Break dancing history, method, and technique, generously illustrated throughout with photographs, some in color. Traces the popular emergence of the dance style in the ’80s from 1970s teenage street culture in the Bronx, evolving alongside contemporary American dance troupes’ adaptation to the influence of West African social dance. Includes chapters on Warm Up and Safety, Break Instructions, Electric Boogie Instruction, Starbreaking: Break Dancing…Celebrity Style, and Fashion.
Preliminary advice as fresh today as it was in ’84 (i.e. ask your doctor before attempting to break; check your chosen surface for nails and broken glass) soon gives way to a detailed stretching routine and specific step-by-step guides to headspins, elbow spins, windmills, popping, the Robot, and the Moonwalk — the latter three being Electric Boogie moves, strictly distinguished by Marlow from breaking: “Clearly, Boogie is Boogie and Breaking is Breaking, and never the twain shall meet.”
BREAK DANCING was published the same year as David Toop’s THE RAP ATTACK and Steven Hager’s HIP HOP and is likewise an early, essential mass-market guide to hip hop culture. Uncommon. (#23390)
