Burning and Breaking

One of the most common misconceptions regarding breaking, based, once again, on the partial media coverage of the 1980s, is that the dance was the product of “cross-fertilization” between African Americans and Latinos (Rivera Reference Rivera2003, 64)—with many scholars even suggesting that it was invented and practiced mainly by the latter (Flores Reference Flores1993; Schloss Reference Schloss2009). However, as firsthand accounts from leading practitioners affirm, breaking emerged in The Bronx, New York, of the early 1970s as a dance performed mainly by African Americans. Latinos did not adopt the dance in large numbers until the late 1970s and early 1980s (Hager Reference Hager1984; Holman Reference Holman1984; Israel 2002). This is important to point out not only in terms of clarifying the historical record but also in terms of tracing the development of the dance and the cultural meanings which may have been associated with its performance.

As in other urban areas during the early 1970s (Clark Reference Clark1974), African-American teenagers in The Bronx regularly danced at house parties, clubs, and gatherings throughout the borough. While most did the latest social dances, a few began to express themselves in increasingly individualized ways, especially to the percussive crescendos in funk-infused records. They began to “freestyle” and “go off,” as it was popularly known at the time, displaying innovative movements and garnering attention from other partygoers—often to the point that crowds would gather and cheer on the most exuberant dancers (PHASE 2 2010). As such dancing went beyond the bounds of standardized steps and couple formations, other forms of dance floor interaction began to develop, namely, a tradition of spontaneously challenging and outdoing a competitor, known at the time as “burning.”

Nearly every early breaker from The Bronx associates the inception of the dance with this burning phenomenon. “Before we called it ‘breaking,’ it was known as ‘going off’ or ‘burning,’” explains pioneering breaker and aerosol artist PHASE 2 (Hager Reference Hager1984). “It was all about taking a guy out, burning him. The big phrase was ‘I'm gonna turn this party out’” (33).Footnote ⁴ More than a formulaic dance with a set technique or structure, burning was a kinesthetic concept dictated by originality, musicality, wit, and competition. A dancer might put a more unique twist on a popular step, act out a humiliating insult, or drop to the floor and come back up with their hand in an opponent's face. Whether they felt aggrieved or simply wanted to test their skills against a peer, crowds would gather as dancers dueled in such exchanges. In turn, burning set the stage for what would later become known as “battling” in breaking, the competitive displays which many argue are at the core of the form's aesthetic development (Schloss Reference Schloss2009; Fogarty Reference Fogarty and Dodds2019). However, contrary to the assumption that such competitions emanated from male aggression, firsthand testimony from practitioners indicates that young women were heavily involved in this burning stage of breaking as well. In fact, many accounts suggest that it was often specifically the girls who would challenge the guys on the dance floor.

Take, for example, this account from Coke La Rock, a pioneering DJ and MC from the West Bronx who was partners with the “founding father” of hip-hop, Kool Herc. He describes how he and Herc became close friends in high school, partly through dancing against girls at parties.

La Rock is referring here to the early 1970s, before he and Herc began throwing their own parties, demonstrating how burning and breaking were taking place in The Bronx even prior to what came to be known as “hip-hop.” Most accounts from these formative years suggest that women's participation was neither marginal nor occasional but, rather, central to the dance's inception. Although they are too numerous to print in full, it is important to quote a sample of these testimonies to demonstrate the extent to which this was indeed the case.

Like La Rock, another early rapper from The Bronx named Kool Kyle identifies women as central to burning in the early to mid-1970s. He discusses practicing dance routines with his friends as a teenager in anticipation of weekend parties, and explains that

DJ Tyrone, the mixologist from the Southeast Bronx, also attests to the fact that “there was girls burning guys first” (Disco Daddy 2017b), while another early breaker, named Dancing Doug, recalls going to parties in Harlem and The Bronx, where he says, “I used to burn guys and girls but it started with the girls” (Norin Rad 2017a). Pioneering DJ and b-boy Grandmixer DXT, from the North Bronx, likewise remembers seeing girls burning guys as an elementary student in the early 1970s.

As can be seen, many of these accounts suggest that it was often women who initiated this phenomenon. And these are individuals from different regions of The Bronx giving testimony independent of one another. Yet, they all recall virtually the same experience: girls going up against guys and helping set the competitive foundation that breaking would become known for. Even those who do not credit women for introducing this practice acknowledge the centrality of their involvement. “Guys started dancing with each other and then the girls got involved,” is how early DJ Afrika Bambaataa describes the roots of the form. “Girls taking out other girls, girls taking out guys, all different types of break dancing” (Hager Reference Hager2012). Cholly Rock, a member of the influential Zulu Kings breaking group, also states that “there were a lot of girls who had reputations” as good burners back then, to which he lists names such as Dancing Doll, D. D. Lawrence, Cokie, and others (Profo Won Reference Profo Won2017).

What is especially interesting about such testimony is that it is referring to the elements of “combat” and “braggadocio” that hip-hop dance scholars so often attribute to a masculine “battle of libido and ego” (LaBoskey Reference LaBoskey2001, 114). Although burning was most often performed upright—and was not as acrobatic as breaking would later become—the dance during this period was known for its confrontational use of everything from comedic to offensive gestures, such as the miming of weapons or alluding to sexual inuendo. These are the very competitive displays that continue to be upheld as markers of breaking's “masculinity.” However, if women were deeply involved in such activities—indeed, if they helped create them—how is it possible to characterize them today as products of masculine aggression or too “unfeminine” for women to perform? Can we maintain such historic characterizations even if they do not comport with the perspectives and experiences of those who ushered in the dance?

Although conventional wisdom may assume that challenging a man on the dance floor is “unladylike” behavior, we know that such norms are applied differently according to their temporal, cultural, and institutional contexts. Just as young men in The Bronx did not view their dancing as a “feminine” activity—as it is often stigmatized in dominant Western discourse (Fisher and Shay Reference Fisher and Shay2009; McRobbie Reference McRobbie, McRobbie and Nava1984, 143–144)—neither did young women who were “going off” and burning see themselves as performing “masculinity.” The above accounts suggest that those who cultivated these practices held different symbolic meanings for them. Along these lines, it should be remembered that burning was a largely underground phenomenon, in the sense that it was practiced only by a small segment of partygoers in The Bronx. Even within the African-American community itself, hip-hop and breaking were considered marginal, youth-based practices that went against the dominant strain of disco during that period. Accordingly, rather than globally applying dominant notions of “masculinity” to competition whenever it appears, it is important to examine the historical context in which such exchanges took place and the extent to which alternative values may have been embedded in them.

It is also important to acknowledge the African-American roots of breaking and the broader tradition to which such practices belong. As dance historian Jacqui Malone (Reference Malone1996) points out, “competitive interaction” has long been a cornerstone of innovation and expression within working-class, African-American communities (5). Whether it be the “challenge dances” of hoofers (Stearns and Stearns Reference Stearns and Stearns1968/1994), the ballroom contests of swing dancers (Erenberg Reference Erenberg1998), or the “step offs” of fraternities and sororities (Fine Reference Fine1991), both women and men have historically engaged in such competitive displays. Burning was simply the latest manifestation of this tradition, enacted at clubs and block parties like a kinesthetic game of playing the dozens, where dancers perform a “ritual of permitted disrespect” aimed at testing the “facility, originality, ingenuity, and humor” of fellow participants (Levine Reference Levine1978, 347).

Unfortunately, the historicization of past African-American art forms has similarly been skewed toward neglecting the role of women. For instance, historian Robin D. G. Kelley (Reference Kelley1997) details how commentators have characterized expressions, such as The Dozens, as simply “a boy thing,” even though considerable numbers of young women took part in its verbal exchanges (33). He attributes much of this neglect to long-held stereotypes about the “pathology” of working-class, African-American culture and an infatuation among social scientists with dysfunction, criminality, and poverty in inner-city communities. In the realm of cultural expression, this has resulted in scholarly generalizations that reduce complex articulations of creativity and joy to masculine survival strategies for ghetto life. Women are commonly excluded from such narratives, as they do not fit the masculinized image of resistance to urban destitution and deprivation. McRobbie and Garber (Reference McRobbie, Garber and McRobbie1991) similarly point out how sensationalized media coverage of youth “subcultures” in the UK tended to overemphasize cases of violence and deviance, leading to an exclusive focus on young men and the erasure of women involved in such groupings (4–5). When it comes to breaking, we see this same pattern playing out. Competitive displays within the dance were attributed to an exclusively male form of alternative combat, with hip-hop itself being erroneously historicized as an outgrowth of street gangs (Aprahamian Reference Aprahamian2019). Recovering the history of women in the dance is critical in reversing these class and racially charged stereotypes, and incorporating new insights, which have hitherto been silenced or overlooked.

There Were B-Girls, Too

What about when breaking transitioned into more physically demanding displays on the floor? Did women continue their involvement, or did its changing structure and movement vocabulary result in an altered perception toward their performance? Although relevant information regarding this period is more mixed, firsthand testimony from practitioners, again, paints a considerably different picture than the one put forward in dominant discourse.

To begin, most practitioners associate the “b-boy/b-girl” era of breaking with the mid-1970s prominence of DJ Kool Herc. This is when the dance is said to have become more physical and virtuosic, developed alongside the repertoire of music Herc popularized, known today as “break beats” (Marshall Reference Marshall and Hess2007). Participants began increasingly adopting acrobatic flips, contorted poses, and prolonged floor movements to stand out from the rest of the crowd at his parties. Although the number of women appears to have dwindled in this stage of breaking's development, practitioner accounts suggest that they nevertheless continued to play a relevant role in the dance.

For example, two of Herc's most influential b-boys, credited with introducing many of the floor-based movements that would become staples in the form, are The Twins, Keith and Kevin Smith. They regularly list women among those active during their generation. “Now they have that terminology of ‘b-girls’ but there were females that danced too,” explains Keith. “Let me tell you man: Sister Boo, Janice and her little sister Saundra, Deucy” (in Numata Reference Numata2005). Although The Twins acknowledge that men began to outnumber women, they also suggest that the latter were not ridiculed or deterred from breaking but, rather, given respect. “It was a big deal to get in that circle,” Keith insists when recalling early b-girls. “You had to have heart and not everyone did. Only a select few” (Smith and Smith Reference Smith and Smith2015).

Other young women said to have been breaking at Herc's parties include names such as Kimmy, Yellow Banana, Doris, and Mother Earth. Clark Kent, another pioneering b-boy and DJ affiliated with The Twins and Kool Herc, remembers dancing with some of these figures and explains that he would not hesitate to battle them if challenged in a circle:

Keith's emphasis on the “heart” it took to enter a circle, Kent's assurances that b-girls “didn't have better skills than me,” and both of their recollections that men outnumbered women may be interpreted in multiple ways. On the one hand, it may signal an increasing discouragement toward b-girls during this era, one which deemed them less capable of performing the dance and, thus, unable to outdo b-boys such as Kent. On the other hand, one could interpret these comments as an indication of a transcendent approach toward gender, wherein b-girls were approached with the same braggadocian combativeness and seriousness as b-boys. In turn, Kent's acknowledgement that “there were quite a few girls that were very good”—with no direct indication that they were derided for doing the dance—conveys a sense of respect for their participation and complicates the notion that breaking was exclusively created by men. Rather than directly confronting this dominant discourse—or, the opposite, overemphasizing and tokenizing the role of women—the above accounts indicate that b-girls were a part of the small coterie of dancers who set the foundation for the form. This is not to suggest that discriminatory attitudes did not exist toward them. Rather, it is to argue that, in order to properly examine such attitudes, the first step would be to affirm the continued presence of women within the dance and assess their participation according to the sole source of information we have regarding this ephemeral practice: the experience and testimonies of breaking's practitioners.

Of course, much greater research is needed to track down the perspectives of b-girls themselves, but even within the limited range of information available, we find hip-hop pioneers regularly referencing women as active contributors to the dance. For instance, a well-known DJ who played music for breakers at around the same time as Kool Herc was DJ Smokey, from the Claremont section of The Bronx. He describes a group of b-girls he was affiliated with called the Luck-a-Trons, which was the counterpart to his b-boy collective, the Smoke-a-Trons.

Again, Smokey's description of his dancers being organized along gendered lines might suggest that there were differentiations made between men and women within breaking circles. However, it is not clear whether this separation was a signal of discouragement (based on the perceived lesser abilities of women), encouragement (based on mutual support among dancers with a shared identity), or some other undisclosed factor. Certainly, Smokey acknowledges that women who danced at his parties “were good” and played a significant role in his career, so much so that he made it a point to highlight their contributions. Indeed, as reflected in the above quotes, many hip-hop founders specifically mention Sister Boo as a prominent early b-girl. For instance, in his autobiography, DJ Grandmaster Flash (Reference Grandmaster and Ritz2008) states, “Sister Boo showed how the girls could get down just like the fellas” (38) and Kool Herc regularly references her name in interviews (Gross Reference Gross2005). Cultural sociologist Mary Fogarty (Reference Fogarty2010) takes stock of such references in her analysis of breaking internationally and notes how the media often overlook the mention of women by hip-hop pioneers, demonstrating just “how much the journalists are responsible for gendering hip hop culture into a male pursuit” (33). Once again, this raises questions regarding the tension between the voices of practitioners and those of external actors.

Even b-boys who say women dropped out of the dance during this period tend to qualify such statements by acknowledging their continued contributions. For example, Zulu King Cholly Rock states, “They [women] didn't go down to the floor like we did cause that just wasn't, you know, girls weren't really going to do that,” but he quickly follows this up by stating, “Although we had some [b-girls] later on” (Profo Won Reference Profo Won2017). His contemporary, Grandmixer DXT, also recalls that “the girls kind of moved away from it for a minute” when competitions became intense, but adds that “once it became more of your floor moves and your skills, and not burning, then the females became more involved again through just being b-girls” (Grandmixer Reference Grandmixer2017). Like The Twins and Clark Kent, these early breakers affirm that the dance was performed mostly by young men, but that women were never completely absent from it. Indeed, what is interesting is that many of the b-girls who were active during this period went on to also become pioneering MCs. As such, several of them have conveyed their experiences in early hip-hop, including their involvement in breaking.

One of the most well-known is MC Sha-Rock of the rap group Funky 4 + 1. Prior to becoming a pioneering rapper, she explains in her autobiography that she got her start in the culture by breaking at Kool Herc's parties. In fact, she dedicates an entire chapter to this experience, titled “B-Girl Stance,” describing how she learned floor moves like the “sweep”Footnote ⁵ and performed at local house parties in the summer of 1976. She also discusses both the consternation and admiration she received for being a young woman involved in breaking. “All of the guys looked at me like, ‘What the hell?’” she says about her first time breaking at a Kool Herc party. “But, at the same time, I could see that they respected that I was a part of the game and was good too” (Sha-Rock and Brown Reference Sha-Rock and Iesha2011). Her account signals how the perspective of women involved in the dance is critically important to gauge the extent to which gendered conceptions may have affected their participation. Although some may have been taken aback by seeing a woman break, others seemed to have encouraged and aided it, as she describes learning the dance from male peers in her neighborhood. In addition, she characterizes breaking as an important stepping-stone in her hip-hop journey, describing how she later transferred the respect and confidence she gained as a dancer onto the stage as one of the first female MCs in hip-hop.

MC Pebblee Poo's story is strikingly similar. As another influential early rapper, she is often asked how she got her start in the culture. She nearly always emphatically states,

The accolades she accumulated as a dancer eventually led her to pursue rhyming as well, with fellow b-boys such as T La Rock—who also went on to be an influential MC—giving her praise and encouraging her to get on the mic (Pebblee Poo Reference Pebblee Poo2009). She proved to have just as much of a commanding presence on the stage as she did on the dance floor, later becoming one of Kool Herc's official MCs and going on to record such renowned rap records as “Funkbox Party” (1982) with The Masterdon Committee.

Zulu Queen Lisa Lee, a noted member of the rap groups Soul Sonic Force and Us Girls, also associates her entry into hip-hop with seeing breaking for the first time around 1976. In a 2014 interview, she identified dancing at Zulu Nation parties as inspiring her the most.

Other early female MCs, such as Kimba of the Infinity Rappers and Lady Sweet of the all-girl group Inner City Disco, also claim to have begun their careers as b-girls in the mid-to-late 1970s (Disco Daddy 2017c). This signals not only the continued involvement of women in breaking but also the interlinked relationship between dancing and musical performance in hip-hop's development—a recurring pattern seen in African-American expressions historically (Gaunt Reference Gaunt2006). Most of these pioneering women recall stepping out into a circle and going up against challengers on an equal plane as a significant component of their careers in hip-hop, suggesting important connections between physical expression, musical comprehension, identity formation, and nonnormative expressions of femininity. In addition, although they were fewer in number, these testimonies reveal that women continued to participate in breaking as it transitioned into more athletic, floor-based movements. Unlike dance forms, which assign specific roles for men and women, breaking allowed its participants to share in its movement vocabulary and challenge one another without regard to gender. In theory, but not always in practice, this more egalitarian format and structure continues to hold sway today and has reemerged in nearly all solo hip-hop dance styles which have followed breaking (DeFrantz Reference DeFrantz and Lepecki2004).

This resistance to gendered categorization also demonstrates how early participants in the dance did not necessarily subscribe to dominant Western notions of “masculinity” and “femininity.” As dance scholar Imani Kai Johnson (2014) has shown, rather than trying to “act like a man,” working-class African-American artists have a long history of embodying alternative, independent, and assertive forms of womanhood through their expressions. Along these lines, Johnson draws insightful connections between b-girls and female blues singers, arguing that breaking offers young women an opportunity to enact a countercultural femininity, one which positions them as producers rather than objects for consumption, within hip-hop. Negating the role of women in breaking's history hampers our understanding of such emancipatory potential within the dance, as well as the countervailing social attitudes of the community and culture which gave it life.

Like the blues women before them, the prevalence of testimony from b-girls who became MCs also puts the lie to another dominant myth in hip-hop history: the notion that “there are no women who have contributed profoundly to rap's artistic growth” (Nelson George quoted in Pough Reference Pough2004, 8). Contrary to such claims, women have historically been involved in the music of hip-hop just as much as the dance. For instance, there were pioneering female MCs such as Sha-Rock, Pebblee Poo, Lisa Lee, Kimba, Sweet & Sour, RD Smiley, Sherri-Sher, Little Lee, Little Bit, Baby T, Debbie D, and Lady B, as well as prominent DJs such as Baby D, LaSpank, Pambaataa, Wanda Dee, and the original Spinderella, to name a few. However, just as we have seen the role of women overlooked in histories of breaking, narratives surrounding the origins of rap music have consistently undervalued female involvement, leading to characterizations of the genre “as male in the face of a significant and sustained female presence” (Rose Reference Rose1994, 152). This historic erasure continues to affect present-day discourse, with most commentators characterizing rap as “disenfranchised alpha males talking to other alpha males” (Ivey Reference Ivey2019). Accordingly, attending to the experiences and contributions of the many women who made their mark on the dance is important for addressing gendered misconceptions, in not just breaking, but in the musical, poetic, and artistic expressions of hip-hop, overall.

“Give Her Her Props”

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, as breaking spread beyond its epicenter in The Bronx and incorporated various other communities, it is possible that the dance experienced changes in both its aesthetics and embodied meaning. Again, more research is needed to shed light on such questions. However, even from the scant information that is available, we know that b-girls continued to break well into the 1980s. Indeed, a close reading of the media coverage from this period reveals that several women remained involved in the dance as it became a national commercial phenomenon. Unfortunately, their presence is regularly downplayed in news reports, with commentators focusing instead on the young men they deemed to be the progenitors of the form (Monteyne Reference Monteyne2013). Although some may attribute this lesser attention to the greater number of men performing the dance, it is also important to question how stereotypes of urban life and Eurocentric artistic norms, among both authors and audiences, may have skewed the narrative of breaking. Indeed, this is the period in which the dominant male-centered discourse of the dance first took hold.

For example, in her initial Village Voice article, Banes (Reference Banes1981) herself quotes a dancer stating that Spy, an influential Latino b-boy from the late 1970s, had a girlfriend who was just as skilled as the guys (31). However, the focus on women in the article stops there. There is no mention of the b-girl's name, no questions about whether other women were involved, or how they fit into a practice that the author deemed to be an expression of “masculine vitality.” In her later writings, Banes (Reference Banes, George, Banes, Flinker and Romanowski1985) acknowledged that “there were some girls who joined in” but continued to maintain that breaking “was a specific expression of machismo” (99). This racialized and gendered depiction was coupled with references to police arrests of young breakers, descriptions of the dance as “ritual combat that transmutes aggression into art,” and claims that competitions sometimes erupted into “fighting for real.” Art historian Vanessa Lakewood (Reference Lakewood, Fogarty and Johnsonforthcoming) has astutely noted how much of this discourse was undergirded by a presumption of criminality. She analyzes how the visualization and narrative of Banes's Voice article presented the dance as an illicit expression of outlawry, a discourse which, I would add, excludes women from its masculine street imagery. In turn, audiences were captivated by these narratives, and media outlets commonly reproduced them in their subsequent transmission of breaking around the world.

Like others in the news and entertainment industry (see Monteyne Reference Monteyne2013), Banes (Reference Banes1981) also repeatedly compared breaking to ballet, describing a dancer posing on his toes as being “on pointe,” another performing floor-based footwork as “a kind of syncopated pirouette,” and practitioners executing difficult movements “as unhesitatingly as a ballet dancer might toss off an enchainement.” Viewed through this traditionally Western lens, it is not surprising that breaking's athleticism was attributed to masculinity, as the dominant discourse of ballet tends to ascribe “graceful” and “delicate” movements to women and actions exuding “strength” to men (Daly Reference Daly1987). Although Banes (Reference Banes1998) has powerfully critiqued such gendered binaries in Western theatrical dance, the repeated references to ballet in her Voice article suggests that they may have nevertheless seeped into her analysis of breaking. Furthermore, it is my contention that, rather than compare breaking to such Eurocentric forms, we would do well to look at the cultural context from which the dance itself developed, and the many women who performed it. For her part, Banes's colleague Martha Cooper expresses regret for having not done so earlier on: “I had not paid enough attention to the girls when I was documenting [breaking] back in the day,” she acknowledged. “It turns out that there have always been women doing all of these activities and, somehow, I had neglected to take any pictures of them” (Holman Reference Holman2014). Cooper goes on to explain that she released a photo book dedicated to b-girls, titled We B*Girlz, largely to make up for this earlier neglect in the 1980s (Cooper and Kramer Reference Cooper and Kramer2005).

As has already been mentioned, most journalists and commentators who have written about breaking in the ensuing years have similarly turned to the same group Banes and Cooper spotlighted: the Rock Steady Crew. But just as the above comments about Spy's girlfriend (whose dance name was Sunkist Evie) were glossed over, subsequent references to women by members of the group have been consistently ignored or subsumed within the dominant gendered discourse of breaking. For example, Mr. Wiggles, an influential member of the Rock Steady Crew, traces his beginnings to The Bronx of the late 1970s and reveals that one of the first people who inspired him to dance was an African-American b-girl.

When asked about women's participation in breaking in the early 1990s, Mr. Wiggles similarly stated that he would “respect” a woman for doing the dance, although he is said to have paradoxically claimed that they should not exhibit the physicality its performance requires (Rose Reference Rose1994, 49). In this same study, Crazy Legs from Rock Steady also expressed no objections to women breaking (49). Indeed, the Rock Steady Crew has had several prominent women who have contributed to their legacy, not the least of which is Baby Love, a b-girl who gained commercial exposure with the group in the mid-1980s. She was featured in several of the group's world tours, recorded an album with them titled Ready for Battle (1984), and appeared in major motion pictures such as Beat Street (1984), competing alongside the guys against the influential New York City Breakers. When asked by a reporter in 1984 whether “breakdancing is mostly men,” Baby Love vehemently denied the claim. “No it's not,” she responded. “A lot of good girls are doing it” (Hezakya 2018). And she has maintained this position in various public interviews since (Guevara Reference Guevara and Perkins1996; Veran Reference Veran1996).

Other early b-girls said to have been affiliated with the Rock Steady Crew include names such as Headspin Janet, Lady Doze, Lady Rock, China, Lisette, and Leslie (Veran Reference Veran1996). In a recent interview with the well-known aerosol artist and musician DJ Kayslay (Reference Kayslay2017), Crazy Legs specifically names Janet as one of the best breakers in New York at the height of the dance's popularity. He recounts how they recruited her for another battle against the New York City Breakers, following the filming of Beat Street:

Going back even further to the days preceding the founding of the Rock Steady Crew, b-girls such as Bambi from the affiliated The Bronx Boys/Girls (TBB/G) group insist that breaking was “a mixture of boys and girls. Of course, there was always more boys but there was a big, large group of girls” (Edukate 2015). Journalist Cristina Veran (Reference Veran and Light1999) echoes this sentiment when highlighting other Latina b-girls such as Mama Maribel, Sunkist Evie, and Bunny Lee. “While never as great in number as their b-boy counterparts,” she writes, “a few brave girls began stepping out from the sidelines as well” (55). There were also prominent all-girl breaking groups who were known to perform professionally in the 1980s, such as the Dynamic Dolls, an offshoot of the Dynamic Breakers from Queens, New York (Valente Reference Valente2015).

As can be seen, women continued to play a considerable role in breaking as it spread to various communities and further adopted acrobatic spins and floor maneuvers. The narrative that it was too competitive, “unfeminine,” or physically demanding for them to do is not borne out by the testimony of those who excelled in the dance. On the specific question of physical ability, figures such as Baby Love have repeatedly insisted that, “Breakdancing is concentration. If you concentrate you'll get it. That's the way I actually feel about breaking for girls” (Guevara Reference Guevara and Perkins1996, 58). Many contemporary b-girls similarly attest to the fact that moves within the dance center more on focus, balance, and training than they do on “strength” (Johnson Reference Johnson2014, 24; Langnes and Fasting Reference Langnes and Fasting2017, 1602). Whether in the past or the present, such practitioner perspectives complicate the dominant gendered discourse that b-girls were unable to perform the more “break-specific moves” reserved for men (Rose Reference Rose1994, 48). According to Pabon-Colon (Reference Pabon-Colon2017), such claims are examples of, “sexist discourse masquerading as commonsense knowledge about physical capacity” (178)—which I would argue have been put forward by commentators often in direct contradiction to the practitioners they consult. Sociologist Nancy Guevara's (1996) commentary on b-girl history attributes much of this discourse to broader discriminatory attitudes toward women and people of color in the mainstream media. “The undermining, deletion, or derogatory stereotyping of women's creative role in the development of minority cultures,” she argues, “is a routine practice that serves to impede any progressive artistic or social development by women that might threaten male hegemony in the sphere of cultural production” (51). As a result, mediated accounts on breaking have often obfuscated the structure of the dance and the role of women within it, presenting b-girls as aberrations or objects of attention, rather than active, coequal participants.

In turn, this obfuscation has led to a conception of history in which factors attributed to masculinity by outside observers are the same ones practitioners acknowledge b-girls for participating in and contributing to: the competitive elements of burning in the early 1970s, athletic floor moves such as the sweep in the mid-1970s, and the more acrobatic “break-specific moves” of the early 1980s. With little knowledge of b-girl pioneers, most commentators have employed a distorted framework to interpret these elements as expressions of inner-city “machismo.” However, just as it would be misguided to associate men who perform hip-hop dance with dominant Western notions of “femininity,” universally assuming that women who break are enacting aggressive forms of “masculinity” can be fraught with problematic implications (see Johnson Reference Johnson2014, 19). As the brief historical sketches above indicate, these notions are culturally contingent and, if applied, need to take account of the specific temporal, institutional and social contexts in which they operate. Such examination calls for not only more in-depth research into the experiences of early b-girls but also the possible shifts in identity and meaning within the dance as it expanded into various communities. This is especially true when it comes to the period of breaking's commercialization in the 1980s. As dance scholar Cynthia Novack (Reference Novack and Foster1995) astutely observed over twenty-five years ago, “break dance in the seventies performed by adolescent boys for their peers on a Bronx street corner” cannot be equated with “break dance performed for an arts audience by these same boys at the Kitchen, a center for avant-garde music in Manhattan” (181). Thus, paying attention to the specific time period and region a practitioner is from is just as important as paying attention to her or his perspectives. Much of the confusion in hip-hop history has resulted from a lack of such delineation, with journalists and scholars conflating testimony from far removed figures and making sweeping generalizations.

It should also be remembered that these questions of history and embodied meaning in breaking are not simply intellectual exercises. Their reproduction and internalization by both commentators and practitioners have profound effects on an art form rooted in conceptions of cultural tradition. As Fogarty (Reference Fogarty2010) argues, the contemporary enactment of tastes in breaking circles are tightly bound by claims to historic legitimacy. Everything from what constitutes the “right” music to dance to the proper criteria on which to evaluate a performance is predicated on notions of “origins” and “authenticity.” As a result, the modern discourse that breaking is a performance of masculinity has precluded many women today from even adopting the dance, while those who take part face the bifurcated challenge of having to perform “like a man” while also being objectified under the male gaze and pressured to enact stereotypical attributes of femininity (Fogarty et al. Reference Fogarty, Erica Cleto and Melindy2018; Gunn Reference Gunn2016; Langnes and Fasting Reference Langnes and Fasting2017; Pabon-Colon Reference Pabon-Colon2017). In the words of Johnson (Reference Johnson2014), “B-girls incur a much greater social cost for participating in a dance culture that is seen as being by and for young men” (p. 16).

Additionally, the partiality of historical information on breaking has conditioned various discursive obstacles for women, such as the prevailing assumption that the “authentic” name for the dance is “b-boying” (Schloss Reference Schloss2009). However, leading proponents of this term have recently revealed that they advanced it—long after the dance's inception—as a counterweight to the 1980s media misnomer “breakdancing.” For instance, during a discussion panel in the Netherlands in 2013, Crazy Legs revealed that he and Mr. Wiggles decided to strategically brand the dance as “b-boying” in the 1990s, when they saw a resurgence of interest in breaking within North America. “Sometimes, if you want to bring something out new, you rename it and kinda create the illusion that it's new now,” Crazy Legs explained regarding their decision. “But, at the same time, you cause controversy which draws it back to the history of it, and then it gives us the opportunity to school people” (Colon Reference Colon2013). A year prior to this panel, Mr. Wiggles had posted the following message to his Facebook page, which was then circulated widely on social media:

As this comment and many others suggest, the dance has always been popularly referred to as “breaking,” a more gender-neutral term which is still the most widely utilized among practitioners today. Thus, just as it is important to bring the dance's female pioneers into greater focus, it is important to clarify the history of its terminology and reconsider the use of such highly problematic labels as “b-boying,” which, as Pabon-Colon (Reference Pabon-Colon2017) aptly argues, discursively marginalizes women in the dance even before they get involved in it (181).