Breakdancing

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Breakdancing began in the Bronx borough of New York City, born from the African American and Puerto Rican communities who shaped it into one of the most distinctive physical art forms of the twentieth century. On the 11th of August, 1973, a teenager named Cindy Campbell threw a back-to-school party in the rec room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. She needed money to buy school clothes, so she asked her older brother Clive to DJ. That brother was Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell. What unfolded in that Bronx rec room would set in motion a dance form that eventually reached a billion people across every continent, and land in the Paris Olympics more than fifty years later. How did a street dance born among the poor youth of New York become a global athletic discipline? What forces nearly killed it, and what forces kept it alive? And who are the breakers who carried it forward when almost no one was watching?

• 2. Roots and Influences

  ›

  West African dances performed by enslaved people in America, including a circle dance called Juba, planted the first seeds. Dance researcher Michael Holman traces a direct line from those early gatherings to a core feature of breaking: the cipher, a circle of dancers where each person takes a turn. After Irish immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1850s, African American dancers blended Juba with the Irish Jig to create Tap Dance. Early breakers known as The Legendary Twins cited the Nicholas Brothers, legendary tap and jazz figures, as direct inspiration for specific moves they popularized.

  When Bronx breakers were asked to name the first b-boy, many answered with a single name: James Brown. Herc himself said in interviews that Brown was his favorite artist while growing up in Jamaica, and Brown's embodiment of black pride and self-expression resonated deeply with the Bronx dance scene. Early breakers Richard "Crazy Legs" Colon and Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert added another layer, citing Kung Fu films and Bruce Lee specifically as influences. The acrobatic move called the flare, a staple of power breaking, draws a clear line back to gymnastics. The dance never emerged from one clean source. It was assembled from fragments of jazz, tap, martial arts, and African movement traditions that had been traveling and transforming for more than a century.

• 3. Kool Herc's Parties

  ›

  Before Herc picked up turntables, he was a regular at the Plaza Tunnel, a club in the basement of the Concourse Plaza Hotel, where African American teens danced in styles called freestyling, going off, burning, or breaking. That background as a dancer shaped everything about how he approached DJing. He wanted music that made people more excited to move.

  After the 1520 Sedgwick Avenue party proved a success, Cindy and Herc kept renting the same rec room on an almost monthly basis. By 1975, the events had grown large enough that they had to move into local dance halls. Herc noticed something at those gatherings: the breakers saved their most spectacular moves for the percussive drum breaks in the songs. After about two years of throwing parties, he began isolating those sections, pulling records like "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band, "The Mexican" by Babe Ruth, and "Yellow Sunshine" by Yellow Sunshine, and playing them back to back. The extended break section became the heart of the party. People started attending just to watch the dancers.

  Specific moves took shape at these events. The two-step toprock developed as a way of claiming space before going to the floor. The Legendary Twins extended the footwork vocabulary, taking breaking down to the ground. Cholly Rock and Pow Wow built on that foundation with fast rotations on hands and feet that became known as Zulu Spins. These were not accidents. They were inventions forged in real time, in a Bronx apartment building, between 1973 and 1975.

• 4. Rock Steady and Mainstream Arrival

  ›

  By the late 1970s, DJs like Grandmaster Flash had begun looping only the breaks from songs, and the dance shifted in response. Acrobatic floor moves grew more prominent; toprock receded. Puerto Rican and Latino dancers entered the scene as breaking parties moved outdoors, learning directly from the African American originators. Rock Steady Crew formed at this intersection. Jimmy Dee, an African American b-boy, and Jimmy Lee, a Latino b-boy, founded the crew specifically to keep the dance alive as many original practitioners aged out.

  Richard "Crazy Legs" Colon eventually took over Rock Steady Crew, moved to Manhattan, and expanded its reach through battles. Photographer Henry Chalfant, who had discovered breaking through its connection to graffiti, began organizing events with Rock Steady performing. In 1981, he invited Rock Steady to battle the Dynamic Rockers at Lincoln Center. ABC News and the New York Times covered the event. Michael Holman then started regularly booking Rock Steady to battle the New York City Breakers at his hip-hop nightclub, the Negril, where the crew built a citywide reputation alongside celebrities.

  In 1982, Rock Steady Crew appeared in the film Flashdance. The movie spread breaking to audiences far outside New York. West Coast scenes erupted, with crews like the Shake City Rockers and Air Force crew developing spinning and power moves into more modern forms. Many of the earliest Los Angeles breakers trained at the Radiotron community center. By 1984, breaking was featured at the LA Olympics, and Donnie Yen performed breaking moves the following year in the Hong Kong film Mismatched Couples.

• 5. The Underground Years

  ›

  By 1986, breaking had largely faded from public consciousness. Many practitioners quit or moved into other pursuits. The mainstream had decided it was a fad. But the dance did not disappear. It traveled, carried by films and by New York breakers who toured internationally. Scenes took root in Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and beyond.

  In Japan, the journey began in 1983 with the release of the film Wild Style, accompanied by a Rock Steady Crew tour. A dancer named Crazy-A, who would lead the Tokyo chapter of Rock Steady, was brought to see Flashdance by his girlfriend and walked out captivated. Early crews formed in Harajuku, including Tokyo B-Boys and Mystic Movers. The breaking community found a home in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park, which still draws b-boys and b-girls today.

  In 1991, the first international breaking competition, Battle of the Year, launched in Hanover, Germany, founded by Thomas Hergenröther the previous year. That event, along with competitions like BBoy Summit and Freestyle Session, gave isolated scenes something to aim for. Breakers traded VHS tapes across countries. They traveled to exchange knowledge. 1997 is remembered in South Korea as the Year Zero of Korean breaking, the moment a Korean-American promoter named John Jay Chon handed a VHS tape of the Los Angeles competition called Radiotron to a crew named Expression Crew in a Seoul club. A year later, Chon returned to find those tapes had been dubbed repeatedly and were feeding a growing movement. By 2002, Expression Crew had won Battle of the Year.

• 6. The Four Elements

  ›

  Toprock is the entry point: any string of steps performed from a standing position, allowing the dancer to establish style before descending to the floor. It draws from popping, locking, tap dance, Lindy hop, and house dance. Transitions from toprock to floor work are called drops.

  Footwork, also called downrock, covers any movement close to the ground where the hands share the dancer's weight with the feet. The foundational six-step and its variants, including the three-step, form the base. More complex variations weave the knees and elbows through each other. Power moves are acrobatic sequences requiring momentum, strength, flexibility, and endurance. The windmill, the swipe, the backspin, and the head spin are among the most recognized. The Thomas Flair, borrowed from gymnastics, became the breakdancing move known as the flare.

  Freezes are held poses executed off the ground using upper-body strength, timed to emphasize strong beats in the music. They often signal the end of a set. Breakers string freezes together in chains called stacks to demonstrate musicality and physical control. One competition-specific variation, the suicide, reverses the idea of control: the breaker appears to lose balance and fall onto their back or stomach. The more painful the fall appears, the more impressive it reads to an audience, though breakers execute suicides in ways designed to minimize actual injury. The musical tempo that holds all four elements together typically runs between 110 and 135 beats per minute.

• 7. A Global Sport

  ›

  On the 7th of December, 2020, the International Olympic Committee announced that breaking would debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, following a proposal by the World DanceSport Federation. Breaking had already appeared at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, in men's, women's, and mixed-team formats.

  At Paris 2024, sixteen male and sixteen female breakers competed in head-to-head matches. IOC President Thomas Bach stated that breaking was added to draw more interest from young people in the Olympics. Japan's Ami Yuasa won the gold medal in the women's event, having previously become the first B-Girl world champion of Red Bull BC One in 2018. Canada's Philip "Phil Wizard" Kim swept three rounds against France's Danis "Danny Dan" Civil in the men's final, with judges voting 23-4. Australia's entrants were b-girl Raygun, a 36-year-old university lecturer named Rachael Gunn, and 16-year-old b-boy Jeff "J Attack" Dunne. Neither made it out of the round-robin stage, and Raygun's performance attracted widespread online attention.

  Breaking will not appear at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, but may return for the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, Australia. The door that opened at Paris remains at least partly open, and the question of whether Olympic inclusion strengthens or reshapes the culture that began on Sedgwick Avenue has no settled answer yet.