Well, breaking’s Olympic debut has come and gone, and I got to do a bit of reporting for this milestone by writing a story for WIRED about how the battles are judged if you’re at all curious after the fact.
As for the biggest story to come out of the Olympic breaking competition, well, I’m not yet ready to address the kangaroo in the room. I do have thoughts but those are for another day.
Now onto to what I’ve got for you today. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I shared a conversation that I had with my mentor and friend, Richard “Break Easy” Santiago, a b-boy who came up in Brooklyn in the late 70s/early 80s.
Today I have the second and final part of my chat with Break Easy. While the first episode got into the nitty gritty details of his early dance years in Brooklyn, this one is focused more on his time as a teacher, which is how he ended up coming into my life. We really delve into the community aspect of breaking, which, for me was the most meaningful part of the whole experience.
Break Easy and many others built something really beautiful and important when they were young. And in adulthood, they’ve spent years making sure that the dance and culture are available to everyone who is willing to throw down on an extremely hard cafeteria floor.
When I think about breaking, it’s not windmills—which I tried and failed to learn—or head spins or air flares that come to mind. I just think about the community of it all.
This episode, like the last one, was edited by Andrew Callaway, because you know I don’t have that kind of talent.
Now for some videos because those are always fun.
Here’s the Hershey’s commercial, featuring breaking, that Break Easy mentioned at the start of the episode when I asked him about the first time he remembered seeing the dance in the media.
And the scene from Flashdance, featuring members of the Rock Steady Crew, which helped breaking go global.
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