'Dance has been my life therapy'

Crazy Moves

The story of how Niels Robitzky became Storm is pretty interesting. Niels grew up like any other boy in the heartland of Germany. As a young man, he was drawn to the hip-hop culture and B-boying or breaking, which was a huge wave in the early 1980s.

And Niels wasted no time in getting a couple of music videos that helped him get the first feel of B-boying. “I was performing in a group one day. I was so involved in my performance that I didn’t realise I had literally swept a lot of people off their feet and knocked out a few of my fellow dancers. That was when people nicknamed me Storm, saying that I had moved like a storm,” Niels aka Storm tells Metrolife.

That Storm has a loyal fan base in the City was proved when he was mobbed by a bunch of youngsters during his recent visit here. They refused to leave his side, trailing along with him wherever he went and asking him loads of questions. “I get asked a lot of questions and I don’t mind spending time answering all these queries. Young people are so interested in the dance form and I don’t think it would be right to underplay any of their questions,” he says.

Storm dubs today’s generation as ‘fortunate’. “I didn’t have anybody to guide me and tell me right from wrong when I began learning the dance form. But today, there’s so much information available on the internet and experts who can share their perspective on it,” he reasons.

Storm can talk about dancing for hours together. “Dance has been my life therapy. It also helps me manage my anger pretty well. Dancing is all about throwing yourself on the ground and sweating it out, till you sweat no more. There are a lot of moves that I conceived and developed over the years and now, these moves have grown with me,” he says.

He observes that there are a lot of young girls taking to B-boying in a big way. “There are only a handful of B-girls across the world. Women are built differently. They don’t grow as many muscles as men do but the one advantage they have is that they can bend backwards, which not many men can do,” he quips.

Storm can dance to just about any music. “I can hit the floor for any music, provided the DJ is good and knows what he’s doing,” he beams.