Breakdancing, Community & the Olympics with Thomas DeCastro

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show, home of the guaranteed sold program, or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio, and if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596, or check us out online at Team lally.com

ATTILIO: 
Our guest today was born in Daly City, I say Dolly, or daily. We’ll get the correction on that and raised in Waipahu, he’s a passionate break dancer who dedicated to building a sustainable breaking culture in Hawaii through his organization, breaks are for kids, he educates youth families on the positive impact of hip hop and dance in the community.

ADRIENNE: 
He is also helping to elevate Hawaii’s breaking scene to the national stage by integrating it into the AAU Junior Olympic Games. His mission is to empower the next generation of dancers and provide opportunities for them to grow, perform and thrive. Please welcome back. Thomas De Castro, hey, Thomas,

THOMAS: 
how you guys doing? It’s great to be back. All right.

ADRIENNE: 
It’s been a minute, but we’re so happy to have you back and sharing with our listeners all the great things that you’ve been up to. You

ATTILIO: 
know, I ran into Thomas the other day, and we were, we were in a breakdance battle, and he told me, now what you hear is not a test. I’m rapping to the beat and me the groove, and my friends are going to try to move your feet. You see, I’m Wonder Mike, and I’ll like to say no, that’s rappers they like anyway. And throwing back, because that was back in the 80s, Thomas, you probably weren’t even born back in the 80s, when the

THOMAS: 
later, yes, 87 you’re like

ATTILIO: 
Gen generation three of the break dancers. But when I was in high school back in the 80s, everybody had their cardboard. Those the ski the ski hats, so that we could do head spins and not end up like, they still, like Homer Simpson, they still use those same hats. They use the cardboard all the same,

ADRIENNE:
yeah. I mean, I’m sure that, like, there’s been some innovation since then, but, but Tom goes by B boy, Tom Solo. Tom Solo. Can you share with us how did you come up with this break in name? And, yeah, and why, like, Why do break dancers have these specialized names? Yeah,

THOMAS:
well, when we have these particular names, we somewhat take on a character, you know, something that we can build from, like, the bottom to the top. And I think that’s why a lot of people that are, you know, willing for, especially in that athletic type of a challenge, yeah, you know, people draw themselves to it because it’s like, we get to create a persona that we want to be, and like we want to be strong and we want to be and it’s almost kind of just like, you know, when you’re a little kid, man, I want to be a ninja turtle. Be a ninja and, yeah, I train as hard as I can to be the best ninja ever. This is the same thing. But, you know, with break dancing, and it’s a real thing, yeah, so, and,

ATTILIO: 
you know, my name, you know, no, they say it’s just so athletic nowadays. I mean, it’s amazing. It’s like, you guys are, like, uh, Olympic athletes on the ground. They are,

ADRIENNE: 
it was in the Olympics. And he’s, like, trying to build this junior Olympic team. So this is, you know, definitely a very exciting time with break dancing, yeah. But we, I do want to hear about your name, Tom, yeah.

THOMAS: 
Oh, yeah. So, I mean, back in the day, it seemed that it was, like, really territorial, as if it was like in the early 70s, you know, you break with a certain community. Those are your friends at your tribe, you know, and then we meet at, like, pretty much, like, you know, like, neutral grounds, which was called the with the Fil com, yeah, yeah. Waipahu in the house? Yeah. So the Filipino community center is a really, really legendary spot, because that was the time that we were, like, there was no social media, the way to get our respect and their clout, or any type of, you know, to get your name out there was to be there to train hard and to keep on coming back, even if you lose and stuff. So I saw everybody within their towns that were dancing similar to each other, and that was cool. But for myself, I never thought of myself like wanting to limit myself to only one particular style with the people that I practice with, you know, much respect to them, but I wanted to cross the lines and be able to say, hey, you know, I’m calling myself Tom solo, because just because I’m from Waipahu doesn’t mean that may take allegiance to any of the crews that represent here. I want to be able to like, I’m not going to be anybody’s team. If you guys need me, I’ll battle with you guys. But I just want to. Learn from everybody. And that kind of just opened me up to be able to, when I was throwing events, made me give, like, a very level ground of, like, yo, it’s pretty level grounds. Tom solo doesn’t really lean any other particular way towards town or this. But it was more so like, yeah, we it kind of melted in that sense, yeah, you’re on the World Team. World, yeah.

ADRIENNE: 
So there was, there was no alliance to any particular area. You just really wanted to connect with everyone who was dancing, yeah? Just, just a way to make a connection, instead of being like, you know, on a certain team, right? Alright,

ATTILIO: 
so we’re like, Yeah, where’s some of the places where you guys may be practicing at Yeah,

ADRIENNE: 
with the Breaks R4 Kidz, yeah. Now, if our listeners wanted to find out more about it and kind of take a look, I know you post it quite a bit on Instagram, so what’s going on with the Breaks R4 Kidz? What do they practice? Yeah? Oh,

THOMAS: 
Breaks R4 Kidz right now is being held out at Kauai Ballet Theater out in town, across the street from the inspiration furniture, right? The Japanese barbecue spot.

ATTILIO: 
Okay, I know exactly. I don’t know where that is. I know where inspiration is, yeah, town side, town side, yep. And

THOMAS: 
so we’re right. We’re right over there right now, and as of right now, because we are in the Olympic trials right now, yeah, we are holding off on until, until everything is done, which is where there’s one that we just went through. The second one is going to be coming up, and then the third one is going to be after May. But we’re going to be holding tryouts, just because it’s been, it’s been really big recently, a huge, huge kind of, like, wave of interest with breaking. And it’s hard for me to, like, just open the floodgates and be like, yes, everybody can break now. We’re not going to fit in that room. So we want to be able to just make sure we the kids that we have right now. We are on point. We’re training them super hard. We’re representing the best through these Olympic trials. And then once we have everything set well and done, then we’ll start opening things up and expanding the crew. So

ADRIENNE:
what are the ages that kids can be in order to qualify for this Olympic the junior Olympic trials.

THOMAS: 
So for the junior Olympic trials, you have to be seven years old. That’s the youngest you can be but we do have another division for anybody that’s under them that they’re called the minis division. It’s pretty much like they get to be part of the stage and get to be part of like the program, but they don’t, it doesn’t qualify them, and to go off to the Junior Olympics, which is being held in Texas this year.

ADRIENNE: 
Nice. Now, what about like, the regular Olympics? We were all watching this whole thing with the break dancing with now, like newly being in the Olympics. And then there was that dancer from Australia who’s made a lot of questions.

THOMAS:
Here it comes. Here it comes to know and see, this is what gets most parents in breaking it’s it’s cool, because they’re in the need to know. You know, they all have regular jobs and everything, and somehow they know, like, Hey, I’ve got the info, because my kid breaks. And everybody wants to know, Hey, Susan from accounting knows what happens. Ask her, yeah, her kids go to break down Danny from

ATTILIO: 
the copy room, the cop inator, yeah,

THOMAS: 
yeah. Everybody loves it now. And see, the thing is, it’s it made a bigger impact. Because we thought, like, okay, next wave of breaking cool, we’re going to be going to do great and blah, blah, blah. But it went bigger than expected, because in the momentary flop, you guys saw what happened? Yes, we realized that people want to know like everybody’s eyes and ears are open. They don’t just want to watch us. They want to listen to us and understand. What was the difference of this whole thing? Now we can go ahead and break it off and say there was a conspiracy. There’s this and that, but the best thing to say is that we were not 100% prepared for anything of this scale, especially with Australia not being, I mean, they’re on the world stage when it comes to, like, all the big events that happen, Australia is not one of like the top countries. It’s usually like China, Japan, Korea, like Russia, or, like, any of, like, those, those other countries, even France, like, is, I love to say America, we’re hanging in there. We got, we got some good, I can’t say we’re the top, but, you know, they don’t, they didn’t know what was being I’m handed off to them in the same way that before, when I was kind of, I was kind of, like, you know, angry too. Like, Oh, what are they doing? They missed everything, yeah, but, you know, seeing how firsthand, trying to organize an Olympic qualifier and get all everything done, I’m doing it myself, because I’m doing the junior version of it, yes, to be given something so big and so important, and with the smallest kind of a, you know, people watching you, you know. You want it to be perfect, and you can only do as best as you can. And for the first time that it happened, not too bad, but you know, something fell through the cracks. And the fact that matter is, they didn’t have enough time to prepare and to get everybody qualified. They had one qualifier, which other countries had many qualifiers around the entire country that they had to qualify for, especially us. And they had one battle. They only had one battle to go, like, Hey, do this one battle. Then you get to go through the Olympics. And that’s how it went. Oh, wow, you know, like,

ADRIENNE: 
so other countries had a had a much more extensive Head Start vetting, and probably, I think, you know, that’s the problem

ATTILIO: 
with the United States, is that most people’s concept of break dancing is when you go to a wedding and some drunk 50 year olds get on the stage and start doing backspins, but it’s more than that. I was describing me at a wedding with a one or two Coronavirus in me doing backspins, but it’s more than that. Because I’m like, I get like, I’m not on any social media, but I get on like, the YouTube shorts, and there will always be a little break dancing, very you know what they do? So strong they zoom in on the audience, and the audience is, like, completely blown away with and I’m looking at, how are these kids aliens? I didn’t even know bodies could even do that. It’s amazing what these kids there’s nothing like when I was in high school, and

ADRIENNE: 
how strong they’ve got to be, like, strong and coordinated, flexible, yeah? Like, it’s just, like, very similar to gymnastics, yeah, right. But, like, there was more,

THOMAS: 
yeah, we have to see the silver lining, though, after everything was all said and done with all of that mess of craziness, you know, it’s creating motivation. Everything is going to Yeah, motivation, exactly these kids now see that, and parents changing the game for it to not be just a one off event, or my kids are really good, and you both of these local events and everything. But the fact of the matter is that my kid can go to the Junior Olympics. Or, on top of that, my community here, or the big dancing community, or has another AAU league outside of the Olympics that goes on throughout the year. You know, this gives them stability. It gives us sustainability, and it gives us, like, a lot, more things to work with and open up for the schools like, as you guys know, I am, I’m currently serving Iolani as my main school that I serve for their after school program, as well as their summer, because of the explosion of everything. Now we are going to be asked to be in Star of the Sea and mid pack starting nice school year. Yeah. So what’s everything like? Pretty much all said and done. You know, we have the legitimacy, the legitimacy of the AAU. We have, we have schools that are willing and participating, and we have students that want to do this as a work. All we have to do is wait for that question. It’s like, Hey, do you guys want to be a sport? And then coach Tom solo will say, Yes, please, and we got everything to go. That’s nice. Well,

ADRIENNE: 
I know that yeah, like some so all of my kids did some breaks or for kids with you like, yeah, back in the day, back in Eva Beach, yeah? And, like my daughter, she, you know, she was more of like a dancer, but she, you know, she part took in one of the battles, yeah, but Aiden and little Chad, they really had gotten into, and I know Aiden had, he had tried to push it through at Campbell to try and create, like, a break dancing club. But then COVID happened, so it was like that just got all squashed. Yeah, and I will tell you though, my oldest son, he ended up going to youth challenge. And I think because of some of the, you know, just the concepts that Tom had taught him, and, you know, he was able to really, like connect through dance with the other kids there. And you know, he, he did very well at a very tough school. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I’m a big fan of this break I think community and everything that Tom instills into these

ATTILIO: 
I think you’re gonna get a lot of support, because I’m 58 and I will tell you how, how is a break dancer in high school that was before the internet, so there is absolutely no evidence, but no we used to in this a shout out to Kaala Souza, my classmate, because the both of us, we used to break dance and perform like An actual routine at our dances and our final performance. We’re more like a comedy act, though we weren’t like the really good break dancers, but we were funny and entertaining, and we even perform. Somebody tell if people out there, somebody tells me there’s a VHS tape. That’s how dated it is, of us dancing at our senior dinner up at Kamehameha Schools, and we were break dancing. So I’d love to see that video, because it’s going to completely you went to Kamehameha. Yeah, went to Kamehameha Schools, class 85 Okay,

THOMAS: 
wait, yeah, wow. Okay. Wait, let me tell you something. We’re talking with Kamehameha and I like what you know, what they’re doing with their dance community. No, but tell us. Let me tell you real quick. Here’s a little insider information. It was, yeah, man, like, they are on point. I love what they’re doing. So the older class men, I think they already graduated last year, but they wanted to set up all the dance program, like for hip hop and, you know, choreography type stuff for success. So what they’ve done is they allowed the middle schoolers to be able to come to high school to, like, you know, yeah, what we had to do, what we’re trying to do with the we’re working them with the elementary right now, and hopefully we’ll be able to get our workshops in, but we want to be able to get the elementary school kids learning how to break so by the time they get to the middle school, they have a strong foundation of breaking. You put in choreography with that, and then they go all the way through high school. Imagine Kamehameha having, like, a really strong, not only hula program, strong dance program that way too, because of what the Kamehameha kids are, the seniors have, you know, set for them. And I think that’s great. So shout out to Kamehameha. All

ATTILIO: 
right. Imua is our motto, and the SA Hawaiian word of the day means forward. So keep moving forward with that. Kamehameha Schools.

ADRIENNE: 
So Tom like, what you guys are working on is sounds like trying to create, like, break dancing teams on the different with the different schools. Yeah, I think that would just be an amazing thing. Yep,

THOMAS: 
yeah. We actually had one the other year with Hawaii Baptist Academy. Yeah, we were able to show right before the girls JV volleyball. It’s funny, Kamehameha versus HBA. So right before that volleyball game, my kids got a chance to show what breaking would look like as a sport. And this was, like two years before the whole AAU thing came up to us and whatnot, we were trying to get this thing done for those for the longest time. So it’s nice to see that now, like I just put myself in the right position to be able to be ready for the opportunity. You know, we went to, actually, we went to, recently, to to California. Shout out to in the circle, which is a van sponsored event. And we were trying to just connect with all of the different dance schools we had our kids actually dance. And have a dance circle with like alchemy, breaking from Las Vegas, nice. We break from LA find a city breaking from from San Diego. And it was just so funny because me and my son went to San Diego after and we met the coach arinetic. And coach aranedic was the one that, you know, I told him my dream, and he said, Hey, you know, I’d like to bring you guys out to Hawaii someday, to, you know, get this lead going. And guess who is the president of the AAU breaking who coach arine. And it was like, bro, he already knew. It was like, hey, yeah, you know, we wanted to do this league from a long time ago, before the opportunity that came along. So he knew that was the right guy for it,

ADRIENNE: 
you know. So if any of our listeners have kids that are, you know, into breakdancing or want to learn more, yeah, get more information. Yeah. Do you have another event coming up soon that they can come and attend and watch? Let me

THOMAS: 
tell you something. Yeah, you’re gonna love this one. So the first event was actually kind of a surprise. Our dance community has been, I feel in somewhat of a lull, so I needed to do something that was very, very impactful and interesting. So the first event that I did, I did a surprise reveal, like a week before it happened, all the people knew this up, but then I, I released it, and it was at the legendary still calm center. And nobody has brought us back there for many years. So, so it was a really, really strong thing for our kids to see this, even the generation right now. Yeah, some of the younger teenagers never even, they even know, never been in that room before. That was amazing for everyone. Yeah, that was number one that went off and went amazing. The second one that we have, you’re gonna love, because we want our kids to learn about their history. So we’re bringing back four main crews to speak upon their time in the community and their contributions. One of them will be ABC rock steady. The next one will be foot rock bunch. The next one would be Supreme Team. And then for the final one, we have bomb squad with Harold and Moria,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, yeah. Because if you Yeah, if you brought back the original guys, we might be like, you know, with the walkers and stuff like that, because this breaking dancing has been around a long time, you know. And

THOMAS: 
then a third one is a little bit of a secret. I can’t do too much. I will tell you that it is going to be on Saturday. It’s going to be on Memorial Day weekend, and it’s going to be another place that not many people would have figure a breakdancing place about to be, but they’ll be huge

ADRIENNE: 
cool. So if the listeners follow the Breaks R4 Kidz. Instagram is that where they can find out more, like announcements coming up about events and opportunities to you know, yeah, just to learn more about getting involved. Yes,

THOMAS: 
exactly that would be the best place to contact us. At Breaks R4 Kidz, HI, that is B, r, e. A, k, s, the letter R, number 4k, i, d, z, H, I,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, all right, cool. So

ADRIENNE: 
go ahead and follow that account. And you know, just watch for the events that are going to be taking place. And yeah, I mean, they’re fun. I’ve been to several of these events, which is high energy and amazing athletes and just like a really positive Yeah, community, my

ATTILIO: 
break i My breaking break dance name is going to be flying Hawaiian. No, it’s gonna be break my back Hawaiian. But, um, anyway,

ADRIENNE: 
is there, is there anything else Tom that you want our listeners to know about with break dancing? Breaks are for kids, upcoming events. Yes, anything else that we need to cover that we didn’t cover already? Um,

THOMAS: 
everything I feel was, everything was, uh, everything I need to say. I will leave you guys with one last thing, and it is very similar to what I’ve told you guys before, is that, you know, give, you know, this whole break dancing thing. It’s not what you guys thought it used to be, how it was that days and everything right now. It’s very, very different. And the way that the AAU is making it, it’s very it’s fair, you know, kids being able to go with their own divisions, you know, battling and being able to get all these different types and being able to be taken seriously as an actual athlete. When my kids come around with these stickers that say AAU breaking on it, their friends that are there in soccer or see that and see them as a peer, not as just, hey, you do something, you know, a random thing after school. You know, you’re an athlete like me. So give this whole breaking thing a chance. You know, listen, you know, these coaches are these, these break dancers that will be teaching your kids are just as much coaches as like those football guys. Give them those respect because they’ve had years and years of experience as well. So treat them as such as well. You know, we’re not, you know, just that’s and it’s

ATTILIO: 
a, it’s a great way workout. I remember we should spend hours doing that stuff, and we were exhausted afterwards. It is not an easy thing. They make it look easy. They make it look easy, not easy. Just like anything where you achieve anything at a high level, you gotta put the time and discipline into it and be open to coaching and direction, which is and you’ve been involved with this long time. I mean, just like even before how long you’ve been involved with the break dancing and being from an organized standpoint,

THOMAS: 
from organized standpoint, about two decades, over two decades, wow, wow. And

ATTILIO: 
you sound like you 12. You got that use usefulness behind you. Tom, solo, I know. I mean, last time he was on the show, we had him in the studio, yes, yeah, that was a while ago. So Well,

ADRIENNE: 
Tom, thank you so much for being our guest again and give me a second date. I’m so proud of everything you’ve been able to accomplish with the break dancing community. And the breaks are for kids and go get

ATTILIO: 
that gold medal for the United States.

THOMAS: 
Yeah, we’re proud, because one of my kids are gonna get they’re all hungry for it.

ATTILIO: 
There you go. Alrighty, alright. Thanks, Tom, thank you. Tom. Tom solo. Breaks R4 Kidz. Breaks R4 Kidz.

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