Was talking to a homie Alvyn, wanted to show the rest of you guys some thing in france they call Jazz Rock in japan and england they call it bebop. Alot of the same influences in foot work to house dance but there are differences of course. There might be difference between jazz rock and bebop but I dont fully understand if there is. I believe its all Jazz influenced and they may just call it these other names in these countries =).
Enjoy the clip though! Love the footwork!!
ODie

England Bebop

Japan Bebop

French Jazz Rock

We have officially launched our video archive (still a rough draft)! Now you can check out our videos, most videos being exclusive to Mind Body FLO.com. To view the videos click on “Video” in the navigation – or we will always have some of the latest videos on the front page for you to check out (upper right hand corner for now).

Check out the latest addition to our collection from the talented and beautiful Tsunami (FLO-ology/Soulshifters).

Yo whats good?!?!?!? We have some black gold for you this week Hope you enjoy, make sure you keep coming back to FLO Radio as we will be featuring some mixes by Chris Serrano in up coming weeks.

Peace!

Right-Click on this link and “Save As” to download to your computer

Mix by Co FLO

Black Gold:

I am the Black Gold of the Sun (4hero Remix) – Nu Yorican Soul
Tumbala (Oreja Remix) – Novalima
Babatunde(Ralf Gum Main mix) – Fast Vision Soul
The Ganni – Karizma
Lets get High – (Louie Vega EOL Mix) – Anane
Circles (Abicah Soul Remix) – Nathan Adams & Zepherin Saint
Desabato – Tarek
Swimming (loop it in) (Jason B & Nick Holder Remix) – Zaki
Streets of the Sun – Andy Ward feat. Sofia Rubina
Oh Lord (K Dope Remix) – Mishal Moore
I am the Black Gold of the Sun (4hero Remix) – Nu Yorican Soul

If you haven’t heard about the House Dance Project you should! Our good friends on the East Coast are in the thick of House Dance/Music culture and are helping to keep the roots/history and love alive. Here is a little bit about the House Dance Project. Respect to Byron, Cricket and Cam for keeping the culture alive!

The House Dance Project is an effort to share the rich cultural experience associated with Underground Dance Music. The dancers, the DJ and the music together provide a fertile playground for all who genuinely enter the garden. The music and the culture have evolved from its simple beginnings; and the dancer and the dance followed suit. The eccentric dances of the Paradise Garage; the smooth lines of the “Lofters,” and the point of departure at the Sound Factory Bar provided the backdrop to the stylized movement vocabulary known as “house dance.” Throughout the site, we will attempt to educate and illustrate various elements of the culture and hopefully inspire everyone to experience it for him or herself.

House Dance Project offers open cypher seesons and workshops world wide!  I suggest your grab their presskit here.

Click Here to Download the House Dance Project press kit

Here are my battles up to the finals where I lost to Cebo this year at HDI. Congrats to all that made the finals it was a hell of a contest (87 contestant entries).

Click the links below for each video:

Whats good folks, FLO Radio this week was recorded at my boy Jose’s Bachelor Party – congrats PLAYA! The mix starts abruptly as the music up to when the house music started was shake your booty music (for the strippers *wink*wink). Also there isn’t a track listing this week if you heard a song that you want to know the title/artist/mix to – just holler at me and I’ll let you know. Co.FLO@MindBodyFLO.com

Right-Click on this link and “Save As” to download to your computer

Mix by Co FLO

No track listing sorry!

SoulShifters Summit NYC 2009 video teaser – “Thunderbolts” featuring dancers from SoulShifters / FLO-ology, SF Bay Area, LA, Boston, Miami.

This is a teaser for SoulShifter’s docu-dance coming out 2010 “Catchin’ the Ghost”.

For more info check out:
SoulShifters on Facebook
Catchin’ the Ghost on Facebook

Music By Ezel EzelMusic.com- Thunderbolts – GO BUY THE TRACK! – http://www.traxsource.com/index.php?act=show&fc=tpage&cr=titles&cv=35606

This was Co Flo’s first battle at House Dance International 2009. Here in the house dance battle preliminary Co Flo takes on Takeshi (spelling) from Japan. The battles gets on quick and builds up some heat. IMHO Co Flo takes care in serving up his opponent whats due.

FLO-ology will be performing at the Crucibles “Fire Arts Festival” in Oakland! We will be on site at 8pm and performing @ 10pm. Come check out the Bay Areas great creations from burning man exhibitions to fire tornados!!!
Tickets available online at the crucible website.

http://thecrucible.org/

My party peoples! (Sorry long post warning*)

We are back and beat up! hahaha! I swear all of us are feelin the rough NY streets. Knees, ankles, black eyes, feet – you name it we are broken! This trip was certainly a great trip. I cannot speak for everyone but I can respectively speak for my self and my feeling about the trip and the scene/culture in New York.

Let me start by saying this trip wasn’t like my normal dance trip where I head out to become inspired and really open my eyes to other dancer’s concepts, style and emotion. This trip, at least for me, was to show the House Dance culture (as far in the world as it could reach) that what I exist as another of many, many dope dancers in the world. I wasn’t setting out bent to battle, upstage or MURDER any other dancers out there- just simply put my name out in the scene. I have been dancing (with and without style) for approx 12 years now (6 almost 7 years with style); I have always been dancing in the Bay Area scene even prior to legal clubbing age. Where am I going with this? Okay – here it is:

Dancing for me has always been something I looked at seriously, at first for fun, then for work, then for popularity. I realized as I tried to achieve these particular milestones in my dance the only one that seemed to really make me feel good was dancing for fun. Dancing for fun? Fun is described and felt differently according to the person you talk to. It had gotten to the point over the last couple of years that dancing wasn’t as much “fun” as it used to be. I wasn’t learning anything new, I wasn’t feeling more accomplished, physically I was feeling older – my normal routine of dance aside for partying in the club wasn’t “fun” for me. I then decided to revisit the pure feelings of when I started to dance and see if I could find that “fun” in dancing. Long story short, I did – what was it that I discovered?

I had discovered: history, culture, people, music and a purpose.

Aside from my main purpose to – put on a show at HDI; I went to New York so I could breathe the same air, walk on the same streets, dance in the same clubs that the originators of House Music culture had once done. The House Music culture in New York is INSANE! People love house music in SF, no doubt, but do they really love the music/culture? I have met many of the older SF “House Heads” in my days clubbing here in the city and any conversation that you have with them they will tell you an incredible story about clubbing in New York. Not to say we don’t have great DJs, producers and club patrons (and Dancers can’t forget the Dancers) – but SF seems almost infant in respect to what New York has done with their scene. Let me give you a small example: We had a group of about 20-25 West Coasters rolling through the streets of Manhattan, bumping TeN’s boombox, playing some FLO Radio mixes (ahhh gheyeaaa!) – just about every group of people on the street or in any park we visited that heard our music would let us know that its dope. They would do this by instantly joining our House marching vibe, dancing, or even just simply blurting out “WOOOOO! Okayyyyy!”. This is the type of reaction that you do not get here in the Bay Area, House music (shit man….music in general) just seems to be felt in a more evolved way out in NY.

After learning so much of the history of House culture in New York I am blown away with where it seems to have gone. From parties on docking piers where the average age is 40+ to parties in Fort Green Park for “Soul Summit” where the dance floor is half a football field of wall to wall people just grooving – House music culture is alive and growing! I only wish I could have spent more time and gone to more (I know I have just scratched the surface). The music alone at every single event I went to was beyond my expectations: grown, tasteful, beautiful house music was the music of choice mixed in thick with old funk, jazz, soul and afro beat. Yes their was electronic sounding music – but not during “groove sessions” type parties. You could see the look on peoples faces, the movement in their bodies – the smell of their hair (hahahaha); the music was really touching their soul – they were all coming together to enjoy this music we call House Music.

The cyphers….well the cyphers weren’t what I expected. Im sure that the parties I went to were not the norm, reason being we went to parties that everyone visiting, Europe, America, Japan were all attending because of the HDI event. The cyphers were filled with good vibes but from what I felt were not natural or inviting. In general the OG’s didn’t show up to as many of the cyphers as I would have liked to witness, but I did get a good feel for their vibe. For the most part the cyphers with the OG’s were very competitive, the energy was raw and to the point, no nonsense – no bullshit. It wasn’t about sharing the experience of the music and the exchange of emotion – more about “dope mufucka’s only”. With that being said I may have read the vibe wrong, but looks on people’s faces seem to tell the story all to well. Not to say I don’t feel like going hard and keeping the cypher raw and bull shit free – it just wasn’t what I expected considering the MASS adoption of house music culture throughout New York. In any case, I respectfully and thankfully have to say – it was incredible to see any and all OGs do their thang….thank you.

My purpose: I have realized that I want to be a name that is associated with House music culture in the Bay Area for years to come. I want to give back twice as much as I receive. I want more people in the Bay Area to experience and feel the same way I do about this culture and music. The more I practice the more I can give back, the more I learn about music, culture, history, theory – the more I can give back. The more places I travel, visit, experience, the more I can give back. The more music I listen to – the more I can give back. I want to dance and represent the beautiful feeling that music, specifically House Music, provides to me. I went to New York to complete in HDI and do well – represent and show people that even with a younger less influenced culture in San Francisco their is still love, passion and desire to feed the same scene world wide. I have accomplished that immediate goal, but the ultimate promise to my self will never end, I am going to keep dancing and keep moving.

Among all the drama with the actual HDI event, there were alot of people with us on this that have inspired me to keep moving – let their names and locations be known, thank you all – lets dance!

FLO-ology Collective (San Francisco), SoulShifters (USA), ODie, TeN of Quad, Tsunami, Slim, Gaby ‘Aqua’, Free, Seth, Orb, Orb’s girl (i forgot her name), Steve Rhythmz, Shade, GraVIDy, Oj, Gerald, Jihnee, Victor, We:Whum, Angelo, Julie, Manny, Cam, Jason, Larry, Raquel, Open House LA, Texas Dancers, Steve Motion, Noi, Corey, Jimbo (congrats on the experimental win!), Tine Machine, Nicole, Dan, Ndu, Eric ‘Ranger’, Zane Danger 45, Carlos, ATM Crew, Erico, Sammy (Boston), Dan from France.

If I missed you let me know – I didn’t mean too, but I want to make sure you are on this post cause it means something to me

Congrats to all the dancers that entered and competed in HDI, all catagories – you have inspired someone out their, at the very least me. Thanks to Pang Lo for supplying the cuts during our battles. Thanks to Ejoe and Red for not shutting me down when I for sure registered and should have been able to compete (drama haha).

A very personal thank you to Shade and my family (FLO-ology / SoulShifters) for being my hype men/women pushing me forward in the competition. I hope I made you all proud (clearing my throat) PARTY ON THE TRAIN, PARTY ON THE TRAIN!

I danced every round for my grandmother Rosalind Smith, I love you.

Till the next trip, peace my music luvin’ peoples.

p.s. stay tuned for pictures, video and other good stuff from the event of the next week as we will be updating soon