Dancers from around the world partake in a 3-day hip hop break-beat
festival in a London theatre to compare notes on different styles.

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 LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (MAY 05, 2008) REUTERS -

Complete with graffiti art shows by international artists and
freestyling boxes marked out on the foyer floors, Sadler's Wells opens its
doors for the fifth year as host to UK's one and only international festival
of hip hop, Breaking Convention (May 1-5).
    Visitors of all nationalities, ages, sex and race arrived on the third
of the 5-day event during London's bank-holiday weekend. While many adults try
to avoid exposing themselves to the hiphop culture often associated with guns,
sex and violence, one dance teacher from Lewisham was bringing her students on
an educational field trip for the second time running.
    "What we like about Breaking Convention is the fact that you see
street style dancing infused with other styles of dancing, and we think that
children and students need to see that," said dance teacher Nathalie from
Deptford Green School.
    Russian group Top9 depicted the original dance battle-offs in which
gangs of friends competed against one another on the street through music,
strength and agility shown through dance-moves.
    "What's good about it is that it's a very male orientated form of
dance which gives the males a chance to perform and show-off which they don't
often have a chance to do so that's also good," commented Janice who
comes almost every week for dance-related entertainment at Sadler's Wells.

    Urban Strides, a dance group from High Wycombe UK and the Russian group
Top9 were among that audience over with their creative and innovative fusion
of music and breakbeat modern dance moves.
    Sadler's Wells also welcomed Brazilian group Membros performing for the
first time in the UK. Membros beat out gut-wrenching realities of souls living
amongst betrayal, addiction and guilt through powerful physical theatre
incorporating breakmoves.
    Tony GoGo, one of the first people to ever perform the
"locking" dance move on a hit 1970's American dance show Soul Train,
and still performed one of the top acts of the day as he busted some moves
with the GoGo Brothers, his two sons Yu and Rei. In true Breaking Convention
spirit, Tony GoGo started to demonstrate and explain his infamous
lockings.
    "It's called "locking" because we have a stop motion
that's involved with the dance movement. Stop! That's called locking," he
explained. Tony explained that it took a long time to reach the level of
expertise of his sons that mange to draw some awe-inspiring gasps during their
performance.
    Already with celebrity status in their home country Japan, the young
GoGo Brothers wished much success for the convention.
    "Yes, if I could get just one more person to understand the
goodness of dance, I'll be happy," said Yu.
    One convention visitor who reckoned some of the breakdance moves could
be newly incorporated into her ballroom dancing skills.
    "Not that I could actually perform on the ballroom but I like
jive, so some of the actions you could do in jive but not the swirl around the
floor with your head! (laughing) Getting a bit passed that!", said Janice
Thorburn.
    Twelve-year old dancer Connor, or Pop-C and and eight-year old dancer
Jerry "aka Diva-J", were rather more hip and casual about it
all.
    "Ummm I think just ..it looks cool on TV so I like doing
it!", said Connor.
    "We have to practice a lot but it's quite easy to do once you get
used to it," said Diva-J.
    Tony GoGo said it took seventeen years of training to get his boys up
to their almost inhumanely high level of lock-motion.