So striking the ideal balance between street performance and conventional dance—a decidedly dynamic but uncertain endeavor—is the crucial struggle for breakdancers.

TOPROCK AND FLOATS

“Hip-hop culture has four original elements,” says Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dance Instructor at Harvard Henry Kasdon. “Breaking,” a bygone term for breakdancing like “b-boy” or “b-girl,” was only one of them; Kasdon’s other three are DJing, rap, and graffiti. Hip-hop culture has its roots in the Bronx of the late 1960s, as a fusion of 1930s “lindy hop,” a form of swing dancing, plus the Afro-Brazilian dance moves of capoeira. Hip-hop became a scene by the early 1970s, according to Kasdon, when “DJs would throw these block parties in the Bronx,” isolating “breaks,” that is, specific sections of a song, and playing them on repeat to allow for a greater exploration of rhythm and beat.

Ultimately it would join forces with a similar strain gaining steam on the West Coast, a funk-infused dance called electric boogaloo, and the combination of the two included such classic breakdance moves as “popping”—quickly contracting and releasing muscles in rhythm with a song; and “locking”—moving in rapid rhythm to a beat and then freezing in a certain position. A vocabulary specific to b-boying began to emerge as the result of the dance’s novelty. “Downrock”—any move on the floor—includes “floats,” in which the dancer supports his weight on his hands to appear as if floating, perhaps beginning to “tap,” or push himself around until able to freely spin. “Toprock”—footwork performed upright—also allowed time for popping and locking.

By the mid-1980s, the media had begun to latch onto the novel potential of hip-hop. The same DJs who had hosted block parties in the Bronx began to appear at clubs in Manhattan. B-boys dancing on the street were hired by L.A. production companies and fashioned into pop-culture sensations. This was the era of movies like “Flashdance,” “Wild Style,” “Breakin’,” and its sequel “Breakin’ 2.” The 1984 New York Times review of “Breakin’” dubbed it a solid portrayal of “break-dancing, the energetic street choreography that is now in the process of being co-opted and merchandized by big-time show business.”

There’s a moment in the movie after the three main characters begin their breakdance routine in front of a cast of stodgy old judges at a dance competition. At first the judges are skeptical, disapproving; they try to dissuade street dancer Ozone from beginning, even though breakdancing isn’t expressly forbidden in the competition. He doesn’t listen and begins. Then an eyebrow is raised, glances exchanged, and slowly the judges are enchanted, much to the dismay of the conventional group preceding: “This is nonsense,” says Franco, a professional dance instructor; “Go away, I can’t see,” responds a judge, shooing him aside. It’s a scene that relies heavily on tired cliché, but it suggests that breakdancing represents the vital future of dance.

More important for the visibility of breakdancing than the scene itself is the fact that a big-budget Hollywood film would be talking about the form at all. Breakdancing became appropriated by mass culture. It was considered a more wholesome alternative to “gangsta rap,” or perhaps a backlash against this other, coarser heir to hip-hop. By the turn of the millennium breakdancing had begun to be employed in commercials and music videos. Stars like Paula Abdul melded it with R&B and pop-friendly rhythms in their performances, drawing on Michael Jackson’s incorporation of breakdance moves beginning in the 1980s.

Yet in another sense, breakdancing began to diverge from other forms of hip-hop culture. In a 2009 Boston Globe article, Adam Mansbach, a writer and founding editor of the 1990s hip-hop journal Elementary, traced the genealogy of hip-hop: “Graffiti exploded onto the gallery scene in the early ’80s; rap records were selling millions of copies by 1979,” he writes.  B-boying, on the other hand, was a process instead of a product, so it was more difficult to package. As a result, it became “the kinetic counterpart to the soundscape of rap music and the visuals of graffiti art.”

The media appropriation had perhaps more to do with the music upon which breakdancing was grounded than with the rubric of its moves. Today insiders are quick to draw a distinction between all forms of dance set to hip-hop music and specifically breakdancing, which need not be set to hip-hop music. Despite their common source, and despite continuing overlap, to some they encompass entirely different attitudes and approaches, a difference framed by improvisation versus choreography.

NIMBLE COMRPOMISES

Y. John Mei ’12 is the first to arrive to a recent Harvard Breakers session. Music from the pulsing stereo echoes across Currier Dance Studio as Mei attempts an upside-down downrock. He’s been breakdancing since his final semester at high school, but has been watching the moves on YouTube for much longer. The Breakers have two types of practices, he says, session and rehearsal, depending on whether they’re preparing for a performance or just want to improve. “Everybody trains differently,” he says. “That’s the really great part about this.”

Outreach Chair Brian W. Yang ’13 says that the Breakers has between 25 and 30 active members, around 10 of whom will show up to an average practice. By 9:45 p.m. at this 9:00 p.m. session, there are eight or nine undergraduates. He points past a kid in a green bandanna spinning around on his head, to another student warming up with a friend, and says,  “I’ve never seen the girl in black before.”

Yang explains that for breakdancing in general, and popping—his own forte—in particular, there are a few basics, a core, upon which you build variations. He sees awareness and control of his own body as the key to success, a tool salvaged from his days playing football and running track in high school.

Yang sees this self-awareness and self-control as necessary to successful performance. “Breakers is very freestyle-oriented,” he says. As its original form, street dance continues to influence even more domesticated kinds of breakdancing. “We really feed off the crowd,” says Yang, contrasting Breakers performances with ballet recitals, in which applause is muted and restrained until the end.

Even the indoor version of breakdancing relies on the accidents of audience appreciation like its outdoor counterpart. There is therefore quite a bit of overlap between the Harvard Breakers and their broader hip-hop counterpart, Expressions Dance Company. It’s not uncommon for students to participate in both, though there can be tension when students leave one to join the other. Each group has a subtly different conception on the way breakdancing should look when performed in a proper theater.

Darcie M. Dieman ’12, who at one point was involved in both organizations, emphasizes that while breakdancing can sometimes be choreographed, “there’s a huge emphasis on freestyle.” Expressions, on the other hand, is always choreographed. It relies less on the vocabulary of the moves and more on the grammar of the dance, demanding an airtight conformity of the music to the movements. Though it also connects the background beat with the form of dance, breakdancing is more about “power moves and flips and foot work,” says Dieman. Breakdancing should transition seamlessly between skill and style, but pauses and abberations are more welcome in the Breakers.

It’s this fluidity that expresses the Breakers’ fidelity to the conventions of breakdancing. Jams might take place indoors, but, according to Dieman, “breakdancing is always going to hold on to that street feel,” even if “it’s not street—but it’s also not stage.” Rather than inheriting both the limitations of the street and the limitations of the stage, the best breakdancers move nimbly between the two. They include the audience to the extent that they encourage cheers and applause during the show, a contrast between the Breakers performance and a Harvard Ballet Company concert. That the Breakers also incorporate choreography gives their moves a more refined sheen of artistic skill, and allows the dancers to put on a theatrical show like YAK’s at Faneuil Hall.

This impure improvisation is a small departure from the heritage of breakdancing as a street art, in which the rebellion of youth culture was embodied by spontaneity. This fusion of two distinct forms inevitably proves irritating to some, who would prefer to characterize breakdancing as unadulterated by either the crudeness of the street or the staid orderliness of conventional dance. But breakdancing is messier than that. Its ability to cobble together distinct forms and strategies without becoming prescribed or systematic in its approach suggests its continued vitality as a form.

­—Staff Writer Victoria A. Baena can be reached at vbaena@college.harvard.edu.