88-398: Drops are breakdancing techniques that allow b-boys to transition down to the floor and begin performing downrock . Drops may be designed to look flashy, painful, or both. A wide variety of other movements can serve the same purpose, and others such as the kip-up can work in reverse, moving the breaker up from the floor. Some of the most common drops are listed below. This drop makes
176-531: A Volkswagen Golf GTi commercial featured a partly CGI version of Gene Kelly popping and breakdancing to a remix of " Singin' in the Rain " by Mint Royale . The tagline was, "The original, updated." The dance shows So You Think You Can Dance and America's Best Dance Crew arguably brought breakdancing back to the forefront of pop culture in the United States, similar to the popularity it had enjoyed in
264-555: A "breakdown". Then in 1898 he filmed a young street dancer performing acrobatic headspins. Some authors claim that breaking and capoeira have common African origin, while others claim that capoeira directly influenced breaking. There is also evidence of a similar style of dancing in Kaduna, Nigeria, in 1959. B-boy pioneers Richard "Crazy Legs" Colon and Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert, both of Rock Steady Crew, cite James Brown and Kung Fu films (notably Bruce Lee films) as influences. Many of
352-545: A Loose" by James Brown, "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band, and "The Mexican" by Babe Ruth to name a few. The most common feature of breakdance music exists in musical breaks , or compilations formed from samples taken from different songs which are then looped and chained together by the DJ. The tempo generally ranges between 110 and 135 beats per minute with shuffled sixteenth and quarter beats in
440-519: A breakdancing competition game show hosted by Jay Park , premiered in South Korea on March 18, 2022. A few video games feature breaking, including: DJ Kool Herc Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc , is a Jamaican American DJ who is credited with being one of the founders of hip hop music in the Bronx , New York City, in 1973. Nicknamed
528-416: A competition, who influenced local breakers to adopt this shift in style. Notable crews of that time were Fresh Sox from Melbourne and SKB (aka Street Kulture Breakerz), from Western Sydney , who recruited Korean breakers B-Boy Blond and B-Boy Blue. SKB were continuing to compete as of 2023. The breaking scene was peaking around 2010, but dipped between 2013 and 2017. After it was announced that breakdancing
616-421: A demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties, organized and promoted by his sister Cindy, had a ready-made audience. DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was used as one of the additions to the blueprints for hip hop music . Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the " break ". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated
704-521: A different country every week. I tell my story dancing... I've been all around the world, y'all been all around the world wide web... [my friend] Bebe once said that shit, and I co-sign that, Bebe said that. That wasn't me but that's the realist shit I ever heard anybody say. I've been all around the world, you've been all around the world wide web. Although there are some generalities in the styles that exist, many dancers combine elements of different styles with their own ideas and knowledge in order to create
792-497: A general in the notorious Black Spades gang of the Bronx, obtained his own soundsystem in 1975 and began to DJ in Herc's style, converting his followers to the non-violent Zulu Nation in the process. Kool Herc began using The Incredible Bongo Band 's " Apache " as a break in 1975. It became a firm b-boy favorite—"the Bronx national anthem" —and is still in use in hip hop today. Steven Hager wrote of this period: For over five years
880-651: A hip-hop dance studio called the Hip-Hop Street College. Born in Thailand and raised in the United States, Tuy "KK" Sobil started a community center called Tiny Toones in Phnom Penh , Cambodia in 2005 where he uses dancing, hip-hop music, and art to teach Cambodian youth language skills, computer skills, and life skills (hygiene, sex education, counseling). His organization helps roughly 5,000 youths each year. One of these youths include Diamond, who
968-629: A home in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park in Harajuku, which still remains an active area for breakdancers and hip-hop enthusiasts. As hip-hop continued to grow in Japan, so did breakdancing and the breakdancing communities. Following the introduction of international breakdancing competitions, Japan began to compete and were praised for their agility and precision, yet they were criticized in the beginning for lacking originality. The Japanese began to truly flourish on
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#17327828808151056-408: A party where her older brother, then just 18 years old, would play music for the neighborhood in their apartment building. She promoted the event with flyers and organized the party. She also styled her brother's clothes for the party. According to music journalist Steven Ivory, in 1973, Herc placed on the turntables two copies of Brown's 1970 Sex Machine album and ran "an extended cut 'n' mix of
1144-660: A physical altercation with school bullies, the Five Percenters came to Herc's aid, befriended him and as Herc put it, helped "Americanize" him with an education in New York City street culture. He began running with a graffiti crew called the Ex-Vandals, taking the name Kool Herc. Herc recalls persuading his father to buy him a copy of " Sex Machine " by James Brown , a record that not a lot of his friends had, and which they would come to him to hear. He used
1232-403: A production point of view the style is visually arresting, instantly recognizable, and adducible to fast-editing, while the ethos is multi ethnic, energetic, and edgy, but free from the gangster-laden overtones of much rap-culture imagery. Its usability as a visual cliché benefits sponsorship, despite the relatively small following of the genre itself beyond the circle of its practitioners. In 2005,
1320-611: A regularly and nationally broadcast television show about Hip Hop—hosted by Sidney Duteil —with a focus on Hip Hop dance. This show led to the explosion of Hip Hop dance in France, with many new crews appearing on the scene. Breakdancing in Japan was introduced in 1983 following the release of the movie Wild Style . The release of the movie was accompanied by a tour by the Rock Steady Crew and many Japanese were captivated. Other movies such as Flashdance followed and furthered
1408-495: A time. The term breakdancing has become an umbrella term that includes California-based dance styles such as popping , locking , and electric boogaloo , in addition to the New York-based b-boying. Goofy A practitioner of this dance is called a b-boy , b-girl , breakdancer , or breaker . The terms b-boy ( ' break-boy ' ), b-girl ( ' break-girl ' ), and breaker were the original terms used to describe
1496-404: A unique style of their own. Breakers can therefore be categorized into a broad style, which generally showcases the same types of techniques. The musical selection for breakdancing is not restricted to hip-hop music as long as the tempo and beat pattern conditions are met. Breakdancing can be readily adapted to different music genres with the aid of remixing . The original songs that popularized
1584-439: Is a more aggressive dance style commonly performed between two partners that feature intricate footwork and hitting motions, mimicking a fight. As a separate dance style, it never gained the same widespread popularity as breaking, except for some very specific moves adopted by breakers who use it as a variation for their toprock. Uprock is also stated to have roots in gangs, as an expressive medium used to settle turf disputes, with
1672-462: Is a style of street dance originated by African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the Bronx . Breakdancing consists mainly of four kinds of movement— toprock , downrock , power moves , and freezes —and is typically set to songs containing drum breaks , especially in funk , soul , and hip-hop . Its modern dance elements originated among the poor youth of New York during the early 1980s. It
1760-406: Is being shown in changing the traditional image of females in hip-hop culture (and by extension, breakdance culture) to a more positive, empowered role in the modern hip-hop scene. In 2018, Japan's B-Girl Ami became the first B-Girl world champion of Red Bull BC One. Although B-Girl Ayumi had been invited as a competitor for the 2017 championship, it was only until 2018 that a 16 B-Girl bracket
1848-559: Is known as the "Year Zero of Korean breaking". A Korean-American hip hop promoter named John Jay Chon was visiting his family in Seoul and while he was there, he met a crew named Expression Crew in a club. He gave them a VHS tape of a Los Angeles breakdancing competition called Radiotron. A year later when he returned, Chon found that his video and others like his had been copied and dubbed numerous times, and were feeding an ever-growing breaker community. In 2002, Korea's Expression Crew won
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#17327828808151936-492: Is regarded as Cambodia's first b-girl. There are several ways breakdancing came to Canada. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, films such as Breakin ' (1984) , Beat Street (1984), and the immigration of people from Chicago , New York , Detroit , Seattle , and Los Angeles introduced dance styles from the United States. Breakdancing expanded in Canada from there, with crews like Canadian Floormasters taking over
2024-484: Is the joint! Herc beat on the point" "To the beat, y'all!" "You don't stop!" For his contributions, Time nicknamed Herc the "Founding Father of Hip Hop", called him "nascent cultural hero", and an integral part of the beginnings of hip hop. On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a disc jockey and emcee at a party hosted by himself and his younger sister Cindy at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. She wanted to earn extra cash for back-to-school clothes, so she decided to throw
2112-649: Is tied to the birth of hip-hop, whose DJs developed rhythmic break for dancers. The dance form has expanded globally, with an array of organizations and independent competitions supporting its growth. Breaking became an Olympic sport at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris , as per a December 7, 2020 decision by the International Olympic Committee , after a proposal by the World DanceSport Federation . The origin of
2200-421: Is unfair to make a sweeping generalization about these inequalities because women have begun to play a larger role in the breakdancing scene. Some people have pointed to a lack of promotion as a barrier, as full-time b-girl Firefly stated in a BBC piece: "It's getting more popular. There are a lot more girls involved. The problem is that promoters are not putting on enough female-only battles." Growing interest
2288-474: The Father of Hip-Hop , Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown . Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the " break "—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed
2376-631: The Rock Steady Crew has said, "We were known as b-boys"; hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa has said, "B-boys, [are] what you call break boys...or b-girls, what you call break girls." Co-founder of Rock Steady Crew Santiago "Jo Jo" Torres, Rock Steady Crew member Marc "Mr. Freeze" Lemberger, hip-hop historian Fab 5 Freddy , and rappers Big Daddy Kane and Tech N9ne use the term b-boy . Some enthusiasts consider breakdancing an ignorant, and even pejorative, term. Others use it to derogatorily refer to studio -trained dancers who can perform
2464-600: The Universal Zulu Nation to further his message. Some breakers argue that because uprock was originally a separate dance style it should never be mixed with breaking and that the uprock moves performed by breakers today are not the original moves but imitations that only show a small part of the original uprock style. In the music video for 1985's hit single " I Wonder If I Take You Home ", Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam 's drummer Mike Hughes can be seen "rocking" (doing uprock) at 1:24 when viewed on YouTube . By
2552-404: The minuet , Juba , the quadrille , and the waltz may have contributed elements. The Juba, for example, is an African dance where men had dance circles where one man at a time would go and dance, similar to modern-day breaking. This dance also inspired competition, also seen in breaking, because better treatment would be given to the slave who intrigued their master. In the 1877 book Rob Roy on
2640-535: The "birthplace of hip-hop", and nominated it to national and state historic registers. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development ruled against the proposed sale in February 2008, on the grounds that "the proposed purchase price is inconsistent with the use of property as a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing development". It is the first time they have so ruled in such a case. According to The Source , DJ Kool Herc fell gravely ill in early 2011 and
2728-544: The "robot" style. In the early 1990s, the country experienced a severe economic and political crisis. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the breakdance craze was over and breakdancing became dated. The next wave of interest in breakdancing in Russia would only occur in the late 90s. There are four primary elements that form breakdancing: toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. … because everybody watches
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2816-562: The 1980s. The American drama television series Step Up: High Water , a series focused on breakdancing and other forms of hip-hop dance, premiered on March 20, 2019. Since breakdancing's popularity surge in South Korea, it has been featured in various TV dramas and commercials. Break is a 2006 South Korean miniseries about a breakdancing competition. Over the Rainbow is a 2006 South Korean drama series centered on different characters who are brought together by breakdancing. Showdown ,
2904-824: The 80's scene, and New Energy opening for James Brown in 1984 at the Paladium in Montreal. Leading into the 90's, crews like Bag of Trix, Rakunz, Intrikit, Contents Under Pressure, Supernaturalz, Boogie Brats, and Red Power Squad, led the scene throughout the rest of the past two decades and counting. In the 2024 Paris Olympics men's gold medal showdown, Canada's Philip "Phil Wizard" Kim swept 3 rounds against France's Danis "Danny Dan" Civil with judges voting 23–4. Although social media such as YouTube cannot be used in China, breakdancing in China has been popular. Many people copy breakdancing videos from abroad and distribute them back to
2992-476: The BC One competition became Bboy Issei in 2016. Issei is widely regarded by many as the best Japanese breakdancer currently and in the eyes of some, the best worldwide. Female bboys, or "bgirls", are also prevalent in Japan and following the introduction of a female BC One competition in 2018, Japanese bgirl Ami Yuasa became the first female champion. Notable Japanese bboy crews include FoundNation, Body Carnival, and
3080-622: The Baltic , John MacGregor describes seeing near Norrköping a "young man quite alone, who was practicing over and over the most inexplicable leap in the air...he swung himself up, and then round on his hand for a point, when his upper leg described a great circle." The engraving shows a young man apparently breaking. The dance was called the Giesse Harad Polska or "salmon district dance". In 1894, Thomas Edison filmed Walter Wilkins, Denny Toliver, and Joe Rastus dancing and performing
3168-415: The Bronx had lived in constant terror of street gangs. Suddenly, in 1975, they disappeared almost as quickly as they had arrived. This happened because something better came along to replace the gangs. That something was eventually called hip-hop. In 1979, the record company executive Sylvia Robinson assembled a group she called The Sugarhill Gang and recorded " Rapper's Delight ". The hit song ushered in
3256-475: The Charleston, echoing the style of Toprocking/Uprocking. He then executed a backflip, dropped face down to the ground, and transitioned into spins, rotating his body horizontally with the support of his hands and feet. Afterward, he stood up, spun, and performed an Eagle Rock-like jazz dance before exiting the circle. Many elements of breaking developed before the 1970s. Even Colonial American dances such as
3344-492: The Floorriorz. Notable Japanese bgirl crews include Queen of Queens, Body Carnival, and Nishikasai. Japanese B-girl Ami won the first ever Olympic gold medal for breakdancing at the Paris 2024 Olympics . Breakdancing was first introduced to South Korea by American soldiers shortly after its surge of popularity in the U.S. during the 1980s, but it was not until the late 1990s that the culture and dance took hold. 1997
3432-711: The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. Famous breakdancing crews from Korea include Morning of Owl, Jinjo Crew , Rivers Crew and Gamblerz . In the 1980s the Soviet Union was in a state of the Cold War with the countries of the Western Bloc . Soviet people lived behind the Iron Curtain , so they usually learned the new fashion trends emerging in the capitalist countries with some delay. The Soviet Union first learned of breakdancing in 1984, when videotapes of
3520-488: The Olympics were b-girl Raygun (36-year-old university lecturer Rachael Gunn ), and 16-year-old b-boy Jeff "J Attack" Dunne. Neither made it out of the round-robin stage, and Raygun was widely mocked online for her creative "kangaroo hop" moves, with a video clip of her performance going viral, as well as discussed in the press. Both entrants chose to wear their team tracksuit rather than street clothes. Ismael Toledo
3608-548: The accompanying speech of their DJs, known as toasting . He emigrated with his family at the age of 12 to The Bronx , New York City in November 1967, where they lived at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue . Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court prompted the other kids to nickname him " Hercules ". After being involved in
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3696-490: The acrobatic moves, such as the flare , show clear connections to gymnastics. However, it was not until the 1970s that breaking developed as a defined dance style in the United States. These precursing elements began to take form in the early 1970s, as breaking began to grow at parties featuring DJs and instrumental records. It was at these parties that DJ Kool Herc , a Bronx-based DJ pioneer, developed rhythmic breakdown sections by simultaneously switching between two copies of
3784-525: The album The Emcee's Properganda . In 2006, he became involved in getting Hip Hop commemorated at the Smithsonian Institution museums. He participated in the 2007 Dance parade . Since 2007, Herc has worked on a campaign to prevent 1520 Sedgwick Avenue from being sold to developers and withdrawn from its status as a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing property. In the summer of 2007, New York state officials declared 1520 Sedgwick Avenue
3872-421: The base of the light pole, take their equipment, attach it to that, get the electricity – Boom! We got a concert right here in the schoolyard and it's this guy Kool Herc. And he's just standing with the turntable, and the guys were studying his hands. There are people dancing, but there's as many people standing, just watching what he's doing. That was my first introduction to in-the-street, hip hop DJing. In 1975,
3960-465: The basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated , rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping . He called the dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls, terms that continue to be used fifty years later in the sport of breaking . Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash . Unlike them, he never made
4048-475: The body. The right (sweeping) leg remains straight throughout. By the time the right leg has swung around to point directly ahead, the left knee should be fully bent and the hands are ready to hit the floor and bear the body's weight. The swinging momentum continues into a 6-step or any other move. A Coin Drop is a transition made from Toprock directly into a Backspin, or more commonly into Windmills. It requires that
4136-406: The break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at
4224-490: The break from a second record, " Bongo Rock " by The Incredible Bongo Band . From the "Bongo Rock"'s break, Herc used a third record to switch to the break on " The Mexican " by the English rock band Babe Ruth . Kool Herc also contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctuating the recorded music with slang phrases, announcing: "Rock on, my mellow!" "B-boys, b-girls, are you ready? keep on rock steady" "This
4312-608: The breakdance craze. Crazy-A, the leader of the Tokyo chapter of the Rock Steady Crew, was dragged to see Flashdance by his then girlfriend and walked out captivated by the dance form and became one its earliest and one of the most influential breakers in Japanese history. Groups began to spring up as well, with early groups such as Tokyo B-Boys, Dynamic Rock Force (American kids from Yokota AB), B-5 Crew, and Mystic Movers popping up in Harajuku . The breakdancing community in Japan found
4400-403: The breaker seem to kick himself and fall painfully down onto his knee. From a standing position, the left leg lifts backwards. The left foot kicks quickly forward so that it slams into the back of the right knee in a "figure-four" position. As the right leg collapses, the breaker falls forward (not to either side!). Ideally, unseen by observers, the left foot actually sticks out just to the right of
4488-543: The capitalists", explaining that the dance was invented by Black Americans from poor neighborhoods. In 1985 the performance of Czech Jiří Korn was shown in the program "Morning Post", and became one of the first official demonstrations of breakdancing on Soviet television. With the support of the Leninist Young Communist League in 1986 breakdance festivals were held in the cities of the Baltic republics ( Tallinn , Palanga , Riga ). The next step
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#17327828808154576-399: The collapsing knee, and the toes should be pulled up hard. Instead of landing on the knee, the breaker lands on the toes of the left foot. The breaker drops as one leg sweeps out around in a wide arc. As all the weight shifts to the left leg, the right leg kicks backwards. The left leg bends so that the body sinks toward the floor, and meanwhile, the right leg swings around toward the front of
4664-451: The dance form borrow significantly from progressive genres of funk , soul , disco , electro , and jazz funk . A musical canon of these traditional b-boy songs have since developed, songs that were once expected to be played at every b-boying event. As the dance form grew, this standardization of classic songs prompted innovation of dance moves and break beats that reimagined the standard melodies. These songs include "Give It Up or Turn It
4752-429: The dancer shifts his/her weight from the left leg to the right leg, leans onto his/her right hand and then moves the weight onto his/her left hand/forearm - shoulder while his/her feet leave the ground. The momentum generated from performing a Coin Drop sends the dancer into a spin onto his/her back. Breakdancing Breakdancing or breaking , also called b-boying (when performed by men) or b-girling (women),
4840-402: The dancers who performed to DJ Kool Herc 's breakbeats. The obvious connection of the term breaking is to the word breakbeat . DJ Kool Herc has said that the term breaking was 1970s slang for ' getting excited ' , ' acting energetically ' or ' causing a disturbance ' . Most pioneers and notable practitioners prefer the older terms b-boying and breaking . Frosty Freeze of
4928-425: The early 1980s, the media began to call this style " breakdance ", which in 1991 The New York Times wrote was "an art as demanding and inventive as mainstream dance forms like ballet and jazz." Since this emerging culture was still without a name, participants often identified as "b-boys", a usage that included and went beyond the specific connection to dance, a usage that would persist in hip hop culture. With
5016-465: The early 1990s, "Australia was a world leading power move country", according to 2020s award-winning breaker Kid Tek. Stars of the time included B-Boy All Stars from Brisbane , who appeared on the American talent show Star Search in 1992. During the 2000s, the style evolved from focussing on power moves back to foundational styles. Influential Bronx breaker Alien Ness visited Melbourne to judge
5104-482: The era of commercially released hip hop. By that year's end, Grandmaster Flash was recording for Enjoy Records . In 1980, Afrika Bambaataa began recording for Winley . By this time, DJ Kool Herc's star had faded. Grandmaster Flash suggests that Herc may not have kept pace with developments in techniques of cueing (lining up a record to play at a certain place on it). Developments changed techniques of cutting (switching from one record to another) and scratching (moving
5192-524: The films Breakin ' , Breakin' 2 and Beat Street got into the country. In the USSR these movies were not released officially. They were brought home by Soviet citizens who had the opportunity to travel to Western countries (for example, by diplomats). Originally, the dance became popular in big cities: Moscow and Leningrad , as well as in the Baltic republics (some citizens of these Soviet republics had
5280-581: The height of breakdancing's popularity, Donnie Yen starred in a Hong Kong film called Mismatched Couples in which he performed various b-boy and breakdancing moves. The 2000s saw a resurgence of films and television series featuring breakdancing that continued into the early 2010s: Several documentary films have been made about breakdancing: In the United States, Breakdancing is widely referred to in TV advertising, as well as news, travelogue, and documentary segments, as an indicator of youth/street culture. From
5368-511: The height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack." Herc stated that he first introduced the Merry-Go-Round into his sets in 1973. The earliest known Merry-Go-Round involved playing James Brown's " Give It Up or Turnit a Loose " (with its refrain , "Now clap your hands! Stomp your feet!"), then switching from that record's break into
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#17327828808155456-524: The international stage following the breakdancing career of Taisuke Nonaka, known simply as Taisuke. Taisuke began to dominate the international scene and led the Japanese team Floorriorz to win the BOTY in 2015 against crew Kienjuice from Belarus. Despite Taisuke's successful career in group competitions, he failed to win the solo Red Bull BC One competition, an individual breakdancing championship that had continued to evade Japanese bboys. The first Japanese to win
5544-501: The lexicon of what would be eventually called hip hop culture. Early Kool Herc b-boy and later DJ innovator Grandmixer DXT describes the early evolution as follows: ... [E]verybody would form a circle and the B-boys would go into the center. At first the dance was simple: touch your toes, hop, kick out your leg. Then some guy went down, spun around on all fours. Everybody said wow and went home to try to come up with something better. In
5632-476: The mainland. Although it is still an underground culture in China because of some restrictions, breakdancing was reported to be a growing presence in 2013. Breakdancing took off in France in the early 1980s with the creation of groups such as the Paris City Breakers (who styled themselves after the well-known New York City Breakers ). In 1984, France became the first country in the world to have
5720-474: The mid-1980s, his father died, and he became addicted to crack cocaine . "I couldn't cope, so I started medicating", he says of this period. In 1994, Herc performed on Terminator X & the Godfathers of Threatt's album, Super Bad . In 2005, he wrote the foreword to Jeff Chang 's book on hip hop, Can't Stop Won't Stop . In 2005 he appeared in the music video of "Top 5 (Dead or Alive)" by Jin from
5808-580: The move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years. On November 3, 2023, Campbell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Influence Award category. Clive Campbell was the first of six children born to Keith and Nettie Campbell in Kingston, Jamaica . While growing up, he saw and heard the sound systems of neighborhood parties called dance halls , and
5896-435: The moves but who do not live a "b-boy lifestyle". Still others use the term breakdancer to disparage those who learn the dance for personal gain rather than for commitment to the culture. Many accuse the media of presenting a simplified version of the dance that focuses on "tricks" instead of culture. According to dance researcher Harri Heinilä, “It has been clear that the 'Breakdance' and other Hip Hop-related dances at
5984-559: The mystique of his graffiti name, his physical stature, and the reputation of his small parties, Herc became a folk hero in the Bronx. He began to play at nearby clubs including the Hevalo (now Salvation Baptist Church), Twilight Zone, Executive Playhouse, the PAL on 183rd Street, as well as at high schools such as Dodge and Taft . Rapping duties were delegated to Coke La Rock and Theodore Puccio. Herc's collective, known as The Herculoids,
6072-517: The opportunity to watch Western television). The attitude of the authorities to the new dance that came from the West was negative. The situation changed in 1985 with Mikhail Gorbachev who came to power and with the beginning of the Perestroika policy. The first to legalize the new dance were dancers from the Baltic republics. They presented this dance as the "protest against the arbitrariness of
6160-415: The percussion breakdown" from "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", signaling the birth of hip hop. The "b-boys" and "b-girls" were the dancers to Herc's breaks, who were described as "breaking". Herc has noted that "breaking" was also street slang of the time meaning "getting excited", "acting energetically", or "causing a disturbance". Herc coined the terms "b-boy", "b-girl", and "breaking" which became part of
6248-504: The percussive pattern. History credits DJ Kool Herc for the invention of this concept later termed the break beat . Similar to other hip-hop subcultures, such as graffiti writing, rapping , and DJing , breakers are predominantly male, but this is not to say that women breakers, b-girls, are invisible or nonexistent. Female participants, such as Daisy Castro (also known as Baby Love of Rock Steady Crew), attest that females have been breakdancing since its inception. Critics argue that it
6336-601: The prestigious international breakdancing competition Battle of the Year , exposing the skill of the country's breakers to the rest of the world. Since then, the Korean government has capitalized on the popularity of the dance and has promoted it alongside Korean culture. R-16 Korea is the most well-known government-sponsored breakdancing event, and is hosted by the Korea Tourism Organization and supported by
6424-639: The record by hand to and fro under the stylus for percussive effect) in the late 1970s. Herc said he retreated from the scene after being stabbed at the Executive Playhouse while trying to intercede in a fight, and the burning down of one of his venues. In 1980, Herc had stopped DJing and was working in a record shop in South Bronx. Kool Herc appeared in Hollywood's motion picture take on hip hop, Beat Street ( Orion , 1984), as himself. In
6512-537: The recreation room of their building, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Herc's first sound system consisted of two turntables connected to two amplifiers and a Shure "Vocal Master" PA system with two speaker columns, on which he played records such as James Brown 's " Give It Up or Turnit a Loose ", Jimmy Castor 's "It's Just Begun" and Booker T. & the M.G.'s ' "Melting Pot". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to
6600-599: The same record, creating " breaks ". By looping the records and their simultaneous breaks, he was able to prolong the break and provide a rhythmic and improvisational base for dancers: Herc tells Jeff Chang in his book Can't Stop Won't Stop (2005), "And once they heard that, that was it, wasn't no turning back. They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks." Breaking prompted dance battles and dance sessions known as "cyphers", competitive circles in which participants took turns dancing while surrounded by onlookers. The Five-Percent Nation first used
6688-422: The same videos online, everybody ends up looking very similar. The differences between individual b-boys, between crews, between cities/states/countries/continents, have largely disappeared. It used to be that you could tell what city a b-boy was from by the way he danced. Not anymore. But I've been saying these things for almost a decade, and most people don't listen, but continue watching the same videos and dancing
6776-515: The same way. It's what I call the "international style", or the "Youtube style". Luis "Alien Ness" Martinez, the president of Mighty Zulu Kings, expressed a similar frustration in a separate interview three years earlier with "The Super B-Beat Show" about the top five things he hates in breakdancing: Oh yeah, the last thing I hate in breakin'… Yo, all y'all motherfuckin' internet b-boys... I'm an internet b-boy too, but I'm real about my shit. Everybody knows who I am, I'm out at every fucking jam, I'm in
6864-498: The term breakdance is unknown. It was used by hiphop pioneer and breakdancer Kurtis Blow in a 1980 profile by Bill Adler in the New York Daily News . The term is frequently used to refer to the dance in popular culture and in the mainstream entertainment industry. The term break has been used in music, particularly jazz music since the 1920s, in which a solo musician is given a break in which to play solo for
6952-474: The term "cypher" to denote circles of people. Crews including the Rock Steady Crew or Mighty Zulu Kingz began to form, in response to the growth of competitive cyphers which sometimes featured cash-prizes, titles, and bragging rights. Breaking started as toprock , footwork-oriented dance moves performed standing up, but as dance crews began to experiment, a separate dance form known as uprock further influenced breaking. Uprock , also known as Brooklyn uprock,
7040-462: The very least resemble or even were inherited from earlier African American dances, which have been collectively called jazz dance since this term appeared by 1917 and was established by the end of the 1920s." For example, in 1942, ‘The Mills Brothers' short film The Caravan featured a dance sequence that bears a striking resemblance to modern breakdancing. The dancer entered the center of a circle formed by spectators, starting with movements similar to
7128-504: The winner deciding the location of a future battle. Although some disagree that breaking ever played a part in mediating gang rivalry, the early growth of breaking still primarily served to assist the poor youth of the Bronx to stray away from gang violence and rather expel their time towards an artistic dance. One example is former gang leader Afrika Bambaataa , who hosted hip-hop parties and vowed to specifically use hip-hop to support children away from gang violence. He would eventually form
7216-507: The young Grandmaster Flash , to whom Kool Herc was, in his words, "a hero", began DJing in Herc's style. By 1976, Flash and his MCs The Furious Five played to a packed Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan . Venue owners were often nervous of unruly young crowds, however, and soon sent hip hop back to the clubs, community centres and high school gymnasiums of the Bronx. Afrika Bambaataa first heard Kool Herc in 1973. Bambaataa, at that time
7304-404: Was augmented by Clark Kent and dancers The Nigga Twins. Herc took his soundsystem (the herculords) —still legendary for its sheer volume —to the streets and parks of the Bronx. Nelson George recalls a schoolyard party: The sun hadn't gone down yet, and kids were just hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Van pulls up, a bunch of guys come out with a table, crates of records. They unscrew
7392-434: Was featured as part of the main event. In the past 50 years, various films have depicted the dance. 1975's (filmed in 1974) Tommy included a breakdancing sequence during the "Sensation" number. Later, in the early 1980s, several films depicted breakdancing including Fame , Wild Style , Flashdance , Breakin' , Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo , Delivery Boys , Krush Groove , and Beat Street . In 1985, at
7480-465: Was going to be included as a sport in the 2024 Olympics , its popularity surged again. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21, because of social distancing measures, breakers started doing battle online, via Zoom or Instagram. Australian breakers started developing more creative and innovative styles, and "pushing international barriers", according to Kid Tek. The qualifying Australian entrants to
7568-460: Was one of the first breakers in Brazil. In 1984, he moved to the United States to study dance. While in the U.S. he discovered breakdancing and ended up meeting breaker Crazy Legs who personally mentored him for the four years that followed. After becoming proficient in breakdancing, he moved back to São Paulo and started to organize crews and enter international competitions. He eventually opened
7656-412: Was said to lack health insurance. He had surgery for kidney stones , with a stent placed to relieve the pressure. He needed follow-up surgery but St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx , the site that performed the previous surgery, requested that he make a deposit toward the next surgery, because he had missed several follow-up visits. (The hospital noted that it would not turn away uninsured patients in
7744-558: Was the spreading of the similar festivals to other Soviet republics. Festivals were held in Donetsk (Ukraine), Vitebsk (Belarus), Gorky (Russia). Breakdancing could be seen in Soviet cinema: Dancing on the Roof (1985), Courier (1986), Publication (1988). By the end of the decade the dance became almost ubiquitous. At almost any disco or school dance one could see a person dancing in
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