1984 SPECIAL REPORT: "BREAKDANCING"

Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance. While diverse in the amount of variation available in the dance, breakdancing mainly consists of four kinds of movement: toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes. Breakdancing is typically set to songs containing drum breaks, especially in hip-hop, funk, soul music and breakbeat music. Although modern trends allow for much wider varieties of music along certain ranges of tempo and beat patterns.

The Breakdancing dance was created by African American youth during the late sixties and early 1970's.[1] The earliest breakdancing groups included the "Zulu Kings" and "Clark Kent".[2] By the mid seventies, the dance began to spread to other communities and gained popularity.[2] At the same time, the dance was losing popularity with African Americans.[2]

A practitioner of this dance is called a b-boy, b-girl, or breaker. Although the term "breakdance" is frequently used to refer to the dance in popular culture and in the mainstream entertainment industry, "b-boying" and "breaking" are the original terms and are preferred by the majority of the pioneers and most notable practitioners.