Dance
Globally hyped street dance champion Poppin'C reveals his 10 tips to take your popping to the next level.
Poppin'C from Switzerland is one of the poppers who elevate the craft – and he’s eager to share 10 gems of advice to improve your popping skills.
1. It's the little things that count
"Of course, you have to learn all the basics and foundations, but for me, the first step is to understand how this explosion your body makes when your popping works. To be a popper, you need to know how all your different muscles operate. Then you have to understand how to control each one of those with the music in order to catch the rhythm and make it all work together."
2. Dream big
"From the first point I started dancing, I said to my mom, 'Mom, I want to be good enough so that one day I can live off dancing. I want to travel around the world, work and be a dancer forever. I want to teach. I want to join big battles and win a world championship.' In 15 years, I have got everything that I said. Set your goals to do the impossible, and once you achieve that, push to go further still. Now, for me, it's time for the next step. I've raised the level of hip-hop culture in Switzerland, especially for popping, and I'm proud of that. But I want to inspire and push the new generation to grow the scene even further. I can't stress how important that is for me. I want to create popping schools worldwide with the top dancers and share my style not just in Switzerland, but as far as it can reach."
3. Always be a student
"I've won a lot of battles, I've achieved a lot, but if you want to stay at the top or be successful, you need to take workshops. For me, you are always a student. I am continually learning every day. You need to constantly evolve and try new things to keep your passion alive. "
4. Manifest greatness
"When I was started popping, I watched a lot of battles. I was lucky enough that I saw pretty much all of the famous poppers. At that moment I said to myself, 'Bro, you have to work hard if you want to get to that level.' I trained every day and repeated that to myself, even though I come from a place where popping didn't exist. I was so determined to show the people my own style and that I could do it. In the end, only six months after I started popping, I won my first pre-selection battle at Juste Debout. You could say it was because I was only 17 years old and not scared of anything yet, but I know for sure it was because I refused to consider the alternative that I couldn't do it, you feel me?"
5. You can't buy determination
"I've danced in so many different countries and experienced so many cultures that are fuelled by hard-working dancers, passionate about learning the knowledge. You have rich places like China, Japan, LA, Russia, etc. And countries that are not so rich like Kazakhstan. They have no money there, no resources like 5G, YouTube, Instagram or workshops and studios full of crazy OGs where you can learn 24 hours a day! But these dancers in Kazakhstan are fire. They work and work and work. They try to find a way to learn popping whatever it takes, they invent moves and they're doing whatever it takes so that they can take their scene somewhere else. I appreciate countries like that so much.
"Here in Switzerland, people like all the commercial things. Still, they're attracted to the easy way. When they see that a style of dance is too difficult or too technical, they give up. They don't have the concentration or the mindset to work out and train to learn."
6. Flex the foundations across all street styles
"If you watch street dance now in 2021, you can see how much popping is growing and influencing all the styles. You can find tutting, robot, waving and the basic popping elements coming from all types of street dancers now. It's so dope to see because I've always seen popping as the original foundation to all top dancing. Popping and locking are the first styles you see when you start diving into the history of street dance, and it's great to see the foundations in toprock, freestyle footwork, and so many other genres out there right now."
7. The popping scene is growing, but finding fame isn't easy
"Breaking is such a globally hyped dance. The first time you see breaking, it's really spectacular. When B-Boys and B-Girls do some power moves audiences, big-name artists, rappers and sponsors around the world look at that you're like, 'Fuck, it's really athletic! It's a show.' Popping, for me of course, is a really nice dance. It's really difficult, it's really technical, but for those who don't know and see popping for the first time... and especially if it's someone fresh dancing... we make it look too easy! Most people will respond like, 'Okay, he's doing the robot, he's waving, I could do that.' So becoming famous with it is not easy. Take your time, don't be too fast wanting to get to the top and be focused on what it is you want from it."
8. Free your mind and the rest will follow
"When it comes to training, you have to be focused on the thing you want to improve, work hard, be disciplined and don't eat crap.
"When it comes to finding your style, that's where it gets tricky. Popping is free, you have to let your mind go. There's so much accessibility and immediacy out there that I think some of the new-gen stops messing around, experimenting and creating moves. And that's when greatness happens.
"When you start popping, you look like everybody. You look like a caricature, you know. At the start, I watched many videos and took a lot of inspiration from Asia and LA and a lot of people and places. I practised, practised, practised, and I looked super clean.
"But when I watch videos from back then, my style is not clear. The way I was popping looks like a rough draft. Once I just followed my feeling and got comfortable with who I was, that's when my style exploded. I started to really play with my dance, and my own unique variations of all these moves I had practised started taking shape."
9. It's better to lose a battle being yourself than someone else
"It's important to know as a popper that you can't have love from everybody. In a battle it's complicated. There are so many odds at play. The judges are always changing, the vibe is always changing, the music and DJ are changing. Sometimes the judges and the crowd just don't like you, or they're just not feeling your style, but it's not personal. Don't adapt to what you think is hype because that's something you can't know. Don't try to do the same thing we've already done on the popping scene. Don't try to replicate the same personality or feeling we already had in the game.
"The most crucial thing in a battle is to do you and just do what you love. That way, you always win. If you lose not even being yourself... damn, that's a whole other type of loss to get over."
10. Don't sweat the technique
"Some of the new-gen, like I said earlier, can be too focused on technique and moves, moves, moves. You have poppers now who are like machines. They kill the beat. They study and memorise the rhythms. Don't get me wrong, I respect those type of poppers a lot.
"But the difference is this. When I did an e-battle recently, the DJ played a track that the other popper I was competing against didn't know. This guy is one of the best poppers, and his skills are mad, but when he danced, he had no feeling. He lost his vibe. Everything you usually see from him was missing, and I won.
"You have poppers who are like poets that express all types of crazy beats and adapt to obscure rhythm because they're tuned in to 'the feeling'. I keep repeating that, but look, if you watch those OG Soul Train poppers, they don't kill the beats, they aren't even technical. But the reason so many of us are still emulating those dancers and looking up to them is that they were so unique. They were interpreting the music in totally different ways from each other, and they have this pure mad passion that you can still feel through the screen decades later. I can't speak for all poppers, but that's what matters to me."
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