A Brief History of Bboying

In the Bronx some time around 1973, Kool DJ Herc was known for throwing block parties in different neighborhoods where everybody would come to dance and congregate. Herc would play music with breaks in it, where all the music dropped out and the only thing still going was the beat (Brenner, 2002). These parts of the songs were very popular and some people would wait just for the breaks to start dancing and showing off their moves. These people became known as Break boys and Break girls, or Bboys and Bgirls.

The actual meaning of the "break" in Bboys is disputed. Some say it came from the breaks on the records; others say that it comes from the slang term "breaking," a term which implies acting like a fool or starting trouble (Brenner, 2002). Early breaking was done predominantly on one's feet (called "toprock"). It wasn't until a couple years later that Bboys introduced flashier moves to their dancing ("footwork" and "power moves").

 Nearing the end of the decade, breaking had lost popularity as something to do at parties and only the die-hard Bboys could be seen breaking. It became more of a competitive dance. Crews (a group of Bboys) would travel around the city to dance against each other and see who had the most skill, called battling.

The big introduction of Bboying to the public eye came in the form of the Rock Steady Crew. In the early 80s, graffiti photographer Henry Chalfant realized that a lot of graffiti writers were also Bboys. He organized a show with the Rock Steady Crew and legendary Hip-Hop personality Fab 5 Freddy in which the crew would dance in front of projections images of graffiti while Freddy rapped and a DJ played music (Brenner, 2002). The show was reviewed by the New York Village Voice newspaper and from there the crew started doing more shows and battles, including one in Manhattan's Lincoln Center that was covered by National Geographic and the New York Times.

In 1982, the Rock Steady Crew was offered a job by Michael Holman doing weekly shows at a Hip-Hop club called The Grill. The next year, Fab 5 Freddy collaborated once again with the Rock Steady Crew to create the first Hip-Hop movie, called "Wild Style." This, combined with the crew's appearance in the 1983 motion picture "Flashdance,"propelled Bboying into the world's view (Brenner, 2002). It quickly spread across the country and different styles emerged from different regions. From there, Bboying shined bright and fast in regards to media popularity. It was heavily commercialized, with Bboying being featured in all sorts of movies, talk shows, and even the Olympics. But by the end of the 80s, it was replaced with the "next big thing" and Bboys fell back into relative obscurity. Some believe that Bboying was never meant to leave underground culture; others argue that the energy that they put into breaking probably would have gone into gangs if they had been introduced to the latter instead of the former (Brenner, 2002).

Today, breaking is still going strong as new generations are picking up the dance and coming up with new styles and more creative moves.