Comments on: Old school breakdancing

Old school breakdancing

swift — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:48:15 -0800

Soviet Army dance ensemble + Run DMC = the invention of breakdancing in the mid-1900s. (slyt, via kottke)

By: jckll

jckll — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:59:47 -0800

Here's the same thing mixed with Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice. Reminds me of the previously featured but still awesome video of Al Minns and Leon James doing the Charleston to Daft Punk. Here are two more videos that track the origins and breakdancing and hip-hop dancing in a slightly more formal manner: one, two. If we're cool with the blue being just a mirror for kottke, waxy, digg, et al, let's at least make it a full mirror.

By: JeffK

JeffK — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:03:57 -0800

I'm a mefite, not a kottkike(?), so I appreciate the FPP here.

By: Hal Mumkin

Hal Mumkin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:05:13 -0800

I think the US Army should have a dance crew.

By: vibrotronica

vibrotronica — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:14:56 -0800

kottkike(?) Kottker?

By: hal_c_on

hal_c_on — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:17:16 -0800

Swift: AWESOME post! Way better than those Fillipino prisoners!

By: owtytrof

owtytrof — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:18:39 -0800

Neat. It's also fun to run videos of people doing distinctive dances(think Soulja Boy or that recent Beyonce video I don't know the name of... yeah, that one) through the Benny Hill-ifier.

By: gman

gman — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:22:26 -0800

hal_c_in da house!

By: swift

swift — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:23:35 -0800

full mirror

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:23:43 -0800

When you're a Jet, You're a Jet all the way From your first cigarette To your last dyin' day.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:25:02 -0800

kottcat (or kottcow)

By: Vulpyne

Vulpyne — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:29:06 -0800

How about with Benny Hill music?

By: asok

asok — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:29:43 -0800

Weak sauce, despite the help of cklennon. Not breakdancing to music that is not breaking music. Like putting some Shania Twain track over this clip of Greek dancing and calling it 'The roots of Line Dancing'. Love me some charleston though. Might even get to see some tomorrow, if the dancers are with the band!

By: Flex1970

Flex1970 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:33:40 -0800

Not even close. No disrespect to Russian dance, because it's great. That mesh sucked, on two levels: RunDMC, and techno.

By: asok

asok — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:34:46 -0800

Anyway, here is that jump style clip that we all enjoyed *some time in the past*, while we are on the subject of stupid dance clips. Opening has some similarities to L4D/any zombie movie. File under unintentionally hilarious.

By: swift

swift — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:36:51 -0800

Wait, this isn't real breakdancing? Sorry!

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:43:42 -0800

Not breakdancing to music that is not breaking music. Okay, educate me — within hip-hop, what counts as breaking music and what doesn't? Now that you mention it, it makes sense that some kinds of music would be better for breakdancing than others, but I'd never really given the issue much thought.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:45:50 -0800

In Soviet Russia, dance breaks you!

By: jckll

jckll — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:06:45 -0800

Okay, educate me — within hip-hop, what counts as breaking music and what doesn't? Now that you mention it, it makes sense that some kinds of music would be better for breakdancing than others, but I'd never really given the issue much thought. Breaking As the clichéd quote "break to the beat" points out, rhythmic music is an essential ingredient for breakdancing. The original songs that popularized the dance form borrow significantly from progressive genres of jazz, soul, funk, electro, disco, and R&B.[5] The most common feature of breakdance music exists in breaks, or compilations formed from samples taken from different songs which are then looped and chained together by the DJ. The tempo generally ranges between 110 and 135 beats per minute with shuffled sixteenth and quarter beats in the percussive pattern.[5] History credits Kool Dj Herc for the invention of this concept, later termed breakbeat. The musical selection is not restricted to hip-hop as long as the tempo and beat pattern conditions are met. It can be readily adapted to different music genres (often with the aid of remixing). World competitions have seen the unexpected progressions and applications of heavily European electronica, and even opera. Some b-boys, such as Pierre, even extend it to rock music.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:09:54 -0800

That's not really the Charleston, by the way, although it's similar. It's closer to the mashed potato.

By: phrontist

phrontist — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:13:36 -0800

After breaking, you can walk it out.

By: a3matrix

a3matrix — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:27:32 -0800

WTF? Man, they got served.

By: box

box — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:49:47 -0800

I love hip-hop and electronic music, but Jason Nevins doesn't do much for me. Shrug--I just don't think his remixes add a lot. It's like that Johnny Cash remix album--I want to hear mixing and bricolage and whatnot, not just a bunch of programmed beats dropped on top of something. Run-DMC original here. I think that the electro and Mantronix influences, and the minimalism of early hip-hop, come through much more clearly.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:03:27 -0800

I can't find it, but I remember watching a clip of Crazy Legs in a documentary and he said something along the lines of "Nobody is creating anything new, nobody is making up new moves, all you're doing is realizing something somebody else has already done." The clip was from the early 80's, but the documentary wasn't that old. They featured all kinds of old clips interspersed with new clips of b-boys doing something similar.

By: Leo Golan

Leo Golan — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:24:05 -0800

heh, that's LOL )) so, that's how the history was created.........

By: es_de_bah

es_de_bah — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:24:22 -0800

hey, i was just talking about this! This is great. Thanks.

By: box

box — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:42:51 -0800

No offense to Crazy Legs, but I think this is the same kind of rose-tinted nostalgia that makes people say that the '72 Dolphins could win Super Bowl XLIII, or that today's rock'n'roll records aren't as good as the ones they made when I was in high school.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:58:32 -0800

ooohhhhh... juxtaposition.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:17:57 -0800

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it was breaking in that video at all. And I think Crazy Legs was commenting much more on what people think of as "originality".

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:46:26 -0800

one two step turn pivot step, pivot step and Soviet!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:09:06 -0800

kottkike(?) Only megnut can tell for sure.

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:13:57 -0800

ryanrs, I have a Greasemonkey script that shows deleted threads and this appears to have been deleted but not closed for comments. Weird. I flagged your comment with [other] so maybe a mod will see it and clean it up.

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:02:18 -0800

That's not really the Charleston, by the way, although it's similar. It's closer to the mashed potato. So, it's a softcore tater?

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:29:08 -0800

geekyguy: I think the front page is lagging slightly. If it were deleted, comments would be closed. It's being discussed in MeTa.

By: empath

empath — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:31:42 -0800

Not breakdancing to music that is not breaking music. Breakdancers can break to anything. And house music is fucking phenomenal to breakdance to.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:46:00 -0800

Heh. I imagine It's much funnier if you're familiar with the original video for that mix of It's Like That.

By: P.o.B.

P.o.B. — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:54:56 -0800

Breakdancers can break to anything. And house music is fucking phenomenal to breakdance to. This is true. Although breaking has had a resurgence in the past few years there was probably a good fifteen years or more that B-Boying was not popular at all. The only people who were doing it were the hardcore. 87' was a year that a lot of things changed in hip-hop. Gangster rap took hold in the West, and gangsters don't dance (well they didn't at the time.) There was the new style ushered in by Eric B & Rakim in the East and there was the booty shaking music coming on strong in the South. All of these things pretty much added up to not much room on the stage for any B-boying. I'm not saying there wasn't any happening within Hip-Hop, just that it wasn't drawing people in like it was in the early to mid 80's. But if you did go to raves in the last ten to fifteen years, sometimes you could find a large group of people circled up watching some freaky dancing. And in that circle you could find some people breaking or popping. So I would say it's not far fetched that the rave scene is partially responsible for keeping breaking around. Oh, and if you're wondering what was going on in the Midwest in the late 80's...House music.