From Bronx jams in the 1970s to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the art of breaking has come along way over the past 50 years. One of the four elements of hip hop, breaking took its name from the dancers who took to the floor to show out when the DJ would cut the breaks.
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With the release of seminal hip-hop films like Wild Style and Style Wars in the early 1980s, followed by Hollywood fare like Breakin’ and Beat Street, breaking became a global phenomenon, with aspiring B-boys and B-girls doing windmills, headspins, and backspins in their freshest fits.
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With the commercial success of rap music, the culture moved away from hip hop’s roots, but breaking continued to grow, becoming an underground phenomenon around the globe. New York native Frank “B-boy Frankie” Perez discovered breaking while he was living in East Elmhurst, Queens, with extended family.
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