House of Marley
Here's a collection of photos from the recent project I worked on for House of Marley with Alldayeveryday. I was given the opportunity to put some ideas together for a video project based on the idea of "getting together". Over the past few years, I've noticed more and more kids dancing and performing on the subway and in the back of my head always felt like it would be fun to learn about their story... When the project for House of Marley came up, it was a perfect opportunity to start digging around and find out who these kids are.
I wanted to find out who the main crew was that started the trend of dancing on the trains. It was important to me to really make sure we featured the right kids and told their story, so after a bunch of research online a few facebook messages and emails I was in touch with Andrew "Goofy" Saunders from the Waffle Crew. Over the span of a few weeks, I got to spend time with Andrew and his friends John O and Kid the Wiz and learned more about who they are and what they do. The type of dancing they do on the trains is called Lite Feet and the music they dance to is Lite Feet music, composed and created by the dancers... most of it by Kid the Wiz.
Living in New York, a city that is very much about your hustle and grind and I really wanted to know if they were just dancing on the train as a way to hustle and make money, or if they really loved dancing and the trains were an outlet for their craft. As a regular subway passenger, it would be easy to feel like they are doing it just for the money, but after spending time with them, I quickly realized that dancing is their life. Every moment of their day is spend either dancing or thinking about dancing and they are extremely passionate about what they do. They actually just started to dance on the trains as a way to earn money to enter dancing competitions... Rather than asking their parents for money, they began performing on their way to the dance competitions hoping for $5 or $10, but it quickly took off and at their peak, they were each making a few hundred dollars each day.
As New York City is cutting down more and more on Subway performers and the phenomenon of dancing on the trains has grown, the Waffle Crew is focused on expanding their dancing off the trains, performing at shows and events. Even though the amount of time they are spending on the trains is getting to be less and less, the trains are where they got their start... and as Andrew says, they are very thankful for that.
Keep scrolling to check out my photos and you can see the film and read an interview with me on Hypebeast about the project.
