History of Break Dance

          Break dancing dates back to the Bronx in the early 1970's and coincided with the era marked by disco. It began within the African-American street gangs that were falling into deterioration by this time. They thought of breaking as a form of dance, but did not regard it as later dancers did, who used it as an expression of their cultural roots. Break dancing during this time had a different form than the present style. B-boys, as break dancers were called, would dance two at a time and try to come up with a group of moves that would prove their skills to be better than their opponents, thus these battle dances became the (occasional) substitute for violence between the gangs. The original moves consisted of mainly 'style' such as freezes and footwork and less of what is popular today, 'power' moves such as head spins, 90's and flares. Many of the early pioneers of hip-hop culture claim that break dancing was one of the original foundations of hip-hop because the dance was present in the early gang cultures of the Bronx whereas the musical elements were not. As was said during this time, "the bboy was here before the MC. They were dancing and there was graf being done before all hip-hop," (Fricke and Ahearn 2002: 12).
          The emergence of break dancing into popular youth culture, especially within the Puerto Rican populations of New York, didn't begin to occur until the decline of gang culture around 1975. Originators to the art form such as the Nigger Twins were still dancing, but breaking was becoming a dance form that was predominated by Puerto Ricans. By 1979, the first wave of break dancing was coming to an end because people were dubbing it as being played out. "When I started dancing more, you could see everyone would stop and pay attention to the MC's, you start losing your circles. People walked away from you when the MC's rocked," (Fricke and Ahearn 2002: 117) Strangely enough, breaking, which had helped forward hip-hop music, was being placed in the shadows. One explanation for this is that MCing was becoming more popular and allowed people an outlet for generating some type of income whereas break dancing did not. Break dancing also fell into the sidelines as the many of the originators of this dance style got older and felt that break dance was "played" or not as interesting anymore. Finally in 1980, a break dancer named Crazy Legs, borrowing the name of the established breaking crew, "Rock Steady" revived break dancing through the Latino culture. He also brought in 'power' moves such as windmills and backspins that influenced the evolution of break dancing from that point forward.