Circlekingz 2011 aka The Revolution

CIRCLEKINGZ 2011 AKA THE REVOLUTIon

Since I started Circlekingz in 2005, I always wanted to bring something real that was connected to the bboy culture, focusing on the vibe and atmosphere more than on any other stuff as big price money, big stage, paying guest to enter the jam, sleeping in bling bling hotel, etc.

Circlekingz was a jam made for the bboys and not for what I called the “civilians” (mainstream people who come to see a breakdance competition). That’s maybe the reason why I never had any big sponsors and also why I still keep on struggling to make it every year…

Moreover, I have always tried to bring CKZ from a point A to a point B, and that’s why Circlekingz has always kept on evolving through the years. Indeed, initially, CKZ was a normal competition that aimed to give a lot of time to the bboys to enjoy dancing in the cyphers; it then became a jam where they had to cipher in order to be qualified for the battles because too many bboys where focusing on the battles and the funny “cypher part” was disappearing little by little. Over the years of the Cypher qualifications era, I saw that the bboys were improving their understanding of the Cypher philosophy and I think 2010 was quite the perfect jam (a perfect balance between competition and Cypher). Nonetheless, there is now another aspect of the scene that I need to focus on….

A lot of people are trying to turn our Art into a sport, making up some counting system points for judges etc….and the number of bboy competitions has significantly increased, resulting in almost every country of the world having competitions almost every week. This fact has pros and cons…but it’s high time I honoured the word JAM within the bboy scene. I have chosen to use the word “Jam” along with “Circlekingz” because that’s how I pictured the perfect event…and CKZ was indeed a competition with the vibe of a jam. I was dreaming that one day CKZ would become a real jam…And it’s time for it to happen. CKZ is about to reach point B.

There are already a lot of competitions and I want to offer something a bit different in the bboy scene.

CIRCLEKINGZ 2011 aka « The Revolution », because there are going to be no more judges.

As I said, the scene is taking the wrong direction (becoming a sport because of the increasing number of jams, while trying to have a common judging point system for everyone, and even creating a bboy league to try to rank crews etc..) Would you be able to decide whether Picasso or Van Gogh was a better painter? When you reach a certain level of excellence in any artform, it all comes to personal taste and opinion…that’s why I will let people decide for themselves who is their winner of the battle and that’s why no judges are going to make it official.

The system is going to be the same as before: cypher qualification for 2-3 hours, then some people are going to make match up battles with the best crews of the cipher qualification. There is going to be around 10-12 big battles with no time limit, no round limit, and no judges. At the end of the day, 7$ are going to give the CIRCLEKINGZ title to the crew that has been the KING of the weekend according to us, representing every aspect of bboying (style, attitude, freshness and skills). A CirclePrinz Award might be given to the most upcoming crew too.

I hope this new perspective will open some minds and bring to our scene something different as a classic competition.

See you on the 6^th of November in Switzerland!

Peace

Amjad,7$