Once in a while in the b-boy scene some innovative thinkers create a standardized system for for judging. A new challenger has appeared and it is the brain child of b-boy Dyzee and the system has been championed at international events such as R-16. Let's take a close look at O.U.R system of judging for b-boying.
You can read in fine detail the tenets and goals of the O.U.R system at its well made website. Professional looking website? Check. To summarize, there are five categories for judging; foundation, originality, dynamics, execution, and battle. Each category has its own criteria, for example, foundation includes some very obvious and appopriate things like musicality, finesse, and confidence. It gets a little cryptic when mentioning Brooklyn and Bronx styles. What exactly does this entail? What would a b-boy from Berlin or Sao Paulo know of the Brooklyn or Bronx style of b-boying? Probably nothing. The categories are seem fitting but the criteria per category needs some decoding or at least some rewording for clarification.
Now let's pretend everyone has read up on the nitty-gritty details of our five categories and are now semi-fluent in the O.U.R system. We are going to perform a thought experiment and pit two b-boys in a one-on-one winner takes all battle for fame, glory, for a lifetime supply of Pro-Keds or whatever it is b-boys wear these days.
In one corner we have created a fictitious b-boy who is competent in all categories but excels in none. B-boy X is a poor college student with a part-time job. He practices just three or four times a week for a couple of hours. He get's past the prelims and into the quarter finals of most jams but gets knocked out by better in the semis or finals. He is an above average b-boy that is on the cusp of being good. Once, he even won a 1v1 at a small jam when everyone was away for Freestylesession. Let's call our hypothetical b-boy the moniker "B-Boy X".
For our next competitor we have none other than b-boy Cico. A veritable powermove God who couldn't out six-step a piss-drunk paraplegic.
Poor b-boy X can never score anything but 3, or good, for each category. CIco, with his world class powermoves scores a 5 in dynamics but a 2 for foundation. He scores a 3 for everything else.
B-boy X scores as follows:
B-boy Cico scores as follows:
B-boy X, who practices approximately 8 hours a week and can do some basic power and do footwork to reasonably to the beat just tied Cico who is doing 20 rounds of 1990 and double airflare combos. Fuck all. O.U.R system is flawed. You can replace Cico with an elite level footworker and risk the same outcome.
What the O.U.R system is doing is homogenizing b-boy dance styles. The specialist is at a strong disadvantage to the all-around b-boy. Cico's dynamics should be rated off the god-damn charts. He is arguably one of the best four or five powermovers on the planet. The O.U.R system cannot adequately capture the difference in skill between Cico and our humble b-boy X.
Variety is the spice of life and if Floor Phantom who throws a intricate footwork set and skips doing a powermove can get smoked buy a mid-level all around b-boy with "good" dynamics then O.U.R system needs to die in a fire.
