This documentary produced by NAS is shinning light on the B-BOYS globally. Taking a look at break-dancing crews internationally. This may be a surprise to many, on how the impact of HIP-HOP impacts the rest of the world.
Yemen, torn apart by civil war and brimming with Islamist sentiment, hardly seems like a place where hip-hop, that most American of inventions, could blossom. Yet it has, as Adam Sjöberg’s new documentary Shake the Dust shows, capturing children and young men bounding up mountains pocked with cobblestones in Sana’a, euphorically honing their dancing skills against the setting sky.
Rolling Stone
An L.A.-based photographer and filmmaker whose résumé includes segments for ESPN and BBC World News, Sjöberg was drawn into Shake the Dust’s subject matter after he did a YouTube search on dance videos in 2008 and discovered a clip of Erick, who later became one of the movie’s main characters. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing,'” he remembers. Further research led Sjöberg to realize that “this is a global, street-level movement, not just hip-hop, but breaking in particular. This is a story I wanted to tell.”
