This video literally saved my breaking.

Back in 2008 I had a knee injury (meniscus) from breaking that led to an urgent surgery. I was devastated. It was around the time I was feeling I uncovered the next level in my breaking with techincal moves and all the 10 years of struggle was starting to pay off. Didn’t knew much about the medical recovery or any details on the surgery but I got lucky to found a doctor thanks to Raffu’s recomendation that understood that I wanted to keep dancing.

After the surgery and 4 months recovery I started to dance again slowly but I realized I couldn’t do many of the stuff I was doing before. Not being able to dance and trying to find motivation again to go further I started to digg for videos. When I found this video, one thing I knew about this dancer – Antopio, it was that he got down with Flow Mo crew which is a dope crew from Finland.

After I saw this video I realized the importance of the soul in this dance. There is so much more fulfillment in being able to connect with the music and being in the moment than to just throw out technical moves. It blew my mind how easy he could connect with the music and being able to incorporate freestyle in between his arsenal.

Once I undesrtood that, everything was starting to get in place and my confidence went out of space. Not being able to do moves as before because of the surgery it forced me to unlock new directions, especially in footwork. I was starting to use my fall and injury into an advantage and that helped me to work harder and progress even more into my breaking. He inspired me to always tap into the soul as the music comes from the same place. 12 years later, I still use the same aproach in my dancing and couldn’t be more thankful enough.

And for those who reminisce over the Boomfunk Mc’s era that definitly inspired the 2000’s generations in breaking, he’s one of the dancers in many of their videos.