Citylink

Ricardo Fernandez does not fit the stereotype of a break dancer. In 1966, when he was just six months old, Fernandez’s family fled Cuba for the United States, first living in Hialeah but soon settling in New York. Throughout his adolescence, Fernandez moved back and forth between the two cities and, as a result, became one of the first ambassadors of hip-hop.

Fernandez, now 37, recalls first hearing rap music in the Bronx, which he and many others credit as the birthplace of the genre. “Kids of all races used to come around the neighborhoods. The DJs would bring the records, the rappers would bring their rhymes, and the b-boys would bring their dance moves,” he says. In 1981, Fernandez fell under the spell of one of those b-boys, or break dancers, a kid who went by the name Flex. “He did not want to teach me at first. He said you had to be special and that hip-hop was a gift from God,” Fernandez remembers. “I did not understand what he meant until he finally started showing me how to break.”

Fernandez was a quick study and soon found himself performing at block parties and in predominantly African-American clubs. And like all true b-boys, he even gave himself a new name: Speedy Legs. “It intrigued me,” he says of the dance form. “I was totally amazed by it.”

When Fernandez settled in Hialeah for good in the early ’90s, he discovered a hip-hop scene that was cool to both him and his style of old-school break dancing. “They weren’t giving me any shine,” he admits. So Fernandez called on an old friend from the Bronx named Steve Roybal, better known on the hip-hop scene as Zulu Gremlin. Together, they came up with the idea of a traveling hip-hop conference and competition.

“I had a crew called Steady Building, and Speedy had Skills 3000,” recalls Roybal from his current home in San Francisco, where he owns a dance company and a recording studio. “He concentrated more on the competition side of breaking, and mine was more on performance. We combined the two and formed the B-Boy Masters Pro-Am conference.”

To date, the conference has taken place throughout the United States and even as far away as Japan, with the most recent one occurring last month in New York. (The next will take place Dec. 13 in Puerto Rico. See www.bboymasters.com.) “We wanted to combine the professional and amateur styles of break dancing into a form where people could learn and celebrate the creation of hip-hop,” Roybal explains.

When not focusing on the conference, Fernandez is teaching kids the art of break dancing at the Hollywood Police Athletic League and hosting a monthly workshop at Miami Beach’s 21st Street Recreation Center called Hip Hop Elements, which is also the name of his clothing line.

Debbie Cartwright, a professional tap dancer from Aventura, brought her students to a recent Hip Hop Elements workshop. “Speedy Legs does a wonderful thing for the kids because it takes them off the street [at] night,” she says.

“Hip-hop is God’s gift to the youths,” says Fernandez, who refers to his students as “my children.” “Hip-hop took kids off the streets and made them into something more than what they thought of themselves. To be a b-boy is a blessing to me, because there are more successful b-boys out there. Only one in a million rappers becomes successful. What you see in the rap videos is not the truth. The money, the cars and the girls are not theirs. And the dancing is not break dancing. The dancing you see in the videos might have evolved from break dancing, but it is not what b-boy culture is about. Hip-hop is who you are, not what you do.”

Speedy Legs will perform Dec. 11 at Club Xit in Hollywood; call 954/957-8411. Then, he’ll host the sixth annual Hip Hop Elements Throwdown Dec. 12 at the 21st Street Recreation Center in Miami Beach and Dec. 13 at The Light Box in Miami; call 954/340-2192. For more information, visit www.hiphopelements.com/home.htm.

Contact Isnel Othello at citylink@citylinkmagazine.com.