Red Bull Flying Bach, which features German breakdance crew Flying Steps, will be hitting Sydney and Melbourne stages this March. With its unlikely combination of classical music and breakdance, Red Bull Flying Bach has had international success. Dance Australia caught up with Red Bull Flying Bach dancers Yui Kawaguchi and Benny Kimoto ahead of their Australian tour.
Kimoto is a member of Flying Steps and has been breaking since 1994. “I first learned breaking at a youth centre,” he remembers. “It was so fascinating, that I trained everywhere l was, like in school, on the street, at home – simply everywhere. My style developed over the years. I travelled a lot around the world and battled, trained and danced shows with other dancers. So I combined all those influences to my own kind of style.”
Swiss-born Kimoto is considered to be one of the most influential figures in breakdance in the world because of the new moves he has created. “I developed the Continue Air Twist/Air Flare,” he explains. “This became the most popular and most difficult power move. And that really makes me proud, that I did my bit to the growing and developing of the b-boy movement.” Other career highlights include, “The success of Red Bull Flying Bach, winning four times the world championship with Flying Steps and having my own b-boy character on the PlayStation.”
Kawaguchi’s dance background is quite different. “I started with classical ballet at the age of six, in Japan,” she says. “As I grew older and became a teenager I also started taking modern and jazz-dance classes in Tokyo. I was thinking to become either an architect or dancer. Then I thought, if I really want, I can still try to become an architect when I am 30 years old, but dancer, not.”
Kawaguchi has been based in Berlin for some years now and that has had a huge influence on her dance style. “Because the dance scene here was totally different from Tokyo, I was in cultural shock and lost my orientation,” she says. “I analysed my identity, different body-codes and communication styles between different cultures or backgrounds, which actually have big influence on body expressions.”
Until she started working with Flying Steps, Kawaguchi worked as an independent dance artist. “I worked freelance and created own pieces, tried a lot of collaborations with musicians, visual artists, kids, scientists, literature also other choreographers. Since moving to Germany, I had been using my body quite conceptually and it was sometimes mentally very tough. After a while I started to miss pure dance energy, then I met Flying Steps.”
To see Kawaguchi, Kimoto and the other Flying Steps dancers in action, check out this preview clip of Red Bull Flying Bach here.
