On finding space to focus

What started your journey to becoming a dancer?

My family threw parties all the time. Family parties, family events, I’m the one that’s going to get called to dance. Whatever music was trending or going off, I would dance to at those parties. Always saw myself in that light: “You’re a raw as hell dancer.”

When I got into music, it was always about the sounds. I didn’t necessarily know at the time that it was these jazz and soul samples drawing me to it to make me move a certain way. All of my musical knowledge is from footwork music. [I remember] Rashad made a track with a “Kick, Push” [by Lupe Fiasco] sample. I was 14, 15-years-old so it weren’t like I’d never heard samples before, but it was like, “Damn, they’re using some music that I know and love inside of footwork tracks?” I was like, “Oh, I don’t even need to listen to regular music anymore. I can just listen to this and I’ll be good.” I like all eras of music, and [footwork] sampled from all generations and all eras. When I heard drum and bass on footwork tracks, I was already kind of used to it because I’m hearing different sounds in footworking.

But being a dancer was always something I was drawn to. It was my quiet space. It was a nice little quiet space where I could go. The way these samples were being used, there was no words sometimes. I’d be able to vibe out to the sounds and move and maneuver. When I found footworking, in freshman year of high school, I was like, “Damn, here’s a whole other portal, a place I can be. I’m a super-competitor, so I can compete and get better. I see that I’m not good at it, so I can really work at it.”

What you said about dancing being your quiet space resonated. I remember as a young teen feeling self-conscious in day-to-day life, but when I was dancing I would feel free. It was a way of occupying space with your body in a way you wouldn’t do normally. You reach that flow state.

Absolutely. When I got into my first battle clique, Terra Squad, I remember they was throwing a party. While it was going on, I was in the corner practicing to footwork tracks, getting ready for [dance competition] The King of The Circle that was coming next year. I was fresh in the group so I was like, “I could care less about this party, so I’m going to go over here in this corner and I’m gonna lab until they cut the tracks on.” That’s how it worked: they’d play regular music, all kinds of music, but at a certain point you’d hear the footwork tracks come on. [Then] you could come in. But I was just in the corner, labbing on my own. That’s how zoned in I could be in that free space. It don’t matter what’s going on, I can go to that space and just make up moves or just be in there and just be vibing and dancing. That’s always been a thing.

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard people say, “Damn man, I used to always dance.” Or they got them periods where they be taking breaks and shit like that. I have not ever had a break from dancing. I’m not saying I’ll be walking around and you can’t get me to stop dancing. But I haven’t had them hiatuses where I’m just not dancing or not making up shit. Even though I don’t be at all the tournaments, I’m always trying to get better. Most people with footworking, they’re done at 20, 21. I’ve always been able to use this space to hone my skill and prepare me for wherever I need to do. [Whether] I’m angry, I’m upset, sad, mad, or feeling good, I can go to this space and channel this energy and I’m lost in it.

What does “lab” mean? I’m guessing “working in the lab/working on your dancing/inventing moves”?

Yeah, it’s all that. When we’re in studio producing, we make up moves sometimes while they make beats, so that’s a form of practicing. It also refers to inventing new moves/wurkz or combinations/patterns.

What is your regular creative practice?

It’s changed. I realized over the years of doing shows and performing and still battling whenever I’m at any type of event, my legs started to burn. Meaning like, after about three or four rounds, I gotta let my legs rest. Footworking is a real high-energy intense dance. Even when you’re dancing to smooth tracks, it’s still a pretty intense dance. So as I got older, I’m like, “Shit, I’ve never trained.” I just wake up and I’ve been able to do it. Of course, I implemented stretching. We got a mentor, Raphael Xavier, he’s a legend of breakbeat from Philly, he taught us some stretching things.

Then I was like, “I’ve got to take it a step further because my shit’s still burning when I go out and battle.” So I’m like, I’m going to create these footwork drills that I can start doing either everyday or every other day at home to prepare myself. And you know what, I’m going to start going to the gym. I’m going to start running as long as a typical performance would be. A performance for just dancing could be anywhere between 10 minutes up to an hour. I want to make sure I can at least run full-out for 10 minutes straight, at the very minimum. Then I’m going to do my leg training, really build the muscles in my legs. And man, it’s really paid off.

I haven’t eaten meat in almost 10 years, so, of course, maintaining a diet regimen that’s good for you is helpful, too. I don’t eat any trash at all. I drink smoothies and coconut water, smoke weed, and mind my business.

What made me do it? I wasn’t really fucking with the meat heavy, especially beef and pork, I wasn’t really rocking with that, but I seen a documentary called What The Health? and I’m the type of person that when I know something ain’t it, it don’t take no time for me to switch. When I do something wrong, it don’t take no time for me to learn my lesson. I had an older brother and I always looked at him like, “I ain’t doing that shit.” So it always hatches in my mind that, you better fix it now so it don’t become a problem. Once I seen that documentary, I was like, “Oh, hell naw.” I gave up meat the next day. It enlightened me. I don’t got to judge nobody else who eat meat. I just know for me, I’m good.

As a dancer, you center your body in your art. Like you said, the challenges of that include managing pain as you get older. What are the highs?

The highs of it is no matter what level I’m on, no matter what age I am, I can go to my old footwork crew’s practice and burn they ass. For about 10 rounds straight and all of them will quit. If I can still go to my practice and I’m working harder than the kid that’s coming in, that’s the high. I know for a fact that I’m giving it everything to be the best or be considered the best to me. Not to nobody else. I’m working harder than me. I’m trying to beat myself everyday. So if I beat myself everyday, that’s the high of it. I know that’s going to transition into everything else that I’m doing. With my work, with my music, with my community building, with my management skills, with my people skills, being able to see who can work well together, being able to sit back from a crystal ball standpoint and look at things: me centering dancing [means] keeping it as a focal point. That’s literally what footwork was based off, it was based off the dance first.

What were footwork dancers dancing to before footwork music existed?

I call it pre-footwork because it wasn’t called footworking and they weren’t called footworkers, per se. This is coming from my research, from my own study. I’ve found the majority of the original Chicago footwork dancers from over the years, the main ones, for a new project I’m working on, NEW GHOST. A lot of the original dancers, they talk about beat dancing. I know it’s not house music [they were dancing to], but I know it’s close to it. Some of the parties were called House Vs Beat. Music was slower. Footwork didn’t start until that ‘90-’93 window. Pre-footwork is ’89 and back. It’s a small window but you can trace it and see where it’s at. Traxman is one of those DJs in those time periods. I’m still learning about the music but I’m putting this whole piece together from a dancing perspective. Because the dance history has not really ever been tracked when it comes to Chicago footwork. And it plays an integral part in how the music’s shaped.

This year marked a decade of The Era, the footwork collective you co-founded. How has it evolved?

So much has changed within 10 years with The Era in terms of what we are, what we’re representing. When we started The Era, we were in our early 20s. We didn’t know what we were doing, we were just pushing footwork. We were like, “Man, the music’s taking off, we’ve got to push the dancing. Dance can’t get left behind.” That was the main focus.

After eight years of running with our heads down and working, just doing shit, the past two years we took our time to really reformulate, rebrand, and retool everything. We re-built our infrastructure, turned that into an enterprise. Under that enterprise, The Era footwork crew still lives but then we also have individual artist programs. I have my own program called LB Productions. I use this brand to produce large scale projects in all areas of art. Chief Manny, he has his own film company that’s under The Era. P-Top is a community and event organizer; he has The Ring, which is a youth-based event where he pays the battlers to battle each other in an exhibition. And Steelo is running the fashion brand, which is Stitched By Steelo, which does all of our merchandise.

DJ Spinn is now in The Era collective. We brought in Spinn to help us navigate the music lane, to push it to the next level with an in-house producer and really develop our sound. We don’t sound like nobody else and we actually footwork. We’re not people that’s outside of the culture who know about footwork or trying to talk about what they saw. We’re the people that they saw and are talking about it now so it’s a different thing. We wanted to bring in Spinn’s expertise and have him guide us in the proper ways. That’s worked really, really well. Bringing him to The Era was a natural thing. We were doing so many different things in terms of music, dance, art, culture building. It just made sense for him to be our music director.

You said one of the things that prompted you to create The Era was that footwork music was getting out there and the dancing can’t be left behind. That felt like something that DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn recognized. Did you used to go to the events they threw?

I wasn’t around at the generation they was partying at the pool hall or when they talk about the YMCA. I’m the generation right after that. Me and DJ Manny, we’re the same age—our birthdays are two days apart—but he was in the game way younger than me. I got in the game late, I wasn’t footworking as a kid, that was Manny. I was footworking when I got into my teenage years. I just got into the culture and was doing a lot of work really, really fast. I’m the one that came out of nowhere — people were like, “Who the fuck is Litebulb?”

I remember seeing you perform at Sadler’s Wells in 2011 with DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn at the Breakin’ Convention festival, which showcased dancers from all over the world. It was thrilling to see you put the music into context. How did that experience help shape your creative path?

When you’re doing it at 21 years old, you’re not thinking about now, 10 years later. Especially coming from the area that I came from and the part of the city that we grew up in. So to be able to go overseas, my mom and my dad were like, “You’re going where?!” They were nervous. “Chicago footwork? Hell no, this is not a thing that you go and pursue, let alone go overseas, you know what I mean? Like, who is managing this?” I’m not saying that that’s what they were asking, but I am pretty sure that went through their heads at some point. They’re not together so I’m hearing it from my momma at the crib, and from my daddy over there: “Don’t go.”

The way the footwork scene was like, everyone don’t get that opportunity to go overseas. So to be that young and to be at that level to be considered to go over there, it was more-so like, you know, we made it. I ain’t got no other career paths, I’m going to a community college, I’m still battling heavily, I ain’t got no job so it’s like, “Damn, we’re going overseas to footwork.”

That shit was like a dream. Of course it changed when we got over there, seeing what it was. But that was one of the greatest experiences I ever had because of the things that we were doing. That shit felt like Save The Last Dance. You know what I mean? The last party we went to, the way it looked, we ain’t been to no parties like that with all kinds of dancers. We’re battling krumpers. We’re the only ones from Chicago. At Sadler’s Wells, all of that shit was surreal the way it was happening. We’re sharing clothes though, you feel me? Everybody had on one of my t-shirts. Rashad had on my hat. That’s how real it was. From the ground up, we was doing it. That was the first time dancers ever went overseas for Chicago footworking as a group with DJs. It ain’t ever been like that. Rashad and Spinn were the only ones doing that type of shit. Just seeing what we were representing out there, it transformed how I wanted to represent myself as a footworker.

In what kind of way?

Damn, people look at you as this, you a figure. I’ve always looked at other people as the figures. I was a fan of Omarion, fan of Chris Brown, fan of Michael Jackson, fan of anybody getting that light without the voice, without the microphones. I can dance just as good as any of them in terms of footworking at that level. I realized that at one show that we did in Paris, it was a nightclub. A.G. hurt his ankle or something like that and he couldn’t dance. I think A.G. went once, I think Manny danced twice. I danced an entire set with Rashad and I was just up there by myself. The energy and the way the crowd was up there with me, I was like, “I can do this.”

When you’re in the zone like that, caught in wordless dialogue with the DJ, what’s going through your head?

That spirit. Back then especially, an uncontrollable spirit. That raw energy. It’s still like that today. It’s just more controlled now. But back then it was way more raw. I don’t even know how many times I’m gonna dance, but play that shit I wanna hear. It’s that bond, that connection. They’re going off our movement, I’m going off of what they’re playing. It’s like, “we’ve got to show these motherfuckers what Chicago about.”

It’s an unsaid thing: we all know we’re representing the city. The culture. We know that we represent that. So when we go places, we don’t got to talk about it, we’re just like we’re gonna give these motherfuckers our best. They’re gonna see Bulb at a whole different level. It’s the only way it can be. If I give them anything less, we ain’t represent Chicago right.

We’re just as much Chicago as any scene, any food, anything. We reverberate through the entire city. We represent that, we’re a beacon for Chicago. As much shit as they talk about the city, as much as people try to leave, Chicago footwork and what we represent, we are the city. We’re the backbone of the city, we’re the soul of the city, we’re the spirit of the city, we’re everything. People can’t get to Chicago without seeing us. We’re in the airport right now. When you fly into the airport, you’re going to see us footworking at O’Hare. That’s years of work. We’re coming for everything for Chicago because we know we’ve been overlooked.

We know people come into our culture, do a little bit, take a little bit, leave and go right back to hip hop. People be huge hip hop fans. But there was a point in time when everyone wasn’t a hip hop fan. There was a point. There was a point when everybody wasn’t trying to hear hip hop music, everybody wasn’t trying to see that dance. There was a point. Well, we at that point right now for footworking. We’re 30 years in. People love our music but we’re just not getting the chance to spread it. You got to keep refreshing these things, just like in every other culture. But we got the chance to push our shit to a whole different level, the same way hip hop did. Bring in resources for our culture the same way hip hop did. Then collaborate with hip hip because we love hip hop. Hip hop is a part of footworking, just like it’s a part of everything. So it’s not a shot at hip hop, it’s more-so like we’re getting ours for footworking and we’re doing it for Chicago because hip hop is a New York thing. That spread everywhere. Chicago footwork is from Chicago, it was bred here, our music is homegrown, it’s for the city. I love hip hop, I love everything about it, but I’m not going to act like we don’t got our own culture and we deserve the same respect.

Footwork has been a very independent thing. [There’s] been labels in it but there ain’t been no artists in it, artists on the microphone, they got lyrics, you know they words. We ain’t ever really had that. Hip hop got a ton of those: there’s a ton of artists that don’t dance, they just got lyrics. All we’ve got is tracks that people want to sample or use a little bit. We finna change that shit.

On The Era’s new EP, COMBO PACK, you guys are carving out new space within Chicago footwork music by getting on the mic instead of only using samples. What was your creative process?

We didn’t put out music for a whole two years. We had 15 to 16 songs that we didn’t finish, just ideas. It was like, let’s just focus on four, and that turned into, let’s really do it then. Let’s stay in the studio for 24 hours. We’re working too slow, let’s see what a whole day would do. [This past May and June], we had three 24-hour sessions and then I still had to go to Spinn’s crib every day to work on the shit with him. Spinn got his own shit to work with and he a father.

You’re a dad now, too. How are you finding it?

Having my son puts me into a different mode of really making sure that I push what I’m doing to the next level so I can make his environment even better than what it already is. It’s super fun though, I’ll tell you that. Even when I get mad or get upset, I know it’s all a part of it. So I’ll be mad for two seconds then I’m right back into dad mode: making sure I’m there when they need me, whether that’s providing or protection, making sure I’m attentive, aware.

It’s been an interesting ride. Pushing Chicago footwork and being a father is hand-in-hand with me. Trying to juggle it all and maintain it is a real task. I’m never really up, never really down; I’m just trying to be even keel throughout it all so that I’m not over-exuding myself in any areas.

Do you have a day job?

This is it. My last day job was working at Food 4 Less. I got Steelo a job at Food 4 Less. We was working in the frozen department. I was the assistant frozen department manager and I got my friend Tony a job there, too. I thought that was going to be my career, too. I was running the department a little bit, and I started seeing that the people I was working for were people that listened to somebody else who listened to other people. And I was like, “I’d rather not listen to y’all because y’all don’t really know what you’re talking about. I can do what y’all talking about more effectively if I just do it my way.” I ended up getting fired. I was like, “I’m not going to let nobody get that power over me no more in terms of how I’m going to make my living. If I’m going to do footworking, I’m gonna just go 1000% in.”

I ended up getting another job four or five years later at a baking factory when we was doing The Era. They made croissants. It was funny as hell. We was all working there [through] a temp agency. So we had points when we [did have day jobs].

I got a pretty decent support system. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten into grant-making and performances and grant opportunities to really create the infrastructure to sustain ourselves.

What does success mean to you?

Success, for me, means being able to stay in a creative state. Stay in the creative state that we in currently—this is a high level and it’s only gonna get better.

I want Chicago footwork to be perceived and loved and have the same influence as hip hop. Footwork is a global thing that everybody needs to understand, and people from Chicago need to know that it’s still here. Footwork didn’t go anywhere. That’s some real real: footwork didn’t go anywhere, you did.

So that’s the success for me: staying in this creative state and making sure footwork [gets] its just due on all levels. Most importantly from the elder standpoint. We’ve got elders that work with us, people that taught us. I found a way to create a project around me going to lab with them and recreate a foundational move called The Ghost. It’s one of the key moves of Chicago footworking. The project’s called NEW GHOST. I worked with all the legends of footwork in the past from the Southside and the Westside to create the new move for the youth of today. Being able to recreate that move with the people that made it up was like, this is incredible. And I did it.