“A crew it’s like a family. Being part of it means growing together, sharing, supporting each other, traveling. And it is the heart of break dance, apart from which it would be just a dance like many others, certainly more acrobatic, but without a real distinction ». Alexandrina e Mowgly they have no doubts, for them breaking is something more than evolutions on the head, it is synonymous with freedom and embodies all the values of a movement that, between the 60s and 70s, saw gangs from the Bronx compete in the street to the sound of music.
We met the b-boy and the b-girl on the occasion of the Red Bull BC One Italy Cypher 2021, the most famous breaking battle in Italy, which was staged at theAlcatraz of Milan and who elected the best performers on the scene to represent Italy at the World Final in Poland on 5 and 6 November 2021. They were on the track 24 breaker tra b-girl e b-boy in challenges that have seen them face each other in pairs improvising on the music and beats chosen by the DJ and evaluated by an international jury made up of some of the most influential world exponents of the discipline.
But outside of competition, the break dance it’s a real lifestyle, a synonymous with freedom, improvisation, an invitation to experience the here and now. But at the same time it is also a sport that, starting from Paris 2024 will become an Olympic sport. The discipline was proposed by the organizers of the Paris yokes more than a year ago, after the positive tests at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires which saw, among other things, the women’s silver win. Alessandra Cortesia, an 18-year-old Venetian from Conegliano, known as ‘Lexy’.
“There has been an evolution: the entrance to the Olympics and Red Bull BC One itself have given crazy visibility to this discipline, but the thing we can proudly say is that we have not changed, the training method is the same, the values that exist within the scene are the same as always », continued the two Red Bull athletes from the Marittima Funk crew.
Alessandra Chillemi, in arte b-girl Alexandrina, she started at a very young age to be passionate about break dance. “I was six and I was doing ballet,” she says. “Then one day I ran into some guys dancing in the street. I was enchanted by their acrobatics, by those particular gestures that I had never seen before: it was love at first sight. I started to understand when they were training, I went to spy on them secretly trying to copy a few steps without being seen. One day I told my parents: “I want to do it too” and I started dancing. I liked everything, especially the environment. At 8 I started traveling around the world, I was the mascot of the group, I was part of the family».
Mowgly, or Cristian knew, was born in Gallico Marina in the province of Reggio Calabria in 1996. «I started looking at my brother Giancarlo who was dancing already in 2007, I always tried to imitate him, to do those stunts, but always a little secretly. At that time I didn’t see break dance very well: I was hanging out with friends who talked about football, mopeds and I felt out of the chorus. Then in 2010 I decided to try because I was always vertical, I was physically predisposed. I started training both with my brother and in a dance school in Gallico. We were 3 schoolmates and together we decided to start dancing by dividing ourselves between dance classes and street workouts. I trained every day, everywhere, even on a dance floor built inside a social center with the leftover tiles that each of the crew made available ».
The training is serious, it includes cardio activities, from running to jumping rope, to strengthening workouts up to the real breaking sections where you can consolidate what you can do and invent new figures. Born from the street and arrived today at the Olympics, break dance still has several myths to dispel. «Even today, seeing us dance in the street arouses in closed minds the idea that we are the bad guys of drug addicts, the girls who are not very feminine and the boys of the violent. Today we have the possibility of being able to change this perception and to be able to get our message of union and freedom to arrive, ”say the two.
«Unfortunately, the evolution of this discipline has also brought its negative sides: today we see almost more teams than crews, especially abroad. Breaking has so many meanings that it is almost difficult to explain: for us it means freedom and makes us feel special, with crazy experiences already lived at a very young age and with the awareness of being part of a large global family where there is a crazy sharing and a great spirit of brotherhood. This is why we think that a b-boy who does not live the street can be very strong, but he will always miss something. And that thing is the heart. “
«In Italy we are really united, here the individual athlete is not growing, but the whole scene. Obviously in the races the only goal is to win and each battle is a challenge to the ultred bullying. Entering the dance flor means giving your best, not only in acrobatics, but also in attitude, provocation and determination. But then we go back to the big family that we are, where the champion and the boy share moments and experiences, where no one is left on the sidelines. Defining ourselves “only” athletes then perhaps is an understatement. We are breakers, which means everything».
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