(e:Lauren) and (e:FellyConnelly) frequently go to the Battle at Buffalo held at Verve Dance Studio, 910 Main Street, the last Saturday of every month. I went with them Sept. 27 and I'm very glad I did! If you don't know anything about this subculture (like I don't), go with Lauren & Felly. Lauren's a very knowledgeable guide and wrote at least one research paper on breakdancing for which she interviewed studio owner Shane and several b-boys and b-girls. They attend classes at the studio, too.

I took my camera - it was a challenging situation with low light levels and fast action. (Flash photography is a no-no in these kinds of situations - distracting and dangerous to the participants.) I took about 700 shots - if these are the best, you can imagine how bad a lot of them were :-) It's very difficult to capture the "toprock" elements like popping without the dancer just looking awkward. ((e:Lauren) - feel free to correct me on my presentation.) A couple of the dancers looked more like skaterats... is there an intersection between those groups?

Shane, Verve Dance Studio owner, emcee:



The DJs - Miss Shing-a-ling and DJ Simple... I'm finding out that I really like good DJing. I can't describe how awful the DJs are at home.


Interplay between the dancers heightens the sense of "battle"







The youngest (looking) participant held his own among the older dancers.


Teddy Krueger (aka Theodore Krzykowski in his real job at the Buffalo dance company LehrerDance) has amazing flexibility and strength. He won a Lipton Iced Tea competition for this video:

And here's video of another Battle at Buffalo competition between Teddy and Pete Nasty.




Lauren pointed out that observing dancers will slap the floor for technical inaccuracies - Teddy's background in gymnastics, stunts and professional modern dance serve him well in performing complicated, difficult tricks but he gets a lot of floor slaps, too.

Pete Nasty might have been my favorite, but I think I need to go back to be sure :-)



I definitely want to see more b-girls. There were only two that night.








The view from the rooftop outside the studio was great!