Break Dance
Breakdance is a modern street dance style that appeared in the early 1970s in the United States and was created and developed by Puerto Ricans and African Americans. Breakdancing is all about freedom of movement and improvisation. However, it does have some peculiar steps that are must-know for all dancers. In particular, these main steps are downrock and toprock, power moves, as well as freezes. In terms of music, this style is often performed to rhythmic music with drum breaks such as hip-hop, rap, breakbeat, funk, and soul. At the same time, modern dancers often choose music that doesn’t fall into any of the abovementioned genres and can perform to pop, rock, and even classical music since everything depends on the dancer’s creativity and vision of their dance.
Breakdancing has several substyles that slightly differ from one another. These styles are:
- Downrock style. The style has three substyles, which are New York style inspired by the Ukrainian traditional dance Tropak, Euro style, and Toronto style.
- Power. The style that most people associate with breakdancing since it contains recognizable spins.
- Blow-up. The style that contains many freezes and challenging moves.
- Abstract. Breaking style based on improvisation and freestyle footwork.
- Flavor. The substyle that focuses on sophisticated freezes, downrocks, and toprocks.
After becoming quite popular in North America in the late 1970s, the dance style spread all over the world. In fact, today, breakdancing is rather popular in Latin and Central America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, there are many breakdancing competitions for professionals all over the world that allow us to assume that the style is still developing and gaining new followers.
