Break Dancing

History

Origin

Elements of breaking may be seen in other antecedent cultures prior to the 1980s,^[16] but it was not until the 1980s that breaking developed as a street dance style. Street corner DJswould take the rhythmic breakdown sections (or "breaks") of dance records and loop them one after the other. This provided a rhythmic base for improvising and mixing and it allowed dancers to display their skills during the break. In a turn-based showcase of dance routines the winning side was determined by the dancer(s) who could outperform the other by displaying a set of more complicated and innovative moves while maintaining to hit specific beats of the break.

Korea

B-boying was first introduced to South Korea by American soldiers shortly after its surge of popularity in the US during the 1980s, but it wasn’t until the late 1990s that the culture and dance really took hold.^[17] 1997 is known as the "Year Zero of Korean breaking".^[18] AKorean-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 of a Los Angeles b-boying 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 b-boy community.

In 2002, Korea's Expression Crew won the prestigious international b-boying competition Battle of the Year, exposing the skill of the country's b-boys to the rest of the world. Since then, the Korean government has capitalized on the popularity of the dance and has promoted it as part of Korean culture. R-16 Korea is the most well-known government-sponsored event, and is hosted by the Korean Tourism Organization and supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

Japan

Shortly after the Rock Steady Crew came to Japan, b-boying within Japan began to thrive. Each Sunday b-boys would perform breaking in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park.^[19] One of the first and most influential Japanese breakers was Crazy-A, who is now the leader of the Tokyo chapter of Rock Steady Crew.^[19] He also organizes the yearly B-Boy Park which draws upwards of 10,000 fans a year and attempts to expose a wider audience to the culture.^[20]

Uprock

A separate but related dance form which influenced breaking is Uprock also called Rocking or Brooklyn Rock. Uprock is an aggressive dance that involves two dancers who mimic ways of fighting each other using mimed weaponry in rhythm with the music.^[10] Uprock as a dance style of its own 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.^[21]:138 When used in a b-boy battle, opponents often respond by performing similar uprock moves, supposedly creating a short uprock battle. Some dancers 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 poor imitations that only show a small part of the original uprock style ^[22]

It has been stated that breaking replaced fighting between street gangs.^[8] On the contrary, some believe it a misconception that b-boying ever played a part in mediating gang rivalry. Both viewpoints have some truth. Uprock has its roots in gangs.^{[21]:116, 138}Whenever there was an issue over turf, the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock. Whoever won this preliminary battle would decide where the real fight would be.^[23] This is where the battle mentality in breaking and hip-hop dance in general comes from.^[24]"Sometimes a dance was enough to settle the beef, sometimes the dance set off more beef.