4 Life-Changing Art Lessons From A World Champion Breakdancer
How to express yourself as authentically as possible.
Menno is one of the greatest breakdancers who ever lived.
He’s won the Red Bull World Finals (the world’s biggest breakdance event) three times and countless world-class competitions.
Here’s a clip from a recent battle.
(Check out the Pro Bboy Channel for more epic stuff like this).
Menno considers himself an ‘artlete’ and he’s one of the most creative dancers in the game.
He’s like Picasso.
In a dance where creativity is the norm, being original and standing out from the crowd is the hardest goal.
And few (if any) stand out like Menno does.
He has a course on Bboy Dojo, a platform with a wealth of Hip Hop knowledge.
If you want to learn Breakdance correctly, there’s no better place than bboydojo.com.
I was fortunate enough to get Menno’s course.
He dropped so much knowledge in the first 3 episodes (there are 18), that I needed to integrate some of it before watching the rest.
Since writing is the best way to deepen one's understanding of something, why not write a blog?
I wanted it to relate to more people, so I took the art angle.
But artist or not. Menno is a world-champion breakdancer.
The mindset, dedication, inspiration, and obsession it takes are things we can all learn from.
I thought I’d distill the first 13 minutes of this course into four lessons we can all apply in our lives.
Here they are.
1. Develop Your Own Style
Train your ability to see things other people don’t notice - Menno
Creativity starts with perception.
A movement, color, melody, or passing cloud is experienced differently by each of us.
To Menno, this is one of the most addictive parts of Breaking - the power to view the same movement from a unique perspective.
When you develop a distinct perspective on how you see the same thing, you develop your own artistic style.
Your way of doing things.
The authenticity of such art gives your creations a unique flavor.
When you train this ability, your senses pick up subtle details that stand out to you. Soon, everything you create will be stamped with your thumbprint.
You must tune into your unique way of perceiving the world and sharpen your understanding of it. It’s the key to creating art that resonates with who you are at the deepest level.
2. Foundation Is Key
Breaking is a dance with limitless possibilities. There are hundreds of basic movements with infinite ways to combine and execute them.
And in Menno’s opinion, mastering the foundation is a never-ending journey. There are always basics to be learned, practiced, and refined.
Building a solid, varied, and deep foundation allows you to create anything you want.
And this can be applied to any art.
For example, if you’re a sculptor.
There are several fundamentals involved, like sketching, manual dexterity, knowledge of anatomy, and so on.
Work on these skills separately, and you will start creating more nuanced sculptures.
Having a stronger grasp of the foundations, you will increase your skill level and have a deeper well to draw inspiration from.
3. Become A Specialist… In Several Things
Menno talks about his judo practice, something he had been doing since childhood.
And he had gotten pretty good at doing judo rolls.
He thought, why not incorporate it into his dance?
So he started doing all kinds of rolls.
In different directions. At various levels. From impossible positions.
He was rolling around and looked epic while doing it.
Safe to say, he got pretty good at rolls.
Seriously, who makes rolling look so cool and stylish?
Then he thought, let’s practice slides.
So he started sliding on his back. His head. His elbow.
Left. Down. Up. Right.
And he got great at slides.
This was one of the many ways Menno elevated his art, by learning and mastering specific domains of movement.
He says when you do this, it creates a ‘snowball effect’.
Each skill you learn begins to bleed into your other skills, building your repertoire and creating something unpredictable.
And depending on the skills you learn, you will end up with a unique form of expressing yourself that will transcend the norm.
You can mimic this effect in your art by honing in on one highly specific skill and spending a month practicing it.
If you’re writing poetry, it could be creating haikus.
If you’re painting, it could be working on a specific kind of stroke.
If you’re producing music, it could be working with one genre.
After a month of working on a specific skill, it will have a significant impact on how you express yourself.
Now, do the same thing with another skill. And repeat this process.
The snowball effect will bind the different skills you have worked on and take your art to the next level.
4. Know Yourself
Understand the qualities you possess and embrace them. - Menno
The champ speaks about exploring yourself mentally and physically. Finding your strengths and weaknesses and using them to guide you towards greater creativity.
When you know and accept yourself, you can trust your creative process.
You can work on your weaknesses.
More importantly, you can lean into your strengths.
You can take your peculiar way of doing and seeing things and turn the dial all the way up.
You intuitively know what you are drawn to. And this allows you to do everything else we discussed before.
This self-knowledge will lead to organic creativity. Your art will feel natural and unforced. An extension of who you are.
It will help you see that your artistic journey is yours alone, and you can express yourself through countless permutations and combinations.
And through this intense self-expression, you will authentically connect with other people.
Understand yourself and your art will become effortless.
P.S. This is just the first 13 minutes. And I didn’t even capture everything he spoke about.
If you’re an artist or mover, I recommend checking out The Battle Breakthrough Course on Bboy Dojo to level up.