Foreword and Interview by Jesse Sykes
The moment I had the opportunity to interview someone who has influenced me I automatically thought of Beau. I have always been intrigued by his interpretation of his dance, he has a very methodical approach towards movement and music as a whole.
He has always sparked my interest into choosing slower, more controlled, soulful music if you will. He essentially opened my eyes to control and processing my movement with depth and curiosity. I’ve watched him year after year, which takes some digging due to the fact he doesn’t post a ton.
Without fail everything he does post is clean, precise, and absolutely filthy. I’ve been trying to expand my mind as well as movement and he has provided an insight for me to explore and always create depth. The man is my all time favorite Waver, and dancer in general.
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Where did your roots with dance begin?
I was first introduced to the dance while visiting my dad on my summer breaks from middle school. Went with some of the local kids from my dad’s neighborhood to a teen club in the city of Abilene, Tx. It was there that I witnessed my first “dance battle” when a local dancer called out another local dancer. The girls went crazy!! I knew I wanted that feeling. haha
Who were some of your inspirations as you grew into the dancer you are today? Did anything besides dancers/music inspire your movement?
My very first inspirations were from the movie Breakin’ when I was introduced to Taco and Shrimp. They were my first real big inspirations in the dance. My best friend showed me a VHS that was recorded off the tv of both Breakin’ 1 & Breakin’ 2. Shortly after that my biggest inspirations were watching videos of Mr. Animation and Mr. Wigglez, Growing up in Texas a lot of my inspirations came from the Texas Bboy scene.
I was inspired by their movements and the control they had over their bodies. The more I started paying attention to the details within dance I started noticing inspirations in everything. From waves, to trees blowing in the wind. I’m a huge people watcher, so I would catch myself mimicking people’s movements, from facial expressions to the way they held themselves.
My biggest inspiration was probably that of a good friend of mine, Bionic Man. Just his creativity and attitude with the dance was very inspirational to me. He taught me a lot regarding history and styles.
What year did you join soulbotics, what would your advice be to people trying to get into a crew. What year did you join moonrunners? How have these crews influenced your dance?
Randm will probably correct me but I believe it was 2005. Haha. Advice I would have for people trying to start or join with a crew is just to crew up with people that are like minded with the dance and people that you have a great relationship with. A crew should be more like family in my opinion.
A lot of people think that Soulbotics is just a super crew of dancers that just decided to make a crew. We were actually all friends before we started the crew. We all met at events and all happened to be from areas where we didn’t have the resources or people to start our own crew. When we went to events we always ended up hanging out with each other and we always got a long on a brother type level. Our connections and personalities are all very similar. Which is extremely scary.
The Moon Runners flew me out to their event Area 51 in 2012. I had been in touch with them over the years and we had always maintained a very good friendship with a few of the members. I was asked to join after the event at around 4:30am in the morning. Me and Frequency were playing video games and I thought they were going to jump me with how they surrounded me. Haha.
I am constantly inspired by my crews. I truly believe I have been blessed to rep 2 crews with some of the most incredibly skilled dancers in the world. The reason I still raise my level isn’t to compete and travel any more. It’s so that I can hang with them when we all get together for an event.
We all live in different places so seeing new videos is a huge inspiration to me. SBK brings out the true popper in me and Moon Runners pulls out my creative side. Beyond thankful for my crews for the inspiration and family like relationship we have.
What are your current works with dance? What are your future plans?
Man. That’s a tough pill to swallow answering this. Honestly, dance is always going to be a huge love in my life. I’m constantly dancing no matter where I am. I hold down a solid 9-5 and dance, just isn’t a main priority in my life. I get down with a few of the local Texas dancers and that is my main inspiration at the moment.
Basically just playing my part in the learning and culture as well as passing the torch to the younger generation.
How is the community in Texas? Is there anything you would change good or bad?
The community in Texas has been real hit or miss. I believe we are at a point where everyone is old enough to leave the drama outside of the dance. We have some really incredible up and comers out here that I am very happy to be able to watch them grow and dance in the community.
If I could change anything it would be for the dancers to get together a lot more often than we do now. Just as the years go on we start families and jobs take up a lot of the time we used to have for dance.
Has there been any moments in your career where it was difficult to continue dancing? How did you get overcome those times?
Dance has been real up and down for me. I lost a lot of love for the dance during the time of the beef on Wigz chat board. I didn’t start dancing because I wanted to deal with politics. I started dancing because I wanted to do something that made me feel alive and almost take me away from reality of life if that makes sense? It was my excape. I just wanted an outlet for any stress.
At that time that’s all there was and it was a real let down to see how much hate was going into the scene. People were claiming they did this or they did that in the scene. People were discrediting and crediting different people. It was just a real turn off and that’s really where I slowly faded away from the scene and just continued dancing for me.
I honestly can’t say that I overcame that feeling. I just continued to do me and just dancing for me no matter what anyone felt about me or my dance. To this day I dance for only me.
Favorite genre of music? And why.
My favorite genre of music is R&B. Anyone that knows me knows that I am constantly listening to R&B. I work out to it, I dance to it and I go to sleep listening to it. Just something about the feel and emotion behind it that makes me dig deeper in my dance.
It’s one of the main reason I don’t like to compete and battle because I rarely if ever listen to funk. And I don’t want to get smoked to a song I should in all honestly know.
