Singh mostly trains in his garage, doing an hour of stretching every weekday and body-weight exercises – pull-ups, press-ups, sit-ups – to keep him light, strong and explosive. He grew up in the city and it’s where he started breaking aged seven, after seeing a local crew, Trinity Warriors, performing at a funfair.
Singh still lives at home in Normanton, a suburb of Derby, with his father, brother and sister. And I can’t say I thought I would be doing this, I can’t say I thought I’d be in the movie. “So if you get a gig like this, it’s amazing, it’s the highlight of your life. “As a breaker, we’ve never really had these opportunities before,” says Singh. The film is directed by Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini, whose surprise hit StreetDance 3D was the highest-grossing independent British production of 2010. Later this year, Singh will play the lead in a new feature-length drama, Breaking Point, about two grief-stricken brothers (alongside his childhood friend Kid Kelvin) who go head-to-head to compete in the World Championships. “So life has changed in that sense, and that came around because of things like the Olympics.”īeing sponsored by Nike – becoming the first male breaker the company has recruited to its athlete programme – is only part of the “surreal” journey. “It’s quite funny because there were times where I’m working at Sky on the telephones, selling Sky, and I’d be on Sky Sports News and people would see it,” he says. Until recently, he fitted his training around shifts at the Firstsource call centre in Derby, handling customer inquiries for Sky. To describe the Olympic announcement as life-changing would be accurate, certainly for Singh, who is bright and bouncy, with lively eyes and close-cropped hair. Karam Singh, who goes by the name of Kid Karam, at the David Lloyd gym in Derby where he trains. But, for me, it’s just a mix of everything.” “A guy called Menno from Holland calls us ‘artletes’. “It’s very physically demanding,” says Singh, during his lunch break on the shoot. But even they struggle to put a label on what they do. Singh is the first breaker to earn a place on Team GB and is currently ranked No 6 in the world. Sardjoe, who represents the Netherlands, is the reigning world and European champion. Let’s start with the “athlete” part: Karam Singh and India Sardjoe are breakers, or breakdancers if you want to show your age, better-known as 25-year-old B-boy Kid Karam and B-girl India, 16. You would expect the pair to be athletes, household names probably. Meanwhile, a camera on a dolly sweeps through the crowd to reveal the two stars of the show. Costume designers and makeup artists swarm around, adjusting this, refreshing that, while the same few seconds of a dance music track plays on a loop through booming speakers. Everything about the production is outsize: the white-walled main stage is populated by around 200 extras, young and lithe, dressed in cropped sweatshirts and joggers, wearing Air Force 1 and Dunk Low sneakers. I n two cavernous film studios in Acton, west London, Nike is shooting one of its tent-pole summer advertising campaigns.
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