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15 Critic's Choice: Breokdoncing Breakdancing may have made it from the black and Latin ghettos of New York City to suburban shopping malls and the cover ofNewsweek, but the surest sign that it's gained a foothold in mainstream American culture is its appearance in the dance studio and, fast on those heels, on how-to and feature movie home-video programs. Social dance is a skill we usually think of as passing from teacher to student through live contact- whether the teacher is a professional or an older sister or brother- but in Western culture written notation has aided in the process, at least since the Renaissance. In the twentieth century, every shift in technology has afforded dance instruction new and more ingenious ways of shaping itself. Radio and records made it possible to spread local dance music around the world. In the sixties, a rash of"instruction " lyrics ("Put your hand on your hip and Jet your backbone slip ...") taught whites to do black dances, while 'IV revolutionized dance fashions by providing mass training to teenagers via studio sock-hops such as American Bandstand. With home video, dance instruction has been doubly enhanced: Not only do we get the appropriate music and the visual model, but we can also rewind to repeat and practice those elusive, difficult moves. Now, with breakdancing, the dance craze that has captured today's American, European , and Japanese imaginations, we have video instruction for the one dance form that seems most apt for 'IV tutelage, born as it was in a generation obsessed by the medium - its imagery, its rapid-fire pacing, its drama, and the instant stardom it promises. Breakdancing was an invisible underground current for years. (It had already been pronounced out offashion by kids in the Bronx, Harlem, and Brooklyn who created it, by the time it got its second wind and rocketed into flamboyant visibility in '81.) But it took to 'IV instantly, not surprisingly , since at times it seems like a live version of a videogame. Breakdancing and all the culture of hiphop (the umbrella term for graffiti, breaking, rapping, scratching, and their immediate social context) incorpoVideo Review (December 1984). 137 138 The African-American Connection rate and use media style and imagery in a homemade, funky form. As usual, though, the media have polished hiphop and homogenized it. At this point, therefore, any reference to breakdancing has to distinguish between prefame and postfame versions ofthe dance. Prefame breaking was (and, for some, remains) a folk form that emphasizes playful competition justthis side ofgang warfare. The urge to top a rival gave rise to the virtuosic acrobatic maneuvers, done close to the floor, that originally embellished the real climax of the dance - the pose or freeze, a personal signature that also served to insult one's opponent and win status for one's crew. Postfame is, ofcourse, the version ofbreakdancing familiar to most of us through the media. Theatricalized and sanitized, it emphasizes gymnastics over meaning, and it has broadened to include various forms of "electric boogie" -an upright, pantomimic, elegant articulation of body parts. Nowadays, breakdancing is utterly common as a 1V image, from ads for Burger King and the u.s.Army to events such as the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. Those who want to learn or simply to savor the spectacle now have a wealth offootage at their fingertips, from the ads they can tape to the four major movies so far released commercially that feature breakdancing , to the mushrooming quantity of how-to videotapes. The reviews that follow offer first a history of the image of breakdancing in movies - its increasing role and appeal- and then a survey of the instructional tapes. With the movies, the ratings reflect the quality ofthe breakdance numbers they include, not their overall quality as pictures. Floshdon(e (1983) * * * Flashdance was the movie that first catapulted breakdancing to fame, although the breakdancing sequences last for less than two minutes of the picture. The plot here is that of an up-dated Depression musical in which the heroine wins her audition at a prestigious ballet school with her nerve, a throbbing disco song, and a jazz routine that features a well-placed backspin , inspired by seeing the Rock Steady crew breakdancing on the streets. The heroine's ripped clothing and T-shirts slung low on one shoulder set a new style that also fits with hiphop fashion. The scandal about the movie that later emerged was that Jennifer...

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