I was probably way too young to remember the very first time I was exposed to break dancing. I was born in the 80s so I am sure it was something that was always just there. However I do remember when I went from thinking “wow that shit is dope but I could never do that” to getting off my lazy ass and actually doing it.
I was not the type of person you would ever expect to get good at breakdancing on any level. As a kid I was clumsy, over weight, uncoordinated and a loner. In other words I had none of the skills or prerequisits you would expect a breakdancer to have.
I do remember the first time I told myself that even if I never got good I was going to push myself to be the best breaker I could be. I was 17 years old and in high school. I had just returned to public school after a year of being homeschooled. I resisted going back at first because up to that point I had never done anything worthwhile in school. But this time was different. I went back with a purpose and someday I will tell more of that story but today I just wanna focus on the daning part.
I have always been into hip hop music. It wasn’t a stretch for me to become immersed in hip hop culture, especially once I moved to Nevada and all my friends were into it too. This was the motivation I needed. I had a friend, homie actually, I spent every spare minute I had of every day. Most of the time we just sat in my car in his backyard listening to music daydreaming about becoming famous rappers or whatever. It was early in the school year when he and I were attending the Homecoming dance with our friends and dates for the night. All of a sudden the DJ put on Shannon’s Let the Music Play and I witness my first real life in person breakdance battle unfold before my eyes. Watching those kids who were my age in my highschool do the magic tricks on the dance floor I had always aspired to do myself was all the kick in the butt I needed.
The next day my homie and I decided we were just going to do it. During that time we cobbled together a functional but mostly garbage picked DJ set up and began teaching ourselves how to mix and scratch records in a vain attempt to make some rap music. We also went around town scavenging every bit of scrap plywood we could scrounge up to build our very own dance floor in my backyard. It was perfect because he lived in the trailer nexy to mine so we sorta shared a backyard anyways so it worked out for the both of us.
The next thing we did was set out to make our way to the shopping mall. Our mission was to buy any and every break dancing video tape we could find. We ended up getting two different Battle of the Year tapes one from 1998 and one from 1999 and a Mr. Wiggles tape I have long forgotten the name of. We ran an extension cord to the backyard where we plugged in his portable TV/VCR combo unit and popped those tapes in. Our first few viewings we were just amazed at all the amazing and spectactual breakdancing we were witnessing that was beyond the brief glimpeses we occassionally saw in music videos on MTV. This was it, we were actually going to take this seriously.
After a while we started just picking the moves we saw that we decided we would each focus on that we figured would be the easiest for us each to learn. As I was taller and less athletic at the time I started with the simple poplocking stuff I saw in those tapes. He was going to spend his energy learning how to do a backspin from a six step. He didn’t want to go big just get a basic combo down first.
We would run home after school every day with our boombox and every breakdancing song we could get our hands on either on tape or cd depending on what we could find. I was making frequent trips to Sam Goody and Hasting desperately looking for any CD or tape that had any well known breaking or popping worthy songs. We weren’t learning to break to rap music, we were mostly focused on what was called Electric Funk or Boogaloo specifically with some techno, tech house, trip hop and Freestyle thrown in for good measure. I was white and he was Latino so we were trying to find music that had a rythm that worked for the both of us.
The first song I started playing on repeat to practice my moves was by an artist called Will to Power. The song was called Dreamin. The one he picked for his stuff was by Newcleus called Jam On It. Then he had an idea. He observed I wasn’t very athletic but if I signed up for track I would at least have access to the weight room and I could beef up some. So I did. Now I wasn’t in track for the letter jacker or the glory, I just needed to pump those irons to build up my upper body strength. Meanwhile as my track coach pushed me into becoming a distance runner I had the side effect of actually getting in shape along the way unbeknownst to me. By the end of the school year he and I were ready to show off what we had learned.
It was time for the Sweetheart Ball. The last dance before prom. Because we had honed our DJ skills he and I and were becoming known as a hip hop due in school we were chosen to DJ that particular dance. While it did impress a girl I liked at the time into going with me, that didn’t work out as I was too focused on DJing to pay enough attention to her.
Finally it was late in the evening. Everyone was getting tired of dancing to Britny Spears and Backstreet Boys stuff. They were ready to get their blood pumping. So I nodded at my friend to signal it was time. I put on Spring Love by Stevie B. This was the song we practiced together and knew we could bust our moves in sync wihout fail. At first the usual kids did their moon walks glides and slides onto the dance floor and it was the same old stuff we’d seen every dance before. Some nice popping, some decent miming and a couple of backspins. Cool, sure for teens with no real experience yeah.
It was my turn. I did my robot glide sideways moonwalk out into the center of the dance floor. With every eye on me, I signalled my friend to flick on the strobe light. I went into a half worm half robot move nobody in our town had seen we dubbed the robot worm. Fortunately even though I missed the first step the strobe light covered up my mistake and the crowd nodded in approval. But I wasn’t the star I was the warm up comedian getting the crowd ready for the real deal.
Up to this point nobody in our high school had learned any dance moves in the hip hip culture known as power moves. There were some good robot dancers, some good pop lockers, and plenty of people who could do the worm and the basic backspins, but nobody in our school could do a headspin, 1990s, flare, or even a windmill. My partner in crime had been working his ass off to perfect his six step into a backspin then lift up onto his shoulder move set. Like I said it wouldn’t be impressive to a professional breakdancer but it was something these kids had never seen before in person. Except even I knew he actually had been working double time on a true power move that he was going to try.
With the break of the song hitting it was time. He went out there and did the usual top rock, down rock into a six step everyone else did before, but instead of flopping onto his back into the still cool but routine for this crowd backspin, he did something NOBODY expected. He busted out a fucking WINDMILL. This 14 year old kid who only started breakdancing six months earlier had just did an advanced power move many dancers don’t even attempt until they have some battles under their belts. Nothing impressive in the grand scheme of breakdancing as a whole but the crowd was so rowdy everyone stood up on top of everyone screaming and clapping and pumping their fists so loud the cops were called because THEY thought the dance had turned intoa riot.
Me and my homie went back to school on Monday as heroes. We WON the respect of the whole school Sure everyone was impressed with my robot worm, a move they had never seen before. And while the Windmill is a DIFFICULT move to learn, we had all seen it in music videos but NEVER in person done by a kid we were in math class with. He and I owned that school for the next two years. I was elected student council president and made head of the Prom committee my senior year. We did a LOT in that time using our newfound popularity but nothing will ever replace the memory I have of that night every kid in town screaming in support of me and my best friend doing something six months earlier we both would have said was impossible for us.
No matter what you want to do in life if you want it bad enough you just need someone to push you to believe in yourself and put in the time. After buffing up by taking track and pushing myself that first year I went from just doing increasingly compelx robot moves to my own physical power movess. I never bother learning the Windmill, that was his thing. Eventually he masted the even MORE Impressive Flare which holy shit was awesome. As for me I masted the ONE move nobody else in our town even attemtped. I became the first kid in our high school to get the headspin down. That was MY power move. I also could bust out a 1990s if I needed to to mix things up. Yeah he and I were not good enough to even make a local TV commercial even if we auditioned nor would we ever “go pro” but those three years we made breakdancing a big part of our lives we got the most out of it, and that’s was hella fucking fun at the time.