Rooftop Jam 2023.

On November 18, the Okayama Breaking Culture Association set up a pop-up dance floor on the Takashimaya Okayama rooftop — a space normally used as a summer beer garden — with the department store's full backing. Forty-three dancers entered the 1-on-1, travelling in from ten prefectures as far as Aomori and Gunma. High winds halted some trains that morning, and a handful of entrants never reached the venue.

The Breakin' 1-on-1 narrowed 21 prelim matches down to a TOP 16 bracket. Noneski (Miyakojima, Osaka) took out kazu (Okayama) and rakachi (Himeji) back-to-back before outlasting KENTWAVE (Ehime) in the final. The Freestyle Shuffle 2-on-2 picked 16 dancers from a one-hour cypher and paired them at random; Break's rest and Waack's Miharu (Kagawa / Okayama) closed the night over KENTWAVE & Active Megane (Ehime / Okayama) for the title. Between rounds, Okayama University's SBF crew and Kawasaki Medical Welfare University's Stepper's Crew (under the name m&m's) ran two showcases, while ChRoNo Coffee kept cold hands warm at the rooftop's edge.

A rooftop in the city centre, forty-three dancers across prefecture lines — swapping a summer setting for a winter battle floor was, for us, one experiment in keeping the scene in this town alive. — Okayama Breaking Culture Association