90, swipes and was decently clean. Next track was locking....I kinda messed up, I didn't hear the tracks switch, so my mind didn't let me switch characters. I was locking like I was a bboy, those styles really dont mix at all haha. But I eventually found my grove. Now the third track was popping, the one I was worried about. Once the track dropped somehow everything clicked. For the first time ever I really felt like I was popping. I had my cool face on, getting my groove on. Then housing was ok, I did everything I expected.

Now the final track was the bboy finale. It was going to be all the rest of my style/tricks. This is at about minute 4, I was really starting to get exhausted. My heart was going like 800 beats per second. It was really hard to think, so I just gave in and let my body do whatever. I think there's a lot more tricks I could have done, but I did mostly tops and footwork. At the end everyone really liked it, hopefully no on noticed my mess-ups. I can't wait till I get to see the video so I can see what I need to work on. To me this show was completely awesome and the first of many stepping stones.

After the show a bunch of us went to chill at the pool again and decided that the next day we were going to the warped tour cause all the skater kids were going to get to skate there. That trip was so funny. So we had 2 full cars full of amputees. We were going to park and no one had any handicapped sticker. But we pulled up to the parking attendants and were like everyone in these cars is handicapped, and showed them, and they looked at us funny and let us park.

It was pretty fun walking around the tour 10 deep in amputees. Its kind of hard for people to stare at 10 people all at once, so for the first time I felt that unity in numbers haha. We didn't stay too long at the warped tour, but it was fun. We spent the rest of the time just chillin, and thats about it.

I'm trying to convince them to have an actual dance competition next year. I gotta rally all the disabled bboys up first. That would be dope....and I'm taking home the #1 haahahahahahahaha!!!

Thanks to everyone that helped me!!! There's no way I could get this far alone.

Peace
Halfstep