GIGS
From leftleft to to right: From right: Designed For Joy Raleigh Rockers co-founders Kristen Napoleon Wright Sydow and Cary HeiseII,
Tu Minh Nguyen, and Brandon McCrimmon at CAM.
BEAT BOYS
Meet our hometown crew of breakdancers by AYN-MONIQUE KLAHRE
I
f you’re lucky, you’ve encountered the Raleigh Rockers already: Spinning and doing one-handed flips, egging each other on as they go from one impossible move to the next. The group—individually, they’re called beat boys and beat girls—started in 2007 as a club at N.C. State, and slowly grew to include non-students. The eclectic mix of members combine raw talent and creativity with loads of practice; the breakdancing crew may not dance as their full-time jobs, but it sure does look like it. The current group has twelve members, and a handful of the originals remain including Dillon Carter, Andrew Ngo and John Galloway. The Rockers evolved from a school club to a true crew around 48 | WALTER
photography by GUS SAMARCO
2010, when the group decided to “take it to the next level,” says member Brandon McCrimmon, by battling other crews out of state. The Raleigh Rockers get together a few times a week to train together—usually in the Warehouse District at CAM— and McCrimmon (known as Beat Boy No Sense for a move involving spinning on his head) is quick to say that anyone is welcome to sit in on practice or join the dance. All year long, the group battles in competitions and for fun, judges other breakdancing competitions and teaches classes for a mix of learning, rehearsing and sharing their talents. The key to breakdancing, McCrimmon says, is to see what