As soon as local performer Brothers Helping Brothers found the right part in the DJ’s mix, he gave the signal to his students to hit the break dancing mat. A grin emerged from BHB’s face as he jumped toward the linoleum mat taped to the parking lot of the Central Community House, located at 1150 E. Main St.
Curious passers-by tried to make sense of the turntables, performers and blaring speakers. Within seconds the student break dancers were executing handstands, aerial flips, windmills, worms, and countless other moves, working in tandem with a beat that echoeed off the walls of surrounding buildings. This is just another day for the 34-year-old Columbus native whose legal name is Brothers Helping Brothers.
The year-round DJ and break-dancing workshop taught by BHB is the brainchild of CAPACITY, an urban group which aims to reach out to Columbus’ youth and develop their creative abilities. CAPACITY is sponsored by the Columbus Association for Performing Arts, but the workshop is just one of many held by the program. Air-brushing, writing, mural design and open art studio programs are also available for 12- to 19-year-olds. Open Mic Night, also offered by CAPACITY, is held several times a month for people of all ages wanting to take control of a microphone and an audience.
“CAPACITY helps people foster a belief in their ability to create and be creative,” said Maggie Livisay, 19, a sophomore at Otterbein and CAPACITY program assistant. “We tell these kids from the beginning that ‘you’re a dancer’ or ‘you’re an artist’ so that they believe in themselves.”
“It’s a safe environment where kids can be creative,” said Lisa Lloyd, a 30-year-old program assistant who joined the organization more than 5 years ago. Lloyd and BHB said there is a lot more than creativity going on in the workshop. Some students who are 18 years old and younger are gaining money and fame from their high-energy craft.
“Fatty Koo, a real positive crew that now performs on the BET channel, used to do open mic tours with CAPACITY,” BHB said.
The success stories do not stop there. BHB said others in the group are dancing for major acts, opening their own DJ-equipment companies, teaching workshops at Ohio Wesleyan University and more.
BHB also said workshops like his have given kids like 18-year-old Lee Carroll the chance to change their lives for the better. Carroll joined the workshop when it started in November of 1999 and took full advantage of the opportunity, BHB said.
“You wouldn’t believe how the arts turned Lee around; it’s a beautiful thing,” BHB said. “He’s a singer, a dancer, plays piano… Before, he was lost with all that energy, using it the wrong way.”
Carroll is now being paid to tour with Rated R, a group known well in the R&B world, BHB said.
“I was into gang-banging and running the streets before I came here, doing stuff I shouldn’t have done … stuff my mom didn’t approve of,” said Carroll, who moved from Nashville, Tenn. to Columbus when he was 5. Carroll said he is now an active church member and has a steady job at Kroger.
“This program is incredibly viable – it gets negative things off (kids’) minds because what we do is fun,” Carroll said. “This class gives you energy and you give everyone else energy. If you’re angry, you can express that anger in dance.”
DeVry University and break dancing student Ricky Brown, 18, said he never would have guessed he could break dance before he joined the program.
“CAPACITY is like a box cutter, everyone has a box of creativity that they don’t open up,” Brown said.
Brown also took CAPACITY workshops in graphic design which allowed him to work with software he would normally would not have access to.
Despite the apparent success of the workshop and CAPACITY, BHB is concerned about the future.
“I think a lot of people are missing the information about all of this,” he said.
“If we had more money, nobody would fall through the cracks,” B.H.B. said. “There’s plenty of millionaires out there – somebody is sitting on some loot we could really use.”
To offset financial problems, BHB said he donates more than his time to keep the program going at full speed.
“I’ve been bringing my equipment because CAPACITY’s is either broken or they don’t have it,” B.H.B said. “All these speakers, this mixer, that mat – they’re mine. That’s how much I care.”
BHB said he would like to see a strong relationship develop between CAPACITY and Ohio State and wants students of any age to know that they have many opportunities to get involved. Lloyd and Livisay also said that even if students cannot participate in the workshops, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities that can be discovered through CAPACITY’s website, ecapacity.org.
Only OSU’s Mansfield campus has an official club involving break dancing, and it is coupled with a martial arts club. The last club at OSU that catered to break dancing disappeared when Michael Keida, the club’s founder, graduated and moved to Seoul, South Korea.
“We would love to do workshops and performances for OSU to show people what we do, get some students involved,” BHB said. “That would be a beautiful thing.”
