Crafts of Kammotionn

Crafts of Kammotionn

CKN is a hip-hop dance crew of Kolkata and they earned the title ‘Best Dance Crew’ in Kolkata in the dance battle 'Rasta Jam 2011'. Starting from a rivalry between two best dance crews of Kolkata, the convergence of the two brought into being ‘THE’ dance crew of Kolkata. Dancing since 13th March 2011, they stand strong with only a 1 or 2 loss. Many changes came through their line-up but everyone in this group from the very first, till now, remain as a complete family.

The Dancers:

• Anurag Ghosh- Founder
• Rahul Roy Chowdhury
• Siddharth Basu Roy
• Deborshi Dasgupta
• Mekhola Bose
• Dimitri Deb Das

Acheivements:

*Was awarded the title of Best Dance Crew in Kolkata in the dance battle 'Rasta Jam 2011'

*Winner of Channel V Nokia Indiafest 2012 Zonals Kolkata.

*Winner of 'Rasta Jam 2, 2012'.

*Winner of Eutopian Euphorians 'Beat street, 2012'

*Winner of Beat Kill, Eclecia, 2012

*Second runner up at Dance Dictators 2012

*Winner (crew battle) of Just Bring it Vol 2.

*Winner of Channel V Nokia Indiafest 2013 Zonals Kolkata

*Winner of 2 on 2 All style,7 to smoke Popping and 2 on 2 Popping in Hip Hop Carnival 2013.

*Second runner up at Culture,Bangalore 2013.

*Winner of 3 on 3 all style at the NH 7 weekender jam 2013.

*Winner of 3 on 3 Allstyle Battle at ‘To The Culture'13', Mumbai

*Runner up in 1 on 1 popping at To the Culture13 Mumbai 2013.

*Winner of crew on crew battle at Clash of the Titanz, 2014.

*Winner of solo popping battle at Clash of the Titanz.

*Winner of 4 on 4 allstyle battle at Flava, Kill the beat 2014

*Winner of Salah all style battle event at Delhi 2014

*Winner of solo popping Integration.

*Runner up popping final in Salah event. at Delhi.

*Winner of Crew on Crew all style battle at integration.

*Winner of 1 on 1 popping at Just Bring It the Scene.

*Winner of 2 on 2 all style at Just bring it The Scene.

*Runner up in 2 on 2 all style at Fancy Street Style Battle, Shillong.

Q. Tell us something about the history of this crew?

A. Me(Anurag), Siddharth, Manav, we were a part of a different crew C.O.P. as in Crafts of Passion and the other guys like Tushar, Harsh, they were part of another crew known as U.K. a.k.a Urban Kammotionn. Like Hip-hop movies, we used to have fights with each other as crews but then we saw that Calcutta was far behind in the hip-hop scene in accordance to our country. So we decided to work together, create a crew and work for the betterment of Hip-Hop in Kolkata.

Q. What was the motivativating behind this?

A. Bengali kids are supposed to be a bit lazy so what we realized is, and they are far behind in the hip-hop scene, than others in the country. We are just trying to make an effort to get together, to create a crew and be better than the others.

It is to let the youth know that there is not only this conventional ways of living life as in earning money that is like fair academically and get a job, we also want to show Indians, basically Calcuttans, that they have an alternate creative field in which like they can also succeed, earn money and make a living out of it and also to make Kolkata exist in the map of hiphop.

Like in Mumbai they have like got 6 good guys in one crew, but it was like two guys in a crew, one good guy in another crew, another two guys in another crew, so the idea was like a shelter to all the good dancers and basically form an all-star crew. That was our main aim to go national directly.

Q. How would you categorise your sort of dance?

A. I thought Hip-Hop was all about flipping, but then I realized it was not. Since when I have started dancing, I have come across a long way, changed a lot of my ideologies, what I used to think was right, but on the course it got corrected. Previously it was like we put everything like jazz and all into one roof into western dance but now it has been categorized, and now no genre like western dance exist nowadays, and it is like classical, semi classical, hip-hop, jazz, ballet.

Q. As a crew, do you all have your own specific roles and specialties?

A. My work is to mainly manage the crew as in deciding practice dates and all, Rahul does the choreography, Mekhola is also into choreography and she provides us our practice place, there are few people who are into editing the music for the crew, there are people who are more into public relations. So basically we have roles divided among ourselves.

Q. What was the turning point for this crew?

A. Turning point was basically to have all the best dancers of Calcutta in our crew, we didn’t have any competition with anyone and that is why we thought we are getting over confident and that is when we decided to break the crew.

When this crew started out, we started participating in different college fests and so far we have won 99% of them, maybe 1 or 2 we haven’t won.

Q. When this crew started out, you had around 13 members, but we now see the count reduced. What happened to the others?

A. There was a difference in ideologies in our crew, some people were more into battles and cyphers and going solo basically. But the current members of CKN were more into battles and choreography as well, but, the others who are currently not with us anymore were more into solos. For doing solos you don’t need so much of team work, which is needed in a crew. No offence to anyone but they had a time commitment problem and a lot of problems as well, and that was the reason they were not able to give time to the crew. We had a lot of misunderstandings, so, what we thought was, not to be enemies being in the same crew. It was better to be friends and get divided and fall into other crews. So the others they were Harsh, Tushar, Deep, Raj and all they formed a hip-hop forum known as the ‘The Big Bong Theory forum’. They were of the best dancers of Calcutta, and we still agree to that, so when you have half of your powers going from your hand, you really feel weak. So we thought if we don’t buck up now, we won’t stand anywhere. That was basically a turning point. Samsul and Manav who were in the crew sometime back also are not anymore in the crew, but we still remain as a family. Dimitri Deb Das has recently joined our family too. So, things keep changing with time. But we all be as a family no matter what.

Q. How is the national dance scene different from that of Calcutta?

A. Haha! This is a big question! In Kolkata, the scene is still young, it hasn’t matured that much and outside Kolkata, places like Mumbai and Delhi, people started doing this from a long time, they are dancing from 7 or 8 years of age. People in those parts have accepted Hip-hop, and it didn’t take much time for them to mix Hip-Hop with Bollywood. In Calcutta, talking in a layman’s words, suppose you are a movie director, you want a guy flipping from here and there and name it as Hip-hop, and people won’t bother to protest against that wrong thing. In Calcutta, people are way more serious and the scene is very much nascent.

Q. What are the qualities one needs to cultivate to become a good dancer?

A. Own character, people who can’t express through their dancing are more into facial expressions, in a way that is also important, the person should be skillful, talking about hip-hop, you need to be a bit of athlete rather than an artiste, and both things go hand in hand, artistry and athletism. You need to have music sense, listen to a lot of music. The newcomers these days, listen to music like Lil Wayne, maybe Honey Singh, and Blue Eyes and all steps and say we are doing Hip-Hop and they end up doing choreography. There is a fine line between choreography and hip-hop dance. Its two different things.

I would like to add, that people outside, maybe they respect these things, it’s not an taboo outside, if you copy from already done choreographies, people outside are more into copying other than producing new things, and being called yourself as creative doesn’t make you one. But even in Calcutta I see things copied from here and there. We are totally against this. I know what it takes for that person to innovate something, I won’t like to eat on his credit, it is his, and it’s his. If I make my thing it will be mine, and totally mine.

There is a difference between copying and inspiring. We inspire and if we see other people, we get inspired from there and we make our own thing. We turn it, we change it and then turn it into a new level up, a lot up.

Q. What is Hip-hop and what is choreography?

A. Choreography is normal steps. Hip-hop dance is something totally different. There are so many different steps and each step has its own vocabulary. Hip-hop, to be major is about the bounce of it. In choreography, it’s about the sharp steps, and there is no basic behind it but there is basic behind each and every style of hip-hop. You can obviously mix styles, you can get influences from hip-hop, but that’s not Hip-hop dance anymore, that’s choreography only. If you do some steps, do some waves, dub steps, and say its hip-hop, it can’t be like that. It will be a choreography.

Q. Other crews who do everything right?

A. In Kolkata, except us there is just another crew who keeps it original, that is CaVoRt WiD KrEaTiViTy. There is no other crew actually.

Q. So how to invent new moves and choreography?

A. People should first know all the dance forms under hip-hop properly; they should know the history of Hip-hop, like where it came from, and how each and every style came up, how each and every step was invented. Everything has a vocabulary. Music has its basics, likewise dance also has got its basics.

Videos inspire but can’t copy from that. We also started out seeing other videos but we never copied them.

When we started as a crew, we got inspired from other dancers and their videos, but now it’s totally different. Now we take inspiration from our daily lives, maybe how a cat is walking, may inspire us, to create a dance step. Maybe just one step, which might be stupid. I might use that in a funny way. I may see like a tube light blinking spontaneously and it suddenly goes out, I might use that thing.

Hip-hop tends to get inspired by martial arts people. If you notice the style it’s more acrobatic, you spin on your hands, head. You can relate this much with ninja, shaolin and all those stuff. So I may say I get inspired from the seven masters of Kung Fu basically.

Rahul: I get inspired from everything. I get inspired from Anurag. I may get inspired from an amateur dancer. I may see his step and get inspired from that and make something new out of it.

Anurag: Few days back I was teaching at our own institute and I gave a kid something to do, he was not being able to do it, he totally changed what I taught him. After he practiced it 5 times, he made his own thing. I also got inspiration from that. Nothing such ever came to my mind. He being my student, he could do this before me, so that is also a form of inspiration.

Q. How do you combine all the dance styles in one performance, as you perform as a crew?

A. Like many students, who like only one subject but has to carry the burden of the other subjects too. Likewise, I am into breaking, B-Boying, Rahul is into popping, Krumping. I too like popping and krumping, but the thing is I like breaking more than that. So we have to do the others, you know, out of love, it is remembered somehow, it’s not that difficult.

For performing, it totally depends on the feel of the song. If you notice the style Krump, you will see there is a type of aggressive feeling to it, you can’t krump to a happy funk song. Maybe we are to choreograph a 30 sec piece, maybe I ask Rahul to choreograph a 10 sec piece, and then I choreograph another 10 sec and say I ask Mekhola Choreograph another 10 seconds.  We three do three different styles, so in the end what I get is a conglomeration of the three dance forms. When there is three different styles in the piece, we also edit our music according to it. We don’t push our style into a song.

Q. How you zero down to such complicated network of choreography and music?

A. Both of them go hand in hand, our choreography is influenced by our music and again our music is influenced by our choreography.

Q. Dream platform for you all?

A. As a crew, we want to go to Hip-Hop International. When I started out, my objective was to create an all B-boy crew, and go for the event named ‘Battle of the year’, but there is so much lack of good dancers, that I couldn’t get hold of much b-boys, and formed an all style crew and eventually I had to shift my dream towards Hip-Hop International as Battle of the year was only for B-Boys.

Q. You judged the ‘B-Boying’ event in The TTIS Challenge this year, what would you like to say about it.

A. As a starter, I think this was a very big platform for all because many people were not aware of many things, but they went back home, learning something. But one thing I noticed in everyone is that most of them were crashing. If you crash on the floor during the battle, you lose points for it and eventually getting you eliminated. There was a girl, the only girl in the event, Nisha Agarwal, she was really good. She did all styles on the stage, and when I asked her, “Do you know what all styles you are doing?” she promptly answered and to my awe she said every style she performed very correctly. She was aware of what she was doing. Anyone who claims to a hip-hop dancer in the town, I bet most of them won’t be able to answer properly what all styles he/she is doing. But the difference between others and that girl was that she knew what she is doing. I was really impressed to know, that such a young girl of class 10 was completely aware. That was completely impressive. Being in class 10 and having such dedication shows your love for dance.

Q. A message to all the budding dancers.

A. The first and foremost thing, I would like to say is take care of your health, your body. If you think while dancing you get hurt, and you be strong to that, it would be a very wrong thing. If you injure your shoulder, let me see how strong you can be. If you injure yourself you will go out of practice and then lag of your counterparts. Safety is always the first priority.

Another thing is that, respect others. If you are a junior to me, you should be respecting me as you started late and be in an attitude like I am the best.

Another thing is that, keep a good knowledge of your music. Don’t dance to any funk or Club or Bollywood tracks while you are dong Hip-Hop on stage. Your music should complement your style.

-Sonket Mukherjee