Hanging with the Fresh Rice Breakers

By Ruby Gee     9/23/10 7:00pm

Forget Step Up 3-D. The Fresh Rice Breakers are the real deal. The Thresher gets the scoop by chatting with three of the five guys that keep this reviving dance group strong.

Within seconds of turning up the music, the guys start freestyling to the pounding beats that echo throughout the brightly lit practice room. But don't expect any Britney or Lady Gaga in this room or the coordinated mainstream choreography seen on MTV's "America's Best Dance Crew," for that matter. As Breakers President Weikei Yu explains it, these guys are strictly old-school hip-hop, though each dancer has his own style subset.

"I feel that old-school hip-hop is much more engrossing than modern hip-hop," Martel College sophomore Timothy Hwang said. "In modern hip-hop, the main emphasis is on choreography, while old-school hip-hop focuses more on foundation."

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He went on to explain that the different dance subsets reflect a bit about the dancers' individual personalities. According to Hwang, breakers tend to have an extremely dynamic, fiery, high-energy feel behind each of their moves, while poppers are a bit more subtle, emphasizing their technique more. In contrast, lockers require considerable skill and stamina, but their main intent is to make people smile at their goofiness.

"Each dance style has a distinct mindset behind it," Hwang said. "I was a b-boy when I first started dancing, but over time, I started to feel that the latter two were more in tune with what kind of dancer I wanted to be."

The Fresh Rice Breakers meet up at least twice a week for what they call "sessioning." Each practice starts with the blasting of obscure dance music from their speakers. From there, the dancers start working individually on the moves they want to perfect for the week.

"For practicing, I find failing really fun ... knowing what you're doing wrong," Hwang said. "At the end of the day, if I fall 50 times and get it right once, I still feel really happy because I know I have the capacity."

Practicing in an environment that champions the creative process and individual taste, the dancers rely largely on personal drive.

"Everyone's in charge of their own progress," Yu, a Baker College senior, said. "There's no apprenticeship or teachers, but we help each other out."

After a wave of graduating seniors, Yu began working on the recruitment problem when he started his presidency in 2008. Admitting that the group was pretty much dead before last year, Hwang sees the lack of campus-wide recognition as a problem the Breakers are all working on.

Yu noted that the academically focused nature of Rice presented the Breakers with the challenge of having long-term members.

"People come into the group, find that the time commitment is too much and [that] the learning curve is steep," he said.

For better or worse, the growing influx of mainstream dance films like You Got Served and the Step Up series has increased student interest in dance groups like the Fresh Rice Breakers. Notably, Asian-Americans have been increasing their presence in an art that has traditionally been characteristic of black and Latino communities.

"When breaking first became popular, people would grab some cardboard and a boombox and knock themselves out," Hwang, who is of Taiwanese descent, said. "However, I feel that Asians have brought their stereotypical 'disiprin' [sic] into their dance ... practicing more intensely and longer than many others, and many more view dancing as a lifestyle than as a pastime."

Smashing stereotypes, dancers of Asian descent have been seen extensively on shows like "America's Best Dance Crew," participating in, if not fronting, the winning dance crew from each of the five seasons. If anything, the physical stereotypes work favorably in the art of dance.

"Asians are just physically built for hip-hop - being slightly shorter is especially beneficial to b-boying, as it makes you look more dynamic and makes balancing a lot easier," Hwang said.

Most visibly, hip-hop culture has exploded in Asian-American communities along the West Coast, notably in the University of California system. Rice has joined this trend on a smaller scale with the Fresh Rice Breakers, whose members have been mostly of Asian descent in recent years.

Unlike their counterparts at larger public universities, the Breakers don't benefit from any funding; rather, they depend on resources they find by themselves. A transfer student from Louisiana State University, Baker senior Johnny Li admitted that the hip-hop community in his previous school was stronger and larger, in contrast to the current circumstances at Rice.

"[A] big roadblock is that none of us have a more talented mentor or a really good breaker to guide us," Li said.

Nevertheless, the Breakers always make a point of showing up at public parties to perform what they have been working on. As the dance floor starts to heat up, the guys start a cypher by forming a circle with their friends. Battling ensues.

The group also plans on performing at the Lunar New Year festival dance this year. Although they were unable to reveal any major details, Li shared that they will be making changes to their typical performance.

"I think this year we really want to highlight individual talent by [allotting] more time for solos during [the] dance," Li said. "The spirit of our style of dance is more diversity than it is choreography."

Li concluded lightheartedly that ultimately the point of joining the Fresh Rice Breakers is not to impress members of the opposite sex, but rather, to grow as a dancer.

"If you love to dance, this is a good thing for you," Li said. "But if you just want to pose and look cool, it's not going to work out."

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