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16 Breaking Breakdancing is a style of competitive, acrobatic, and pantomimic dancing. It began as a kind of game, a friendly contest in which black and Hispanic teenagers outdid one another with outrageous physical contortions , spins, and back flips, wedded to a fluid, syncopated, circling body rock done close to the ground. Breaking once meant only dancing on the floor, but now its definition has widened to include electric boogie, uprock, aerial gymnastics, and all sorts of other fancy variations. Although breaking is the newest part of hiphop culture, it's the part that has made hiphop a media obsession. Five years ago the only people who had ever heard ofbreaking were the kids in NewYork's ghettos who did it. They didn't even have a definite name for the form - they sometimes called it "breaking," but they also referred to it as "rocking down," "B-Boy," or just "that kind ofdancing you do to rap music." By 1980 -when the form had already been around for a few years - they weren't even very interested in it anymore. This kind of dancing was a passing fad, they felt, that would soon be replaced by roller disco. But history was to prove them wrong. Not since the twist, in the early sixties, has a dance craze so captured the attention of the media. By 1984 only a hermit could not have known about breaking. It had arrived, not only in the United States but also in Canada, Europe, and Japan. Breaking had been featured in the 1983 Hollywood film Flashdance, the independent hiphop musical film Wild Style, and the documentary Style Wars (which aired on PBS), served as the inspiration for the 1984 films Breakin' and Beat Street, and was rumored to be the subject of fifteen forthcoming Hollywood movies. Countless how-to books and videos had hit the market. Breaking had been spotlighted on national news shows, talk shows, and ads for Burger King, Levi's, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, and Panasonic . One hundred breakdancers heated up the closing ceremonies ofthe 1984 summer Olympics in Los Angeles. And Michael Jackson had given the form national currency. Breaking made the cover of Newsweek in 1984. Newspapers all over the country regularly carried stories on its latest ups and downs. The paradox emerged, as you flipped the pages of the Washington Post or the Fresh: Hip Hop Don't Stop. Co-authored with Nelson George, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski. New York: Random House/Sarah Lazin, 1985. © Sarah Lazin Books. 143 144 The African-American Connection Los Angeles Times, that breakdancers who'd come up in th« ghetto were banned from city streets and shopping malls for causing disturbances and attracting undesirable crowds, while at the same time middle-class housewives and executives could learn to breakdance in their spare time at classes proliferating throughout the suburbs. Doctors added to the form's acceptability by giving medical advice on how to survive it unbruised. And the New York Times began using breaking as a metaphor even in articles that had nothing to do with hiphop. By now, breakdancing was happening at bar mitzvahs, children's dance recitals, high school proms, college dances, in prison talent shows, at ballet galas, and on Broadway, as well as in clubs and discos-and, in a second-generation revival, in city parks and on the streets once again. Even President Reagan was delighted by breaking when he saw the New York City Breakers perform in Washington, D.C., at a Kennedy Center gala. The media hype about breakdancing has changed both its form and its meaning. So to talk about breakdancing you have to divide it into two stages: before and after media. Before the media turned breaking into a dazzling entertainment, it was a kind of serious game, a form of urban vernacular dance, a fusion of sports, dancing, and fighting whose performance had urgent social significance for the dancers. After media, participation in breakdancing was stratified into two levels: professional and amateur. For the pros, breakdancing had become a theatrical art form with a technique and a vocabulary that, like ballet's, could be refined and expanded. On this level, competition took on new meaning. It was no longer a battle for control of the streets, for neighborhood fame, or to win your opponent's "colors" (T-shirt with crew insignia). Now cash prizes, roles in Hollywood movies, and European tours were at stake. For the amateurs, the element of competition had...

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