Break Dance

P

pygmalion

Well-Known Member
I know zero about breakdance. So I was intrigued to find this website, maintained by the breakdance team at Rice University.
Their goal is to promote the various aspects of breakdance/hip hop culture in a positive way. Good deal, in my view. Does anybody out there do breakdance? Care to share your wisdom? To me, it looks like breakdance is one of those art forms. VERY popular for a while. Now, waning popularity, except with the diehards. True? Off base? Why?


http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~frb/
 
There actually is a breakdance club at Cornell University, a very active one. They practice on Sunday nights after the International Folk Dance group, which I attend, and they are amazing. There must be 50 people at least, or therabouts!! It really requires quite a bit of skill and seeing these people do their thing I would put it on the par of doing aerials and other fancy dance moves. Perhaps this is one reason you don't see too much of it?
 
I used to do it and i was part of a breakin crew; we were called ugk (UnderGround Krew). I was also part of some graffiti crews too as I was heavy into that; all this just seemed to go hand in hand though. I remember like all the writers (graffiti artists) new all the b-boys (breakers/breakdancers), and we all used to hang out with each other.

Anyways, breakin was hard, but it was really fun. Thats really the only reason we did it, just to have fun and friendly competition. Even within our own crew, everytime we would practice, we would show up boasting about what new moves we created or whatever.

Breakdancing has always been pretty known, but always seems to go back to the underground; what i mean is, people see it, but most dont really know anything about it - just as in graffiti, which is even more underground. Every so often, theres a huge resurgence in interest again though.
 
bboying (breaking) never really died it just slowed down a bit...alot of people got into it during the popularity explosion in the 1980's but to most of those people it was just a fad until the next pop-culture sensation came along...but before it was a fad real hiphop heads were doing it in one form or another since the late 1960's and i have a few die-hard homies that have been bboying (mostly on top) ever since they first got in to it.

bboying is HUGE right now with HUGE competitions being held all over the world and it has been pretty big for over a decade now...even up here in portland, oregon where i live we just had a HUGE bboy battle with crews from all over the country and we have another one coming up at the end of this month.

i visited that website you posted and they say that "breakdance" is an umbrella term for all the HipHop street dances which is true and not true...it's true according to the media who lumped everything together as "breakdance" but most people who are actually into HipHop and it's dances, for one, rarely use the term "breakdance" (the media actually made up that word! we prefer bboying or breaking)....for two breakdance or breaking is it's OWN style...SEPERATE from popping and locking which are actually their own forms of what we call funkstyles.

anyways before i write too much i'll just post up some links that you can check out yourself if you're interested...

http://www.zulunation.com/hip_hop_history_2.htm
http://www.templeofhiphop.org/section-2.html
http://www.mrwiggleshiphop.net/hip_hop_knowledge.htm
http://www.electricboogaloos.com/knowledge.html
http://members.aol.com/wepaman/

PEACE!
 
Thanks ALLCity for holding it down.

Breakin' has been been around since well before the mainstream media picked up on it. It nevere died out, it just lost the interest of the B&T crowd. You can find it in nearly every major city in the US and through major metropolitan centers around the world.

I'm a funk dancer since before the word hip-hop was being used to describe the culture. I don't mind hip-hop dance being sed to describe what I do... it is accurate to an extent, I teach the forms of dance that are down to the music of this culture. Some people teach Polish Folk Dancing, the native vernacular dances of Poland, My teaching Hip Hop Dancing is every bit as acceptable to me... IF you take my classes though I make sure that you know what is gliding, and ticking, and strutting etc. the dances that make up the particular style of hip-hop I teach, the generic name is for the masses.
 
d nice said:
Thanks ALLCity for holding it down.

Breakin' has been been around since well before the mainstream media picked up on it. It nevere died out, it just lost the interest of the B&T crowd. You can find it in nearly every major city in the US and through major metropolitan centers around the world.

I'm a funk dancer since before the word hip-hop was being used to describe the culture. I don't mind hip-hop dance being sed to describe what I do... it is accurate to an extent, I teach the forms of dance that are down to the music of this culture. Some people teach Polish Folk Dancing, the native vernacular dances of Poland, My teaching Hip Hop Dancing is every bit as acceptable to me... IF you take my classes though I make sure that you know what is gliding, and ticking, and strutting etc. the dances that make up the particular style of hip-hop I teach, the generic name is for the masses.
Click to expand...

word up d nice...they say that rocking or "uprocking" started in like 1968 and eventually evolved into what we know today as breaking...and that's about the time i imagine that the funkstyles started on the westcoast...man that's a long time...it's amazing how many people don't even realize how long this so what has been around!

that's dope that you break down the different styles in your classes...my homeboy owns his own dance company and they mostly do, for lack of a better word, "hiphop"...but he is also a straight up bboy and funkstylist...so what he's just a dancer straight up! but he always makes sure his students know the difference between "hiphop" and "HipHop" and breaking and popping and locking, etc.

i've always been more into bboying but lately i've been getting more into my westcoast roots and into the funkstyles and into the music that goes along with it...coming up i've always thought of electro-funk (planet rock, etc.) were the best popping songs but i'm finding out that alot of die-hard poppers prefer straight up funk...i am curious as to what you think about that?

PEACE!
 
Different beats for different styles. I'm not an "old-timer" except when you compare me to a bunch of kids, but I was out there at the BBQ's a little kid in SF and Sac dancing to P-Funk and to Planet Rock.

Its all good in my book. I'm kinda like Skeeter Rabbit, when I hit I like it to be to something gangster. When I'm gliding I like it cool and rhythmic, G-Funk works, but when I'm straight up poppin' it needs to be late 70's or early eighties.
 
d nice said:
Different beats for different styles. I'm not an "old-timer" except when you compare me to a bunch of kids, but I was out there at the BBQ's a little kid in SF and Sac dancing to P-Funk and to Planet Rock.

Its all good in my book. I'm kinda like Skeeter Rabbit, when I hit I like it to be to something gangster. When I'm gliding I like it cool and rhythmic, G-Funk works, but when I'm straight up poppin' it needs to be late 70's or early eighties.
Click to expand...

yeah some of the funkstylists that i kick it with up here say that electro is good for doing what they call "tricks"...the way they were talking about tricks implied, to me, that they kind of looked down on them...sort of like how alot of bboys look down on power moves...they were saying that straight up funk like zapp and roger, etc. is better for "getting down".

i feel you about the hitting to something gangster...that's like how animation was explaining it in the freshest kids.

stay up...peace...
 
Breakin' and Funk are still incredibly popular, what is gone is the media attention and the "trend-followers" those people who were there just because it was "popular".
 
Eh. Probably just as well.

And isn't that always the way? Things can be underground for years, or decades, and all of a sudden get "discovered" by the big media moguls. And all is well (meaning huge, over-commercialized, and homogenized) until the next media "discovery" comes along.

That's life, I guess. :?
 
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