How to break dancing

How to breakdance step by step

The following 3 videos will teach you how to breakdance step by step. We recommend that you watch these lessons in order as they are arranged from easiest to hardest. These moves come directly from our breakdancing courses which you should check out if you want to learn more. A word of caution, you must be careful when you attempt these moves. Be sure to study the movements very carefully and slowly and then ease into them. For other online dance classes click here.

Free mini video course for break dance:
Beginner break dance moves

Breakdancing move #1: 3 Step
The 3 step is one of the most popular beginner break dance moves. It consist of 3 steps that are done in a circle. In this move you will start with one leg extended in front of you and then will switch the legs as fast as you can so that the other leg is extended, from there you bring the leg side where you end up in a kind of push up position. Learn how to sync the arm switches with your leg switches.

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The Complete Breakdancing Course For beginners (No experience needed)
Learn simple but impressive moves step by step! You will learn footwork moves, ground moves as well as freezes. This video course has 3 modules with +3 hours of video instruction. Delivered through instant online access.
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Breakdance move #2: Corkscrew Up:
This is another cool bboy move. The corkscrew up is perfect for when you need to get up from the ground in a “cool” and smooth way. You can do this move on it’s own or from any other combination of moves.Here you will develop strength and balance as you push off the floor to spin upwards and around.

One more to go below!

Break dance move #3: The baby freeze
Learn how to do a baby freeze move in this video. Freezes in Breakdancing are meant to draw attention to the dancer and are usually put in at the end of some footwork combination like the 3-step above! The baby freeze is great to start out with since its small. It still requires lots of coordination and practice so take it slowly and make sure you don’t skip anything.

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The Complete Breakdancing Course For beginners (No experience needed)
Learn simple but impressive moves step by step! You will learn footwork moves, ground moves as well as freezes. This video course has 3 modules with +3 hours of video instruction. Delivered through instant online access.
Learn more & Buy it here (Click here)

History of Breakdancing:

Breakdancing was founded by the black community and Puerto Rican kids in the 1970s. And it really became popular after James brown’s single “Get On The Good Foot” where his busted out his high energy footwork dancing. After that, the kids in New york started to copy his moves and eventually it evolved to be called b-boy or break dancing. At that time most of the style was ground footwork combinations without any of the fancy stuff you see today like windmills or back spins that are popular today. There were also breakdancing battles between gangs or clicks.

Another dance called “uprock” influenced the b-boy dancers. In this dance style, the dancers mimic fighting moves into rhythmic dance moves that opponents would use to ‘battle’ against one another.

The music is not restricted to Hip Hop anymore. These days dancers choose Techno, Jazz, electronic, pop and an other types of music that suites their style.

Other styles:
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How to Ballroom dance
How to dance at clubs and parties
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break dancing | History, Characteristics, Olympics, & Facts

break dancing

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break dancing, also called breaking and B-boying, energetic form of dance, fashioned and popularized by African Americans and Latinos, that includes stylized footwork and athletic moves such as back spins or head spins. Break dancing originated in New York City during the late 1960s and early ’70s, incorporating moves from a variety of sources, including martial arts and gymnastics.

Break dancing is largely improvisational, made up of variations of “standard” moves or steps, including freezes, powermoves, downrock, and toprock. The emphasis is on energy, movement, creativity, humour, and an element of danger. It is meant to convey the rough world of the city streets from which it is said to have sprung. It is also associated with a particular style of dress that includes baggy pants or sweat suits, baseball caps worn sideways or backward, and sneakers (required because of the dangerous nature of many of the moves).

The term break refers to the particular rhythms and sounds produced by deejays by mixing sounds from records to produce a continuous dancing beat. The technique was pioneered by DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican deejay in New York who mixed the percussion breaks from two identical records. By playing the breaks repeatedly and switching from one record to the other, Kool Herc created what he called “cutting breaks.” During his live performances at New York dance clubs, Kool Herc would shout, “B-boys go down!”—the signal for dancers to perform the gymnastic moves that are the hallmark of break dancing.

In the 1980s breaking reached a greater audience when it was adopted by mainstream artists such as Michael Jackson. Jackson’s moonwalk—a step that involved sliding backward and lifting the soles of the feet so that he appeared to be gliding or floating—became a sensation among teens. Record producers, seeing the growing popularity of the genre, signed artists who could imitate the street style of the breakers while presenting a more wholesome image that would appeal to mainstream audiences. Breaking had gone from a street phenomenon to one that was embraced by the wider culture. It is around this time that the term break dancing was invented by the media, which often conflated the repertoire of New York breakers with such concurrent West Coast moves as “popping” and “locking. ” Those routines were popularized in the early 1970s by artists on television, including Charlie Robot, who appeared on the popular TV series Soul Train.

Break dancing had an enormous influence on modern dance styles, and offshoots of it were performed in many music and especially rap videos as well as in live concerts by popular artists such as Britney Spears. The mainstreaming of the genre was never more clearly demonstrated than in 2004, when break-dancers were invited to perform in the Vatican before Pope John Paul II. Break dancing cemented its place in popular culture when, in 2020, the International Olympic Committee approved breaking as a sport at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Alicja Zelazko.

How to breakdance - tips for beginner breakdancers from the school Breaking Academy

Breakdancing is actually not very difficult if you have the appropriate physical preparation and knowledge of dance basics. The main thing is to learn how to put together all the components of breakdance into one common dance sweat coming from the human body, transmitting vibrations from the sounds made by musical instruments to your body. Of course, being able to break dance is a great pleasure for the soul and body. The feeling of how you convey the rhythm of the music with your movements is very pleasing and creates a feeling of happiness. The main question is how professional the dancer's movements are. And here it is important to find a specialized breakdance school, such as ours, in order to fully experience all the delights of controlling your body, music and energy of the audience.

In our classes, any student will learn how to learn how to dance breakdance, as our trainers, being, of course, professionals in their field, will tell you all the nuances and features of this dance. They will prepare the body for physical exertion, teach you to feel comfortable and not be ashamed of your dance. Every child who has applied to us will be able to go to the center of the dance floor after a month of classes and show, without any hesitation, what he has learned and show everyone how he dances.

What are the benefits of doing breakdancing

The child will be guaranteed excellent physical shape.
The mobility of the body links will improve due to intensive stretching.
Increases overall endurance to physical activity and increases efficiency.
A creative approach and a view of the world around are being developed, because dancing is an art.
The skill of feeling rhythm and music in general appears, after a while, the child will learn to dance to the music.
Dancing is a way of self-realization, any dancing child will always be in the spotlight and, as a result, will be self-confident.

How to start break dancing, break dancing

It is best to start by contacting specialists - people who have gone through this path and are ready to share it. Of course, it is more correct to start mastering breakdance with knowledge of dance theory in general. And only then work out the dance moves. If you do not understand what you are doing, then you can lose a lot of time for nothing, without learning anything or moving in the wrong direction. To avoid this, we advise you to work with a trainer. A competent teacher will always tell you how best to develop a particular student, develop a special program for developing skills and gradually mastering the elements of breakdance. What is an integral part of the process of teaching break dancing to children.

What elements are important to learn in order to break dance beautifully

Dance at the top is a set of dance movements in a standing position.
Downward Dance is a squat-level movement.
Racks and fixations are different racks, they can be at the top (on the hands), I can be at the bottom (on the head) and so on.
Acrobatic elements - everything related to acrobatic stunts.
Power movements - transitions from rack to another rack.
Power rotational movements.

Why is it useful to dance break-dance, break?

Break dancing is quite a useful activity in terms of developing creativity and the physical form of your body, and it is also an indisputable advantage in the fight against excess weight, since a lot of calories are burned during dancing. Below are the main benefits of break training.

Increases endurance and physical strength.
Breakdancing develops various muscle groups that are not used anywhere else by our body.
Teaches you how to competently approach the development of your body in terms of building strength and stretching.
Break allows you to feel relaxed and free to dance to the music in front of the audience.
Gives you the opportunity to come up with your own movements and thus be realized in creation.

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How to improve yourself in breakdance

Red Bull b-boy athlete Killa Kolya gives 10 clear tips - a complete guide to breakdancing.

You can start at home!

If you have a desire to dance breaking, try this direction, you can even start at home. Find tutorial videos on youtube and try to repeat what they show there. And if the desire to dance has already finally taken shape, then it's time to find any studio where there is a break dance and sign up.

Free form!

Clothing should be loose: not to fetter anywhere, not to squeeze, not to tighten. An excellent option can be hoodie pants and a T-shirt, you can even go up a size. And sneakers or sneakers, whoever is more comfortable.

Breakdance equipment also includes a hat and a jacket: a hat is needed in order to perform elements below, where the head touches the floor, so that there is protection, and the jacket helps to spin - it glide better, and also serves as protection.

Everyone will find their own form

And then everyone will find their own form. You can see what your favorite b-boys have chosen as their equipment. You will see that someone has chosen tight clothes for themselves, someone prefers jeans. After all, the form is a continuation of the dance style. So, when you form your style, you will understand what is better to dance in. For example, if there is a big emphasis on stretching, it is better to give preference to loose clothing, it will be more comfortable in it.

Basic set - the basis of training

Basic Approach

Workout can be organized according to the classic scheme: warm-up, study movements, pumping and stretching at the end of the workout. If you approach it from the dance side, then toprock is the best warm-up. This is a dance that does not have complex elements and physical activity, but at the same time, arms, legs, and the body are involved in it. If you give it 15-20 minutes, you can warm up well, here you need to follow the sensations. After that, you can move on to the movements below, for example, use the calls down and footwork. And when you feel that you are already in the right condition, you can proceed to the study of complex elements. And as a download, I most often do the breakdance elements themselves, I do them for the number of approaches: this is how the element is worked out and the download occurs. And finally, the basic stretch.

Atmosphere

When choosing a place to train or dance, remember that atmosphere matters. There must be a spirit of creativity and the same people, close in spirit, from whom you will charge and charge them. To have an energy exchange. Plus to everything - there should be a good floor. For b-boys, it is important that there is a slippery floor, it is easier to perform spinning elements on it.

The choice is yours

If you break breaking into directions, then for each you need to master certain movements that will help you master the direction itself. For example, for toprock, the quality of the hull is important. That is, so that not only the arms and legs work, but the body shakes. In general, for any dance direction, the basis of the dance is the quality. For breaking use funk-kach.

For footwork there is a basic movement - Russian Steps: squatting, not holding hands, swings legs alternately. If you have seen Russian folk dances, then you can imagine what it is about.

It is imperative to master this movement so that all other movements and elements of direction can be easily obtained.

Don't give up!

For more physically demanding moves like power moves and power tricks, you need to be able to do different handstands, headstands, shoulder stances, and so on. And from here it will be easier to learn more complex elements.

Do not throw

If movement is not given, the reason must be found. If we are talking about simple directions, then, most likely, there is not enough technique, and you just need to work on this movement more.

If a complex element is not given, most likely, there is not enough physical preparation and you need to pump up or learn something additional about this element.

It happens that an element is not given at all for a very long time, and then you need to give it time. Don't get hung up. Continue to teach him, repeat each lesson, but do not torture yourself with questions why he is not given. Each element has its own period and operating time. The main thing is not to throw.

Mood, Attitude, and Approach

The essential elements for a successful session are your mood, your attitude, what you want to get from this workout, and your approach, how serious are you. This is the basis that is important for any workout and result.

Protect yourself!

To prevent injuries, it is important to learn the technique of the elements. When you approach the study of a certain element, it has its own technique. In order to learn how to do it as safely as possible, you need to master this technique.

Well, protect yourself. As I said before, wear a hat and sweater to cushion falls. Because in the process of studying the elements, there will still be some minor bruises, bruises, abrasions. But this is inevitable, because this is an extreme dance.

Protect yourself!

Serious injuries such as dislocations or fractures are very rare. And they are always the result of an illiterate approach, when you are not sufficiently prepared to try something difficult.

Well, pumping helps against injuries: the body becomes stronger and easier to endure a collision with the floor. And with experience, you learn the art of the right fall, a cat skill is developed. This is where stretching helps.

Dance with what doesn't hurt

If you are injured, approach wisely. If necessary, see a doctor or take a break from training to recover. And if the injury is minor, wait for everything to pass, but you can not miss training, just distribute the load so as not to use the sore spot. As I tell my students: if your arm hurts, dance top rock, if your leg hurts, stand on your hands.