While Breaks8’s performances on America’s Best Dance Crew were very impressive, they weren’t on the same level when they came to Redwood Hall on Sept. 30.

The show started out with very high expectations. On a projector above the stage, a montage of the best Breaksk8 performances on ABDC were assembled, giving the potentially uninformed audience an idea of what to expect.

It is human nature to be impressed by things that we ourselves cannot do. The fluidity and confidence shown by the clips from the MTV show were extraordinary. The Breaksk8 crew seemed to have created their TV performances to accentuate the advantages of being on wheels. Even simple things like locomotion were impressive because they seemed effortless.

Being on skates was not an obvious hindrance at all.

On that temporary stage in Redwood though, they lacked that fluidity. It appeared as though Breaksk8 was almost struggling to dance in their roller skates. They struggled at times to control their bodies, they tried to do on-foot dance moves that didn’t work well with heavy skates on their feet, and they lacked the gracefulness that was so important to their TV persona.

That is, whenever they lifted the skates off the ground, they came down with a loud thud. Unfortunately, the music wasn’t loud enough to cover up the almost incessant noise, and you could very easily tell when one or two people were off in their timing.

Watching the performance, my initial thought was that this group had spent so much time performing in front of audiences since their ABDC finale that they had not taken the time or energy to develop new routines. Comparing the version of “Cupid Shuffle” that they did on stage to the version that they did on ABDC, you can tell that this wasn’t the case at all.

In fact, it almost begs you to take a closer look at the group. When you do, it becomes apparent why they seemed like completely different performances: because they were.

On Breaksk8’s website (breaksk8.com), you can see the names and faces of the six members of the crew. The funny thing is that only one of those faces was on stage Sept. 30, the emcee-of-sorts, Shannon Anthony.

Junior Mauri Uranga noticed this after looking at one of the posters that were liberally thrown into the audience during the show.

“I looked at the poster, and there were people on it that weren’t on stage,” he said. “I think they were better on the show because they seemed to be born on stage; the group [in Redwood] didn’t seem the same way.”

That fact actually explained a lot about the performance. Less than the space constraints of being on such a small stage and less than the lack of a large crowd might have played on the struggles of the performance, the notion that the actual performers weren’t who they appeared to be must be considered.

There is another concern to take into consideration as well: the goal of the two shows. On ABDC, Breaksk8’s only responsibility was to wow audiences and dance really impressively. In Redwood, however, their responsibility was to entertain the crowd in a two-way sense, and while they may have been good dancers, they weren’t great entertainers.

The awkwardness of the audience participation in the dance-off near the end of the show was overwhelming. It seemed, at times, that the laughter during that segment was as ridiculous as some of the participants looked on stage – and those participants knew how ridiculous they looked.

The “judging” was seemingly based upon that ridiculousness; the people who I determined were most serious about their 30-second jig were the first ones eliminated.

The most depressing part about the whole show was the general feel of it. Searching YouTube for clips from their ABDC performances, the “real” Breaksk8 is capable of accomplishing awe-inspiring feats, but the same cannot be said about the Breaksk8 troupe who were onstage here.