Break dancing, energetic form of dance, popularized by African Americans and U.S. Latinos, that includes stylized footwork and athletic moves such as spinning on the knees, hands, or head. Break dancing originated in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s from martial arts moves developed by street gangs.
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.”
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.
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