Learning Day: Pop & Unlock the Power Within (Patreon)

At the intersection of magic and dance, there lies a single man who refers to himself as the Dance Jedi, even though Disney has forcefully asked him to stop doing that so many times. Adrian “Lobo” Miramontes refers to himself as a “movement mystic, movement artist, and healing facilitator, in addition to the Jedi dancer. I recently enrolled in his online class Pop & Unlock The Power Within because I wanted to learn to dance from a self-help guru who looks like the twin Steven Segal ate in the womb.

Adrian normally charges sixty dollars an hour for “healing sessions,” so his $12 online class on how to heal yourself with the power of breakdancing is a steal. He also sells a monthly membership for $25 a month, but at this point, Disney has caught up with him and he’s rebranded to the Dance Djedi with a silent D, I’m assuming. Not going to lie; that's kind of a genius branding tactic. I’m considering rebranding myself as DDwayane The DRock DJohnson, three silent D’s of course. Try and catch me, djabronis.

When planning this course, Adrian spent a lot of time thinking up badass names for himself and not very much time learning how to record sound outside on a windy day. The classes are all shot outdoors in Sedona, Arizona because Sedona “contains all of the natural elements”. The backgrounds are beautiful, but the location choice poses a lot of issues, mainly the sound. Adrian’s lengthy introductions end up sounding like, “Dance CRACKLESWOSHSWISHSWOSHSWOSH powerful thrumming of CRACKLECRACKLESWISHSWISH what if instead of step ball change we step ball stay the same? WHAPSWISHSWOOSHKERWAP."

He also clearly hasn’t paid for these locations. He simply found a pretty hiking trail in a public park and hopes no one can stop him from teaching you how to heal with break dancing there. This means every once in a while, he looks off-camera nervously at someone passing by, like, “Please don’t interrupt my pop and locking. You have to pay $12 to watch me explain how to do a body roll!”

The class begins with a long discussion of the Yin and Yang of dance. Yin is the feeling of dance, and Yang is the technicality of dance. Together, they create a balanced dancer, and the practice of dancing will discipline your body into healing. "This dance path is a holistic path. It will help heal you. It will help your body unlock its greatest potential," Adrian says, but you can barely hear him over the blaring flute music he's aggressively popping and locking to. I mean, it is blaring. My senses are being assaulted by a flute. As much healing as this class promises so far, all it's doing for me is making me afraid of flutes.

After being introduced to Yin and Yang dancing, we move into "how Yin and Yang evolve into the 5 elements" of the Tao-Pop style, which appears to be what this vaguely spiritualist/karate style of dance is called. I can't find anyone else who calls it that, so I'm assuming Adrian has the patent. It's sort of the McDonald's Szechuan Sauce of breakdance karate: sweet, vaguely Asian-inspired, ignored by most, and considered mostly problematic by others.

Each of the 5 elements, water, wind, fire, earth, and lightning, is tied to a different element of dance. We begin with water, which is linked to the dance element of waving. "Keeping the element of water in your heart and mind when you're dancing will help your waves become much more fluid and beautiful." This section is more bongo heavy and includes several minutes of our teacher dancing at us while standing in front of a creek. Waving my arms around did not successfully cure my IBS, but I'm not willing to give up yet.

The next section is on wind-style tutting. Appropriately, the wind is wreaking havoc on the sound again. Tutting symbolizes that geometry created everything and is in everything. The tutter is the master of the grid within the human body. Also, it's how Benedict Cumberbatch does fake magic in Dr. Strange.

Apparently, tutting is named after King Tut because it is a big, strong dance style inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. I think of King Tut as an inbred, sickly child king with both physical and intellectual disabilities who died at 19 from falling down. If he was using breakdancing to improve his health and increase his longevity, I'm not sure that's a great advertisement for it.

After learning the king tut, the box tuts, and the grid tuts, we combine them all into one final tut in the section called tutting it all together. Now that I've completed two sections of the class, I don't feel that different other than having a desire to buy a shirt with a badass dragon on it. Hopefully, the fire section doesn't contain an even cooler outfit with multiple dragons; OH NO!

"Popping is associated with the fire element because…" (there's a long pause where Adrian clearly begins to improvise) "you need to have good energy and a fiery personality to do good pops." My energy is terrible, and I've worked hard to cultivate that garbage energy, so I guess I should skip the rest of this section. I'll only ever be able to lock it. This is my fate, and I freely accept it. I'll never be able to heat the aura around me with my pops. I'll never warm up my coffee with the power of my crisp shoulder rolls, and that's fine.

The Earth element is tied to footwork because, and you may not be aware of this, feet are touching the ground unless you're doing a Jean-Claude Van Damme double high kick, which does not count as footwork. Good footwork allows you to be grounded in your body and balanced in your life. It also allows you to do a sick moonwalk away from the enormous puddle you've managed to keep mostly out of frame for the rest of the video. Nice!

Finally, we get to learn about the "lightening-metal-robot-animation" style of dance. The course syllabus just calls it lightning, but again, there's some heavy improv going on, and some things were added in post. The robot is associated with the lightning element because robots conduct lightning. A lot of other things also conduct lightning just fine, including people, which is famously kind of a big problem for us.

Doing the robot will help "hone the lightning element in your being" because in order to do the robot, you have to be very in control of your thoughts and emotions. Here's my favorite direct quote from the lightning section: "The robot is the most modern of all the street dances because in order for it to even be invented we had to have the evolution of robots to even exist before the robot dance could even be born." I think this idea was thrown in because you can't attach an ancient mystical meaning to robots, but no self-respecting breakdancing class can leave out the robot.

The class ends as all things must, with a shill to pay way more money for private online dance classes from the spiritual pop and lock guru. I still have IBS, I can't pop at all, and my locking is mid at best. However, I'm now the world's first officially certified manly psychic breakdancer.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: M Jahi Chappell, also known as the Sith of breakdancing OH SHIIII-

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