Celebreak

Breakdance Injuries and Overuse Syndromes in Amateurs and Professionals

Posted on April 1, 2009

“Conclusion: Breakdancing must be considered as a potentially high-risk dancing sport. Even with severe injuries, dancers interrupt training only for limited periods of time. ^“

Okay, now this one HAS to be an April Fool’s joke. Not that I don’t believe there’s no validity to injuriers in b-boys and b-girls…but would this really be in the American Journal of Sports Medicine?!

Breakdance Injuries and Overuse Syndromes in Amateurs and Professionals

Max Daniel Kauther, MD^,*, Christian Wedemeyer, MD, Alexander Wegner, MD, Kai Michael Kauther and Marius von Knoch, MD

Department of Orthopaedics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany, and the, University Giessen and Marburg, Giessen and Marburg, Germany

*Address correspondence to Max Daniel Kauther, MD, University of Duisburg-Essen, Department of Orthopaedics, Hufelandstraße 55, D-45147 Essen, Germany (e-mail:maxdaniel.kauther@uk-essen.de).

Background: Serious injuries due to breakdancing have been presented only as singular case reports to date. So far, there have been no comprehensive studies about injuries in this sport.

Hypothesis: Professional breakdancing might lead to a higher incidence of injuries than amateur training. Wearing safety equipment is correlated with a decreased incidence of injuries and pain.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods: The retrospective study surveyed 40 breakdance professionals and 104 amateurs by questionnaire.

Results: There were 1665 injuries and 206 overuse syndromes found in 380 588 hours of training, leading to a loss of 10 970.6 training days. Professionals reported significantly (P < .001) more injuries and overuse syndromes with significantly more injuries of the wrist (P < .001), knee (P < .001), hip/thigh (P = .003), ankle/foot (P = .013), and elbow (P = .033). No significant differences were found in the time lost per injury and the time lost per overuse syndrome. Pain occurred most frequently in the region of the wrist, spine, shoulder, and ankle. A negative correlation between protective gear and injuries or frequency of pain could not be shown.

Conclusion: Breakdancing must be considered as a potentially high-risk dancing sport. Even with severe injuries, dancers interrupt training only for limited periods of time.

Clinical Relevance: Breakdance injuries and overuse should not be underestimated. Physicians should be aware of the common risks in this highly acrobatic kind of dancing.

…but then again, maybe it just means breaking is getting more attention. With the grewing numbes of breakers, the number of injuries (we’ve all had them!) would be on the rise and so would the number of hospital visits. If it’s true, I have a lot more respect for the AJSM for studying it!

American Breakdance Instructor refused entry into Britain?

Posted on April 1, 2009

I don’t know if this is an April Fool’s joke or not but I saw it when reading the news this morning:

AN American break-dancing instructor who tried to get into Britain illegally has been sent back home from Leeds Bradford Airport after telling lies about his reason for visiting Yorkshire.

On arrival at Leeds at Sunday night on a flight from Paris, the 28-year-old man told UK Border Agency officers that he was only intending to stay in the UK for six days to visit a friend at Leeds University.

However the man had no return ticket, and officers’ suspicions were raised further when checks revealed that he had been refused entry to the UK only last June, although his passport bore no sign of the refusal stamp.

A search of the man’s baggage revealed the two missing pages from his passport including the refusal stamp – along with 500 business cards he had packed, promoting his services as a break-dancing instructor.

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “There are strict legal channels for people wanting to come and work in the UK. Visitors must abide by our immigration rules: if they do not they will be sent back. We do not tolerate people entering with the aim of working illegally.”

The man was refused entry, detained and removed from the UK the next day.

From the Yorkshire Post. Is this an April Fool’s joke? Or do you think someone really tried to illegally enter Britain with the intent to teach breakdancing on the low?

Anthony Anderson Breakdancing at a Knicks Game

Posted on March 25, 2009

Apparently Anthony Anderson, comedian and actor on Law and Order, is a b-boy. These flicks of him breaking at a Knicks game are currently floating around the internets:

He joins the ranks of celebrity b-boys Common, Shaq, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Pauly Shore. They have to start a crew. How cool would it be to have them compete together at a jam?

A Conversation with Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones aka “Ozone” from Breakin and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo

Posted on January 26, 2009

There’s an interview with Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones (aka “Ozone” from Breakin‘ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo) over at Blackpower.com. He talks about how he got into locking, what he’s up to these days and technology’s influence on today’ breakdancers:

We do have some dancers, today, that are doing some pretty spectacular things. You look and think, wow, look at that guy fly. Or, wow, that guy can do 50 head spins as opposed to the little Puerto Rican guy who could only do three back in the day. The big difference is the guy doing 50 head spins lacks the nutritional value. And that nutritional value can only come with time. We’re not allowing the soil time enough to repair itself, organically. If you have people who are viewing dance steps on YouTube so readily and quickly. What you have is people just copying from one another. Just copying, copying, copying. And we never get a sense of your own neighborhood.

That’s what I talked about earlier. Back then, you had east coast going on  and you had the west coast going on. We didn’t know what you guys were doing.You’d seen some of the stuff we were doing because we were on TV, we had <i>Soul Train</i>. But we had time to let it settle and sink in. That’s no longer the case now. Now you got YouTube, which is a big problem. True art needs time to reflect. It needs time for these feelings and thoughts to inculcate themselves in our minds and our bodies. With technology, there’s no way for art to grow properly. Arts needs to be allowed to mature and enrich itself.  Life can only be reflected in art if it has time to grow.So that’s what you have out there: a lot of junk, a lot of cotton candy. And YouTube is the McDonald’s of art and culture. Anybody with a camera can put anything they want on there, and it doesn’t have to be tested.

It’s like break dancing now. You don’t have break dancing. You have break flying. What made it beautiful back then was that they were bringing their experiences and those frustrations from the boroughs to the dance. Not the high flying stuff. It was organic, rich, my-momma’s-whooping-my-ass- I’mma-go-out-in-the-street-and-let-out-this-frustration kind of dancing. All that other stuff, based on tricks and flips, is Olympic dancing.

This is as interesting as it is ironic. Shabba-Doo starred in 2 movies that were detrimental to the b-boy scene (and doesn’t appear to be bothered by it) in the 80’s yet is dissing technological advancements which have helped spread and maintain a breakdancing scene all over the world. While he does have some valid points on Youtube’s impact on originality, he’s missing the big picture.

80’s article - “What Break Dancin’s All About”

Posted on January 24, 2009

Here’s an 80’s article and how-to about break dancing. I don’t know where it was published it looks like it was produced by Jamb Productions:

John Hopkins University to sponsor a breaking competition

Posted on December 15, 2008

John Hopkins University is sponsoring a battle! They recently awarded their campus breaking organization, John Hopkins Breakdancing, a grant to host a b-boy competition. The grant, which was awarded through their Arts Innovation Program, “offers funding to faculty to create new courses in the arts for undergraduates, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and cross-divisional courses.” 

The group wants the competition to increase awareness and communication between the school’s different dance groups and the Baltimore dance scene at large. Plus, they plan to host the event during their school’s Family Weekend which should give it an even bigger audience.

All Consciousness Crew featured in Central Magazine

Posted on December 10, 2008

Sydney’s All Consciousness Crew has been featured in Central Magazine and even got on the cover: