Breaking
Breaking
It’s the family you have and the family you make for B-Boy Lee
Meet B-Boy Lee, the young breaking phenomenon from the Netherlands taking the dance world by storm with his creativity, explosive moves and signature style.
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Lee is one of the few b-boys who is able to stand out from the crowd due to a unique vibe, style and mindset that differs from so many other breakdancers. So it doesn't come as a surprise that he has emerged as one of the current crop of new superstar b-boys. We met Lee to find out what shaped his career and how he became the man he is today.
01
Born into the breaking culture
The son of a b-girl, he was born into breaking, but there's more to Red Bull BC One All Star B-Boy Lee's story, whose breaking crew became like a second family and helped him develop his own style and creative expression.
Lee's mother didn’t just bring him onto the planet – a b-girl herself, she used her breaking skills to entertain Lee as a toddler. Now 21, the Dutch breaker is known as B-Boy Lee and it's all because of his mom's moves.
Hear B-Boy Lee's full story on the Beyond the Ordinary podcast:
"I would say my mom really helped me a lot, like in the beginning, and not even really teaching me, you know. It was just me looking at her and thinking, 'Oh yeah, let me just try this.'
"You know how kids and babies start to mimic their parents, that’s exactly what I did at that young age. I was two-years-old and already standing on my head before I could even walk and talk properly.
"And it was never like, 'You have to do this in this way and you have to put your arm here.' It was never like that. It was just me trying to mimic my mom."
B-Boy Lee throws down at the Red Bull BC One World Final 2021
© Gniewko Głogowski/Red Bull Content Pool
It was just me trying to mimic my mom.
His mom had style – plenty of it. She hung around with the Turn It Loose crew and her breaking name was Molecule. She was small, fast and her footwork was very detailed, so you had to look closely to see her intricate moves. In 1998, she set up the Plan B B-Girl Express, a place for up-and-coming b-girls to come together, train and battle. Back then, it was even harder than today to make a career out of breaking, so it's no surprise that she soon left the breaking world and got into fashion design. But it's very clear: without her involvement in breaking, it’s unlikely that Lee would be the dancer he is today.
Minus the fact that his mom was a b-girl and that Lee himself was a toddler standing on his head, other parts of his life were pretty predictable: school, playground and (although it would eventually prove to come in a clear second to his love of breaking) football.
"I was a good kid at school, I did my homework, I did my stuff, but I wasn't really liking learning," he says. "As a kid you want to play around a lot and try some new stuff, so from six-years-old until eight I was playing football."
Nice kid, did his homework, even if he didn't want to – all in all, it was a pretty normal life for an Amsterdam kid. Things just clicked when he met one of his mom's old friends and his mentor, Shailesh Bahoran, a much older breaker from the Illusionary Ruckus Crew.
Lee is ready for this year's Red Bull BC One World Final
© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
02
How B-Boy Lee found his second family in The Ruggeds
Shailesh hung out at a spot called Nowhere on the east side of Amsterdam, near the train station, and that's where B-Boy Lee started to really find his game, as he mimicked Bahoran. Shailesh – now a choreographer with the Netherlands National Ballet – didn't really focus on teaching young Lee. Like he did with his mom before, they just had fun. Shailesh would do a move and Lee would imitate and then tweak it, the dance and movement evolving over time.
However unusual it was for a grade-schooler to hang out with almost 20-year-olds, it turned out to be an important fork in the road. After a few years of learning from Shailesh, Lee became even more strongly attached to his identity as a breaker and he knew he wanted to join a crew. But not just any crew: "I saw The Ruggeds at the Dutch B-Boy championships and I told my mom, 'These guys are crazy men, I'm trying to be like them, be with them, practice with them.'"
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Lee wanted to be in The Ruggeds. He was nine and they were in their late teens. But he had a drawing. Colored pencil, not crayon. And in the drawing, he asked to be in the crew.
"I saw them in 2009 and then in 2010 I made a drawing saying, 'Can I please join your crew?’," he recalls. "I gave it to them, and they were like, 'OK.' They were contemplating and talking about this, like, 'Should we let a little boy join the crew?', you know?”
I made a drawing saying, 'Can I please join your crew?'
"I was really young, nine-years-old, and they were 18 or 19 – a very different phase of life. Eventually, I took some master classes, joined the crew and since 2010 I've been doing battles with them, commercial shows and theater shows as well, a little bit of everything."
Being in a crew at that time meant Lee had to work, train and travel to competitions, but this wasn't a big-budget thing. And for the first few years, Lee's mom came along, although eventually she just had to trust Lee and the crew.
Lee is a freshly minted Red Bull BC One Allstar
© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
"My mom didn’t really have a lot of money at the time, so for her to buy tickets for herself was expensive," he says. "The first few years, she joined me and went around with me, but then eventually she said, 'OK, I trust these guys.' I don’t know the exact name of it, but somebody from The Ruggeds had to fill in a form so they could travel with me, because I was still young and if we got to the border security they had to show the form."
03
Picking breaking over football
As Lee went through his teenage years, his conviction actually wavered. At times, he'd step back from full commitment to breaking and there was still the obligation of school, and the pull of football – a much more common dream for a 16-year-old to have. The daydream of football is easy, but he had to choose.
"To combine football and breaking was impossible for me, because I already knew that if I was going play football seriously whilst already being on a certain level with breaking, I would get injured from football and unable do breaking, so I had to make a choice. Obviously, my first love was breaking, I was already good at it and I was with The Ruggeds for a very long time. I'd already told them, 'I just want to finish school, go back to you all, tour abroad, do international stuff and get back.'"
Lee put the breaking on pause to focus on high school, graduating in 2018, but his first love and the promise he made to his crew was always in the background.
"When I was in school, I already started to break more and when I graduated, I said to my crew, 'OK, let’s go. I'm not going back to school anymore, I'm not going to study, I'm going to put my full focus into breaking.' And that's exactly what I did. Ever since 2018, it's been more battles, more international contests, commercial shows, show gigs and theatre shows."
Over the next few years, Lee started to develop his style. Breaking, an art and a sport, is about expressive performance, power, strength, agility and skills. But ultimately, it's creativity that shines through – and Lee has plenty.
04
What makes B-Boy Lee stand out?
"I would say the good points from my breaking is that I'm unique. There isn't anyone else that dances like me. I would say, I break differently. I use a lot of slides, so I'm using certain body parts to slide over the floor and stuff. I think when I dance, I’m super free and if you look at me I'm someone that doesn't think a lot before battling. I'm more an in-the-moment type of B-Boy."
Breaking is a rather untraditional sport. There are very few trainers and coaches, you learn from fellow breakers. And, of course, your path to a career is difficult to define. Is success defined by contest wins or accolades? Social media presence? Making money and paying bills?
Over the years, Lee has made a name for himself all over the world, including victories at Crashfest in 2020, the 2021 Red Bull BC One E-Battle and the 2022 Dutch Breaking solo B-Boy competition. He also recently became a member of the Red Bull BC One All Stars and competed in New York City for the Red Bull BC One World Final 2022. There might also be a bid for Paris 2024, the very first Games to include breaking.
B-Boy Lee in action during the Red Bull BC One E-Battle
© Leo Rosas/Red Bull Content Pool
05
A look to the future
Lee is just stepping into the golden years of his breaking career, while many of The Ruggeds are reaching their mid-30s and moving on to other steps of life. But the bond remains. Even though he's now got a place with the Red Bull BC One All Stars, it's still crew first. When you look at Lee's history closely, it’s clear that his breaking community was around for the most important parts of his life. When he decided he was Lee, the B-Boy, it was because he felt at home with this group of adopted friends and mentors.
"My family isn't that big, so I would call my mom like my only real family." But after that, it's The Ruggeds. Who he is today – Lee's that person because of them: "They're friends, but for me it's almost blood-related, you know. It's like family. The love for my crew really runs deep, so I would never, ever leave them. Even if sometimes it doesn't go so good with the crew, it doesn't matter, we're always going to stick together."
They're friends, but for me it’s almost blood-related, you know. It’s like family. The love for my crew really runs deep.
Lee's future is bright, but looking ahead, what will the rising talent take with him? Just like when he started his career – a strong sense of community, family and one more lesson from his mother.
06
Lee's best advice for upcoming breakdancers
"I would say, don't listen to people. Well, let me shape this correctly. Basically, don’t listen to everybody, because some people that don't have a lot of knowledge try to tell you things. Sometimes it's just better for you to figure it out alone. Eventually, you realize that what they said wasn't important, you know? With breaking and social media right now, a lot of people have things to say, but it's your choice whether to be affected by this."
In an age where everybody's constantly paying attention to what’s happening on their phones, it's a mature place to be and while it might be surprising to hear it from 21-year-old Lee, whose career was basically built on social media, it really shouldn’t be surprising, because he’s built himself a network of real friends who really care about him – and each other.
“What I would say to my 10-year-old self is, 'just be yourself and don't listen too much to what people have to say, except what your own people have to say,' because when I was young, a lot of people were saying, 'these kids are really good, but they don't have certain things.'
"It didn’t really affect me, though. Like my mom always told me, you shouldn't listen to those people. We're all doing breaking, we're all doing something we love and the support is always amazing."
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