Breakdancers

B-boying

A b-boy performing outside Faneuil Hall, Boston, MA, United States
Genre	Hip-hop dance
Inventor	Street dancers
Year	Early 1970s
Origin	New York City

Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying, 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 hip-hop, funk, and breakbeat music, although modern trends allow for much wider varieties of music along certain ranges of tempo and beat patterns.

The dance style originated primarily among Puerto Rican and African American youths many of them former members of street gangs (many of them former members of the Black Spades, the Young Spades, or the Baby Spades) during the mid-1970s in the Bronx. The dance spread worldwide due to popularity in the media, especially in regions such as Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

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.

Instead of the original term b-boying (break-boying), the mainstream media promoted the artform as breakdancing, causing many to only know it as such. Enthusiasts consider "breakdancing" an ignorant and derogatory term due to the media’s exploitation of the artform. The media displayed a simplified version of the dance, making it seem like the so-called "tricks" were everything, ultimately trading the culture for money and promotion. The term "breakdancing" is also problematic because it has become a diluted umbrella term that incorrectly includes popping, locking, and electric boogaloo, which are not styles of "breakdance", but are funk styles that were developed separately from breaking in California. The dance itself is properly called "breaking" by rappers such as KRS-One, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Darryl McDaniels of Run–D.M.C.