Breaking – An African American Cultural Dance That Not Everyone Can Master

For over a century, Black Americans have performed a cultural dance style unique to them in the USA, and that cultural dancing has come to be known as breaking. Previously mistakenly thought to have originated in the 1970s, this Black American style of dance has been practiced since before the 1920s and even recorded in the early and mid 1900s.

It was in the 1970s that what we now know as breaking became known to more than Black Americans due to the influx of migrants flowing into their neighborhoods, then assimilating and finally making it the dance craze that has gone global.

Not everyone can and should break, or in the more commercialized term, breakdance. Black Americans created and mastered the dance style, and many of the moves performed in the early 1900s are still being performed today, decades later.

The first time breaking was added to the Olympics was 2024, and not everyone was excited about the addition because the artform is truly not a sport. However, many wanted to judge it as a sport which failed tremendously, especially after an Australian woman made an attempt to breakdance and failed miserably along with others. To everyone’s disappointment, there was barely any, if any, Black Americans to be found in the competition. Needless to say, breaking will not return to the Olympics after the failure as well as the uproar of the appropriation of a unique culture that many believe, should not be judged as a sport nor by those who aren’t authentic, Black American breakers.

View the video below and learn more about and see more of the dance being done prior to the 1970s that’s caused a stir at this years Olympics below. In these videos, you will see the cypher as well as the dances that are still being done today.

Modern day breaking is also mixed with Popping and Locking, founded by Sam “Boogaloo” Solomon and Don “CampbellLock” Campbell respectively, both Black Americans. See these styles of Black American cultural dance below.