It's DIVERSITY misrepresenting Streetdance XXL at Southbank Festival of Hip Hop

This is how you lie to a million people:

 A few days ago Diversity (or rather their management) posted up a notice on Facebook saying the following:

"IMPORTANT NOTICE: Diversity would like to let all our fans and the public know that they were never booked or part of the XXL street dance championship on Sunday 17th of July or the southbank hip hop festival. Diversity will always support any event that helps promote dance but are yet again being misrepresented and we owe it to our fans to let them know. Thanks"

Wait! Support? Misrepresented? Let's look into this closer:

Allegedly this goes back to a TV advert which used Diversity as one of the festival's attractions, but seeing as their marketing has been few and far between it's difficult to verify. If you HAVE seen the advertising then read this to clarify. 

Street Dance XXL, formerly G-Force Productions, was the competition that launched Diversity into the spotlight in the first place. While that might sound like marketing talk taken from their website, the fact that there were talent scouts looking for performers for Britain's Got Talent AND G-Force Productions were key to helping make the Streetdance movie, anyone can verify that by doing a little homework. 

As Street Dance XXL likely owns all footage and photography it's up to them how it's used. 

Channel 4 is a partner to Southbank's Hip Hop Festival and is covering aspects of urban dancing for it's Street Season this August. When given the video footage of groups that had performed at XXL in the past to cut up any adverts or trailers, producers instantly recognised Diversity and used the footage. Alas: It was somehow misconstrued that Diversity would perform there.

SUPPORTING street dance, as the person behind the Facebook updates would be saying "check out where we came up from before we were famous!" not, in so many words, "don't go to this event."

Fans of street dancing should be free to choose what events they choose to see, not be told in the particular way they were told to - three times! And anyone who enquired about purchasing a ticket would be set straight by ticket staff, right?

"Diversity will always support any event that helps promote dance" - Yes, if it benefits them. 

"yet again being misrepresented" seems exaggerated that footage has been used to insinuate their participation - its hardly like they were advertised as headlining. If XXL own the footage and photos, they can market using them as they like - the misrepresentation was likely on Channel 4's behalf. 

"we owe it to our fans to let them know" - Diversity owe their fans the free will to choose to go to shows they might not have otherwise gone to before to see other dance groups that work hard to make it.

Stop misrepresenting street dance and start representing it truthfully yourself!

Diversity at Into the Hoods press night

Is the public's interest in Diversity waning?
When I heard about this it made me mad: I got a message on my phone saying "Diversity are here [at the Into the Hoods press night] and they brought a film crew."

What's wrong with Diversity watching a show? Nothing actually, I'm sure they get invited to many a show. Observing doesn't hurt anyone. It's the cameras - they came into the auditorium with a film crew, meaning an unavoidable huddle of DV fanatics.

There are ways of publicising an event to get it into the gossip pages, one of them is to invite celebrities along (dancers are NOT celebrities!). It worked when Sadler's Wells invited a press huddle for the press night of Blaze: The Streetdance Sensation  at the Peacock Theatre.

The link between Diversity and Into the Hoods is as follows: Akai is in Into the Hoods; Ashley Banjo of Diversity fame stood drop-jawed at Akai's performance in Got to Dance; Got to Dance series two is auditioning and the interest has to tick over until it airs some point in winter. In the mean time publicity dictates the direction where their careers go (judging opportunities, TV spin offs, and so forth).

But the way it appears is, regardless of the relation to Akai being in this summer's production, by turning up with a film crew (complete with lighting) at someone else's show turns a LOT of attention on you and not on the show itself. Rather than focussing attention on what's happening on stage the attention is diverted away from it.

Why would you want to turn up at another company's event and make it your own? Hmm. Attention seeking? It seems slipping in through the back door and taking your seat is so out of fashion (the Queen is renowned for doing this when visiting the West End to watch shows).
Instead its all about the hype surrounding the celebrity, getting people to pay attention to you and doing it in front of hundreds of people when the original dancing was in fact on stage.

Like lambs to the slaughter fans ended up flooding Diversity rather than recognising Zoonation's contribution to the arts: over an hour's worth of hip hop theatre. People paid for tickets to see the show. Some may feel they got better value for money with a few celebrities showing up

Consider that Akai, last night's main attraction, turned up to Boy Blue's A Nite With Da Bratz a fortnight ago and didn't roll up with a team, just his parents and relatives. What does that say about people recognising entities better than them?

Diversity don't realise how fortunate they are to have won Britain's Got Talent against the choreographic might of Flawless. The keeping up appearances since they won Britain's Got Talent panders between securing successful commercial futures - appearing in the Streetdance 3D movie; Got to Dance judging; Dance4Life sponsorships, etc - to overshadowing others.

For the sake of the future of original street dance, Diversity and the media circus that surround them has to stop.

We've had our  say, now have yours. You can comment using the box below.

Beardyman Freestyle Project at the Udderbelly, Southbank Centre

A year ago, the first time I went to a beatboxing jam and knew very little about it, the host, Stig of the Dump, remarked that "this is a real beatboxing jam - some of you have only seen beatboxing watching Beardyman on YouTube!"

Well truth be told... I hadn't seen Beardyman myself! To be fair, it was the first time I'd investigated beatboxing.

Click here to check out all of our Beatboxing feature on the site

All is about to change, however, as following Shlomo's run of Boxed there's not one but two more beatboxing performances as part of the E4 Udderbelly.

Freestyle Project is bringing together beatboxing with slam poetry, emceeing, visuals and guitar for a hip hop mash-up of everything that makes organic hip hop so wonderful.

As your eyes peruse the flyer, you'll see that Stig of the Dump is also in the line up, as is the poet Dizraeli whose talent I have mad respect for (apart from trying to put one past the audience at Shaking Spears). JFB, DMC Champion 2007, is on decks, and 'J'm Black, who I'd offend trying to pronounce his name, is on guitar.
Throw a loop station into the mix and the result is going to be pretty cool!


The Freestyle Project is on Monday 7 June 2010 at the Udderbelly by the Southbank Centre.
It's £14 (Concessions £11) 8:30pm – 10:00pm. Box office: 0871 663 2538

Beardyman Unshaved is the second beatboxing event, a fortnight later on Monday 21. Prepare yourself for a standby ticket, as it's been entirely booked up!

B.Supreme Club Night at the Southbank Centre Spirit Room

Even though the B.Supreme Festival was in April (check out our report) you'd be foolish thinking that the dancers are just jamming about waiting for next year's show.

For the first time B.Supreme was hosting a club night at the Southbank Centre, or in the Spirit Room, to be more precise. Probably not the best place to throw a club night with its bare walls causing acoustic problems to the ears, or the children's beanbags and foam chairs laying about. It should probably be labelled a jam night...

Although I wasn't able to stay for the party, I was able to stick around to catch the showcases and battles.

Since the winner of B.Young B.Supreme 2009 was chosen in October, this year's winners, Retaliation Girls, and last year's winner, Stylinquents, have been working on some new and interesting pieces which made a debut that night.

Both Retaliation Girls and Stylinquents will be performing at Kymberlee Jay Presents: Serious About Street Dance in January - click the link for information.

Upon winning B.Young, B.Supreme, the winning group is given a mentor to help them develop. Retaliation Girls were mentored by Boy Blue Entertainment's Kenrick H2O Sandy who devised a piece dedicated to... Whoopie Goldberg!
Yes, it was weird, mixed in with voice samples from the movie Ghost, but it was different, although I'm not sure how much I like it yet.

Stylinquents' new piece was about drug dealing, which took on a more theatrical angle than their other sets, so it involved as much acting as it did dancing. It was dramatic, loud, and rough, with the storyline of drug dealing gone awry, but it suffered from not having enough space to express its meaning in, so hopefully it will be put on stage some time soon.

It was a shame that both the sound was so bad and the performance space was so small, because both performances look really stunted as the dancers tried not to step on people's toes who were sat on the floor watching.

Next was the new style battle to take the coveted title of being the first B.Supreme club night winner. After several rounds of battles in quick succession, it was Koala versus Rebecca "Famous" in the finals, with the judges voting in favour of Koala as the first champion.

While it wasn't an amazing night (£6 a ticket, or £4 when you say the password: Facebook!), it was the first club night B.Supreme have hosted and will hopefully improve as word about them gets around.

The next B.Supreme club night will be announced in the future, so keep checking the B.Supreme website www.bsupreme.co.uk where you can also follow their Twitter updates.

Dance Mob at Southbank Centre: Well received by all who took part

Last week we said we were excited about Dance Mob at the Southbank Centre.

The aim was to learn a simple routine and perform it on a mass scale either stood up or sat down. With the good weather on their side (a rarity for outdoor occasions in England) people of all ages from the furthest reaches of London town came down to enjoy it, the Southbank awash with Big Dance Drop t-shirts. We'll kick ourselves for not getting out and enjoying too! Check out the video below to watch the large scale the routine was performed on. Feel good stuff!

This Easter weekend...

Get yourself down to Southbank Centre which will be holding TWO events - with a lot of stuff to do for free!

The first is B.Supreme 09, celebrating the contribution women to hip hop culture, featuring a gang of special guests, battles, and a free popping, breaking and house classes.

The next is BoxCon 09, the international beatbox convention, where emcees will astound and amaze you with their microphone skills.

As I said, most of these events are FREE to check out (except for the main shows and concerts, all reasonably priced under a tenner), so get on down!

News and updates are on the site.

Have a great Easter

Flave