17 minute read
Break Out West
Since the dawn of breaking in the late 1970s, West Coast dancers have fueled the art form’s progression, and today, the followers of those early innovators are dreaming of the Olympics.
B-Boy Nico Castro Aguilar performs in front of fellow breakers (left to right) Victor Montalvo, Asia Yu, Rody Pedraza, Soetan Osifeso and Soyemi Osifeso. The group was photographed for The Red Bulletin on June 20.
F
rom the floor of the Memorial Coliseum, firework explosions burst into the Los Angeles sky on a mid-August night in 1984. Burgundy and gold light colored the field. Rainbow balloons were unleashed into the heavens. Broadcasting the closing ceremony of the Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad across the globe, aerial cameras captured the five interlaced rings in electric splendor. But the real action was down on the floor.
Six thousand athletes marched to the tune of John Williams’ 1984 “Olympic Fanfare and Theme.” The Los Angeles Symphony played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” There were traditional folk dances and speeches, poems and military trumpet blasts. There was also a laser show. Upon the festivities’ conclusion, a 7-foot-tall “alien” floated above the cauldron to salute Los Angeles and the assembled nations for keeping the “ideals of the Olympics” alive. Then it was time for Lionel Richie.
The sequin-clad former lead singer of the Commodores unveiled a full nineminute version of his smash, “All Night Long,” accompanied by an acrobatic ensemble of breaking crews. For most of the 90,000 mesmerized attendees and the estimated 2.4 billion watching around the world, this was their first introduction to breaking.
More than a hundred white-suited B-Boys and B-Girls in berets stormed the stage to deliver dazzling moves. If you watch the live broadcast, you can hear the announcers dryly break down the various steps for the uninitiated: “The poppers are the ones doing the angular movements; there’s the breakers … and that’s a real windmill.” The cameras flash to a man shimmying in a Bhutan jacket. A few seconds later, they pan to a B-Boy spinning on his head. One of the commentators wisecracks, “They don’t dance like that in Bhutan.”
Nearly four decades later, they do, in fact, dance like that in Bhutan. You can even find Buddhist monks doing pyrotechnic power moves on YouTube. What was once a foundational tenet of hip-hop native to the South Bronx has become a global phenomenon. The onetime dance curio that Richie helped expose internationally will be an Olympic sport in 2024. But none of this could have happened without the contributions of West Coast dancers, who supplied the elemental techniques that allowed for its creation. And over the last 40 years, the subsequent breakthroughs of B-Boys in Los Angeles, the Bay, Seattle, San Diego, Fresno, Las Vegas, Denver and up and down the Western Seaboard have been vital to its evolution.
The B-Boy turned rapper turned movie star turned CSI staple, Ice-T, said it best on his 1983 electro-funk single, “The Coldest Ever”:
The East started breakin’ but the West started poppin’ But what does it matter as long as it’s rockin’ A ghetto’s a ghetto, a street’s a street A hip is a hop and a beat is a beat
In the beginning, there was locking. A full three years before DJ Kool Herc birthed hip-hop at a “Back to School Jam” in the South Bronx of 1973, the seeds of B-Boying were being sown in a community college cafeteria in South Los Angeles. That’s where an L.A. native by the name of Don Campbell blended two of the most popular dances of the era—the “funky chicken” and the “robot”—to invent “locking.” The genius of this new locomotion lay in its opensource approach. As soon as Campbell appeared on the popular television show Soul Train in 1971, his interlocking joint freezes and fast, fluid movements inspired dancers across the nation.
But L.A. and the five boroughs were only a part of the story. In the agricultural hub of Fresno, California, Sam Solomon, aka “Boogaloo Sam,” improvised upon the Bay Area’s funk dances to produce “popping,” a paroxysm of jerky arm, leg, chest and neck pops—as though the dancer was practically popping out of his skeleton. It caught fire throughout the nation, but especially in the West. By the late 1970s, the poppers from California’s Central Valley had teamed up with dancers from Long Beach to form the iconic pop and locking crew, the Electric Boogaloos. And when these moves were fused with the ground-level gymnastics of New York’s B-Boys, breaking truly took off.
By the dawn of the 1980s, breaking was ubiquitous in South L.A. and on the city’s east side. Funk jams from Parliament-Funkadelic, the Bar-Kays, Zapp, Prince and Rick James ruled the West Coast, serving as the soundtrack for thousands of teenagers popping and locking, doing headspins and coin drops (the then-slang for windmills). In 1982, Ronnie Hudson dropped the era’s quintessential anthem, “West Coast Poplock,” which set caller request lines on L.A. radio station KDAY aflame and later served as a sample source for 2Pac’s “California Love.”
This was the same year that Cesar Rivas, better known now as Lil’ Cesar of the seminal Air Force Crew, first saw breaking in the wild. Exactly four decades later, the specifics of the discovery remain vivid in his mind. In the center of the once
Brothers Soyemi, 24, and Soetan Osifeso, 28, and Rody Pedraza, 32, are all current members of Air Force Crew, the L.A.based group formed by their mentor, Lil’ Cesar, in the 1980s. Here they break outside the Gold Diggers bar in Hollywood.
notorious Pico-Union District, by a gas station on the corner of 7th and Union, Rivas saw a friend spinning on his head at a dizzying velocity.
“I didn’t know people were capable of doing that with their own bodies,” the B-Boy legend recalls.
A few blocks away, the first West Coast capital of hip-hop enjoyed a brief efflorescence. For roughly 18 months between 1982 and 1983, MacArthur Park’s Club Radio became the mecca of the fledgling cultural movement. With Ice-T on the mic and DJs like the Egyptian Lover, Afrika Islam and Chris “the Glove” Taylor behind the decks, the venue attracted luminaries like Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson. It also drew the attention of Topper Carew, the future creator of the TV series Martin, who used Club Radio’s action as a primary set piece in the 1983 documentary Breakin’ n’ Enterin’.
The 90-minute film featured all four elements of hip-hop (breaking, MCing DJing and graffiti) but fixed most of its attention on the psychedelic creativity of the L.A. B-Boys. Its underground success inspired a major motion picture, 1984’s surprise hit Breakin’, which grossed nearly $40 million and introduced millions to some of the linchpins of the West Coast B-Boy scene, such as Electric Boogaloo member Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers (who had previously appeared in Richie’s “All Night Long” video). So when the 1984 Olympics arrived, just three months after Breakin’ hit theaters, all of young L.A. seemed to be popping, locking and downrocking.
Inside the Coliseum, canonical B-Boys like Fresh (L.A. Breakers) and Baby Huey (Pony Express) performed windmills alongside Richie. Outside in Exposition Park, members of L.A.’s next generation, the Air Force Crew and the Radiotron Wizards, wowed the crowd by doing up to 20 consecutive high-speed headspins.
These were the progeny of Radiotron, the youth community and arts center and breaking hub that succeeded Club Radio in 1983, after police officers from the Rampart District harassed the building’s owner for allegedly allowing drugs to be taken on the premises. In its next iteration, Radiotron became ground zero for 1980s West Coast B-Boying. Inspired by the legendary Shake City Rockers, the Air Force Crew coalesced. What we now consider modern power moves emerged from the ingenuity of Air Force’s Lil’ Cesar, Orko, Lil’ Lewis, Steve and Bobby Franco, Air Master, Oz Rock, B-Girl Yvan and Kid Tuff.
From Mondays through Fridays, Radiotron was a practice spot. On the weekends, it featured immortal dance competitions between local crews, attended by everyone from Dr. Dre to Ice Cube, Vin Diesel to Toni Basil (“Hey Mickey”). The crowds and dancers reflected the diversity of the city. In particular the Air Force Crew largely consisted of the children of Central American immigrants, a group often overlooked in the annals of hip-hop history. Yet these teenagers from the
Left: In 1985, a large group of young breakers gather outside of City Hall in Los Angeles to protest the closing of Radiotron, a nonprofit breakdance center in MacArthur Park. Right: Just months before the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, members of the crew L.A. Breakers perform in Century City.
streets of Pico-Union supplied some of the most intricate combinations the B-Boy world had yet seen: double halos to flares to 1990 spins; double halos to flares, back to double halos.
“We mastered power moves in our spinning and combos, and elevated it,” says Lil’ Cesar of the Air Force Crew. “Our feet never touched the ground. We brought our own flavor, and did it with such control and perfection that it seemed inhuman. Even today, there are only a handful of people on Earth who can do our moves as well as we did.”
But by 1986, the phenomenon began to wane. Naysayers derided breaking as an ephemeral fad. With the emergence
Current members of L.A.’s Air Force Crew follow in the footsteps of their “sensei,” the legendary B-Boy Lil’ Cesar.
Since 1994, B-Girl Asia One has led B-Boy Summit, an international symposium for breakers.
of N.W.A., gangsta rap replaced the electro and funk soundtracks that propelled B-Boy creativity. Ice-T threw on a pair of dark sunglasses and a menacing glare and rapped about pimping, shotgun shootings and police raids. People prematurely pronounced breaking dead.
Hibernation was perhaps a more accurate description. Around 1992, the West Coast rave scene offered a technicolor positivity that meshed naturally with breaking’s flamboyant acrobatics. With gangsta rap still in ascendance, hip-hop traditionalists felt the need to return to the foundational components that many felt it had repudiated.
One of those determined to keep the B-Boy torch alive was Denver native Nancy “Asia One” Yu. A member of the Rock Steady Crew, the B-Girl was inspired by the golden era of hip-hop and the activism of the Zulu Nation to create the B-Boy Summit in August 1994—which for nearly full two decades has served as an international symposium for B-Boys and B-Girls, fostering “friendship, global unity and peace, economic sustainability, and healthy competition and relationships.”
Held in Yu’s new home of San Diego, the B-Boy Summits immediately earned raves in the hip-hop bible, The Source magazine. Videocassettes from the events became the stuff of lore, circulating among B-Boys like a holy grail.
“We were faced with a challenge: People had moved on and said we were stuck in nostalgia, but we wanted to keep doing what we had been doing,” Yu remembers. “We felt ousted and knew that we needed to preserve this traditional hip-hop dance, as well as move it forward. You always see different nations climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and planting their flag there. I pictured it like that: something to elevate the culture so it could never be destroyed.”
The year 1994 proved to be a seminal year in the rebirth of breaking. In this unlikely hip-hop hotbed of San Diego, local promoter Chris “Cros 1” Wright also built a bridge for the art form that allowed it to span generations. With the establishment of the Freestyle Sessions, West Coast B-Boys forged another crucible to test their mettle, refine their skills and spur the evolution of the dance. With the ascendance of underground, purist-minded hip-hop (Jurassic 5, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Dilated Peoples), more momentum was added to this four-elements renaissance. From the southern border up to Seattle, the second generation of West Coast B-Boy crews formed.
Overseas, the popularity of breaking exploded. The Freestyle Sessions became more than a West Coast testing ground; through Cros 1’s influence, the event helped build a global community. VHS recordings of Freestyle Sessions’ dance battles circulated from continent to continent; over the next two decades, the event itself traveled to more than 40 countries. (There was also the new phenomenon of internet message boards, which helped connect B-Boys and Girls locally and across the world.)
“We were hungry to see breaking again,” Cros 1 says. “Freestyle Sessions went from being a local thing to working its way up the West Coast and then to the East Coast. I went everywhere—Pro Ams, Scribble Jam, the Rock Steady Anniversary—and wherever I went, I showed them Freestyle Sessions videos.”
Those early videos showed the B-Boys’ mastery of power moves, which had been a signature of West Coast breaking since the days of the Air Force Crew. Anyone who caught these tapes witnessed the introduction of an array of abstract movements and circus styles (tricks, contortions, etc.). What was once exclusively a dance began to become a sport, too. Like the NCAA’s March Madness, the Freestyle Sessions introduced tournament-style formats, with brackets to ensure that the best dancers battled each other in the finals. While other major competitions existed before Freestyle Sessions—most notably the Battle of the Year, founded in France
Multiple generations of the West Coast breaking scene gather on the stage at Gold Diggers bar in Hollywood. From San Diego to Seattle, they have helped shape breaking’s evolution.
in 1990—Cros 1’s creation allowed Southern California to become a grassroots epicenter, the spiritual home of a 21st century renaissance.
In the spring of 2001, the Lords of the Floor event in Seattle helped West Coast breaking continue to grow. Starring immortal crews like the L.A. Breakers, the Massive Monkees and the Style Elements, the LotF had Z-Trip as the house DJ and offered a $4,000 grand prize. Its success paved the way for the launch of the Red Bull BC One tourney in 2004, which rapidly became a Grand Slam level event for the B-Boy world. In the mainstream, the proliferation of hip-hop dance movies (You Got Served, Stomp the Yard) and the success of the Jabbawockeez on America’s Best Dance Crew introduced a new generation to street dance and B-Boying.
As West Coast breaking continued to morph, the scene absorbed and synthesized capoeira movements, house dancing and a grab bag of other dynamic wizardry. The Squadron helped to catalyze this evolution, a Southern California super crew somewhere between the Avengers and Wu-Tang. In the late 2000s, the late David “MexOne” Alvarado handpicked, named and assembled the Squadron from elite B-Boys across the country. His eye for talent was so strong that they won 11 straight battles between 2008 and 2011. In 2013 and 2014, the Squadron took home first place at the Freestyle Sessions—not to ignore their countless international victories. If the genesis of the Shake City Rockers and Air Force Crew traced back to intramural L.A. battles, the Squadron were the region’s answer to the age of globalization—a superpower from the land of palm trees.
Omar “Roxrite” Delgado was one of the founding members of the Squadron. Born in Guadalajara, Delgado moved to the U.S. at the age of 6, began breaking at 12 and gravitated to the wild styles emanating from the late-’90s Bay Area hip-hop scene. To this day the stick-
Victor Montalvo, aka B-Boy Victor, is a member of the Southern California super crew the Squadron.
freeze master has over 106 first-place victories on his ledger.
“The Squadron had all built a bond as individuals in the scene, and we respected each other. MexOne saw the vision and built the brand,” Roxrite says of the Squadron, who were among the first fully sponsored crews of their generation. “We were straight-up grassroots grinding: one of the first independent West Coast crews from the scene, for the scene and sustained by the scene.”
“MexOne pushed me harder—he made me believe,” adds the Florida-raised Squadron member Victor Montalvo, aka B-Boy Victor. “Without MexOne, I don’t know if I would’ve become who I am.”
B-Boy and DJ Lean Rock, 33, is also a member of the worldchampion breaking crew the Squadron.
Nico Castro Aguilar, a member of the Killafornia Crew who hails from San Diego, embodies the modern era of B-Boying. On Instagram he has more than 60,000 followers.
Now based in Los Angeles, Montalvo has ranked among the best breakers in the country for the last decade-plus, winning too many trophies and rings to mention. But for anyone connected to the world of breaking, perhaps the notion of medals looms largest at the moment. With the 2024 Paris Olympics, breaking will finally become an Olympic event, a half-century after its creation— the rare art form that evolved into a competitive sport without losing the creative sensibilities that sparked its genesis. For most of the dancers, the connection with the music, specifically hip-hop and funk breakbeats, has not been severed.
“With me, if music isn’t the most important thing, it’s number two,” says 16-year-old Maddux Maya (aka Weapon X) a teen prodigy who makes up the Maya Boys alongside his older brother, Mace. “Music is my main source of energy. My style is based around that—flavor, finesse, steez. Anyone can do sick moves, but it doesn’t matter unless you’re moving with originality to the beat.”
Long gone are the days of spinning on cardboard at gas stations or battling in the local park while a boombox bumps. There is the understanding that being elite doesn’t just mean being the best in your neighborhood or region; there is an international scale that requires intense training and rigor to have a shot at greatness. A professionalism has set in.
“We’re entering the sport phase of breaking,” says Nico Castro Aguilar, a member of the Killafornia Crew. Aguilar embodies this modern era of B-Boying. Chronicling both the highs and lows of his journey on social media, he’s amassed over 60,000 Instagram followers. He’s also a savvy entrepreneur who opened several brick-and-mortar businesses, including plant, coffee and exotic-snacks stores in San Diego.
“There are families involved now and sponsored livestreams—you can’t just be waiting for the judges smoking in the parking lot anymore,” Aguilar continues. “We all want to be able to pay our bills and keep breaking. You can’t be a professional B-Boy and have that entitlement. We get to innovate a beautiful craft, but we have to be punctual, too.”
Two examples of this next generation are the aforementioned Maya brothers, who have both dominated B-Boy battles and appeared on Ellen. The winner of the 2021 Red Bull BC One Los Angeles Cypher, 18-year-old Mace has his sights set on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. He discovered breaking on YouTube at age 5 and understands all too well that raw athletic talent and superior rhythm on their own won’t be enough to get him to the Games. So there are 6 a.m wakeup calls for three-hour B-Boy training sessions, plus a steady regimen of weight lifting, stretching, massage, saunas and physical therapy.
After all, with its official Olympic debut, breaking will have the most eyes on it since crews were doing windmills to “All Night Long” at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. For those who have made breaking their life, there is unparalleled excitement. Its rich history remains ingrained in its fabric, but there is a sense that a new realm of possibility has emerged.
“I think the Olympics will shine a light on it to millions of people, who will learn that B-Boying isn’t what it was in the ’80s and ’90s,” Mace says. “This generation is hungry and we see the future of breaking. It’s going to be big. You’ll be able to live off this fulltime, which is what people dream of. We want the gold.”
“We all want to pay the bills and keep on breaking,” says Aguilar. “You can’t be a professional B-Boy and have that entitlement.”
