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B-Boying

WHERE B-BOYING IS PRACTICED

STORYTELLER PROFILE

WHERE THIS STORY

WAS SUBMITTED FROM:

Hamburg, Germany

STORYTELLER'S AGE:

40

STORYTELLER'S

GENDER:

Male

STORYTELLER'S

ETHNICITY:

Pashtun

B-BOYING DESCRIPTION

In the last 10 years I have not danced. I guess as of age 27, I dance simply less. I used to dance regularly at the weekend, but now, more at weddings or celebrations. Formerly when I was 15 or 16 years old I do hip hop and street dance. That was "real.” We have learned new moves and battled. We were B-Boys. My parents did not mind when I was dancing. It was just fun and was a hobby. 

 

But then you get older, and then we have more feelings or body language to symbolize the feelings, and now I dance only at weddings. My life has changed, and as you get older you just have different interests. For example, at 15 or 16 is because there was  a very different approach to music. Now I hear a lot less music. I’ve heard a lot of music earlier. I've heard all day music, we had it on "repeat," so I constantly heard. Now I no longer do that. In the past I have also heard a lot of classical music, but now that do not more due to studies, because if you are very busy you have less time to listen to music. Music has also changed. It has become much more commercial. And then also came Techno and electro to the scene. So this electro scene has pretty much completely ruined the music scene, it’s actually less fun to deal with this phenomenon. 

 

I do not know, I've already had the emotions, had these feelings of 15 or 16. If I still had interest in dancing, I would make more Samba or Tango or more partner dances. Because that one has to work on and practice and that is I think, for me, makes more fun than when I dance as a medium to have friends. For me dancing earlier was a lot about getting to meet people. In hip-hop I've made friends. But today... I have so many friends already, I do not think that I need to put myself at the center through dancing now. 

 

We used to take dance as a sport. We have for example made basketball and hip-hop because it was accepted and now you simply do those things less. With family there were Afghan dances, but we danced more with friends. We also danced certain choreographies in hip-hop too, but that was more if you made solo dances. Afghan dances, I've noticed that if the family has danced that there were certain movements. When you dance, for example, if I dance a Waltz that is of course an entirely different melody or rhythm when I dance Afghan. In Afghanistan, I can not remember that I danced myself. When we were young we went dancing 4 times a week, since we had 3 or 4 different dance groups. But that then eventually turned into basketball to football and then at some point it sort of ended. We had friends we danced with that came from Philadelphia, and we have also danced at the time to MC Hammer with which we have practiced many dance pieces. Vanilla Ice too. It was the time where we laughed about Vanilla Ice because he could not dance.

 

And there were these great movies where Germans have gone to schools in America and have there somehow the absolute best dancer discovered. But there were only 2 or 3 hit movies. I think there was Beat Street, a hip-hop movie. Then there was something like "electric" and it comes that they somehow try to save young people by dancing. And after came movies like “Step” or “Honey.” In our time there were many breakdancers that went from Europe on special trips to New York to learn moves. At that time there was no "crumping" or "b-boying" to start with, and now there are I believe 6 different styles of breakdancing. 

 

So, today my friends are naturally mixed. It depends more on personality. We watch videos together and we cook together, and we used to play basketball in different parks, but the time is simply no longer there. I suspect that there is more to do with age.

 

For Afghans, it is so that this folk dance really are a lot of movement and many historical aspects. It’s the story of dancing I find quite interesting, really exciting. I know of the history of the instruments in different regions. For example, some say that the first instrument was the drum, others say no, the flute was the first instrument. There are then the string instruments. So guitar, that was the first. Many movements which are taken as a dance are really just about showing their feathers and their colors indicate that they are healthy, they are strong, and that is then interpreted by many people as joy. And that is older than musical instruments. So first there was the voice, and then musical instruments, and then of course the motion.

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