breakdance

Breakdancing or breaking, also called b-boying (when performed by men) or b-girling (when performed by women), is a style of street dance developed by African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the Bronx borough of New York City. Breakdancing consists mainly of four kinds of movement—toprock, footwork, power moves, and freezes—and is typically set to songs containing drum breaks, especially in funk, soul, and hip-hop. Its modern dance elements originated among the poor youth of New York during the 1970s and early 1980s. It is tied to the birth of hip-hop, whose DJs played songs featuring rhythmic breaks for dancers. The dance form has expanded globally, with an array of organizations and independent competitions supporting its growth. Breaking became an Olympic sport at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, as per a December 7, 2020 decision by the International Olympic Committee, after a proposal by the World DanceSport Federation.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Breakdancing”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

breakdance is style of street dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 29 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶