Coastal Conflict Breakdance Hits the Floor in Blackpool

For its third year, and supported earlier on in the year by the Grand Theatre’s Breakin Convention’, Coastal Conflict is back.  It’s bigger, better and badder then previous years. I caught up with Joe Rogan to get some background on the ever growing event.

Where does the event’s name come from?

The first word of the event, Coastal, relates to the area where we live and the second word was chosen as a slang term for a dance off. Names that have been used in Hip Hop history over the years have been ‘throw down’ or’battle’ – stemming from 70’s and 80’s breakdance. Instead of those we came up with Conflict Conflict as a play on words.

Who are Coastal Conflict and how did it all begin?

Daz, Scott and myself decided that there were not enough Hip Hop events going on in Blackpool and we wanted to try and change that. With this being our third year we are hoping for a broad attraction of dancers to attend from around the UK. Last year we had dancers down from Burnley, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds, not forgetting the fine home-grown Blackpool talent. We had a fantastic turn out and we are hoping for even better for 2014: a fantastic night of dance and a great night of music for the audience.  There should be a high level of talent fom Bboys and Bgirls from around the country to dazzle the audience with their moves, accompanied by awesome tunes all night from the North West’s finest DJs, The Shaolin Monkeys, together with MC B Fresh.  Daz and Jay Littlewood and myself judge the Breakdance competition on the night, which is what its all about.

Where is it and how much can we expect to pay?

For the third year running it’s being held at the Underbar, Blackpool.  The evening is open to everyone over the age of 18. It will be a fantastic night of pure Hip Hop, music, dance and entertainment and it’s £4.00 entry on the door.

What should we expect from the evening?

You can expect the whole team: Daz, Jay and myself getting involved, throwing down Hip Hop moves. Our backgrounds, dancing against each other, go back over thirty years. In 1984 my dance team was called the Floormasters and Daz and Jays’ team was called Futureshock. We would travel to various places in the North West every Saturday by train: Bolton, Manchester, Burnley, Chorley, always looking for the best crews to take on. My brother Scott also got into Hip Hop through dancing originally but he soon found his love for music production. Scott has been DJing from the age of 15 and he continues to develop his skills and wow the audiences with his DJ crew, The Shaolin Monkeys.

To find out more about the event, visit the Facebook page.

 

Featured image by Carl Gray.