B-Boy Life: From Breakdance To B-Boy

 

LOS ANGELES, California -- Celebrated as a premiere member of the world-famous Rock Steady Crew, Eazy Roc said the word break dancer isn’t the term he’d use to accurately describe his preferred style of dance. “The term break dancer is just a word the media made up to describe all the different styles of dance that they saw in the ghettos and the streets,” Eazy Roc explained. “They wanted one label [and were] like what can we use? It’s to hard to go into this and really educate people to what it is.

Dance moves like those featured in the "Best B-Boying On Earth" DVD, above, showcase the intensity B-Boys feel toward their craft. The "Best B-Boying On Earth" DVD displays the most exciting power moves ever attempted on film, and features inside information on how and why B-boying started! Click HERE to see clips and purchase the "Best B-Boying On Earth" DVD!

We never called it break dancing. What I do is B-Boying and that’s basic breaking where they get the term break dancing from. Breaking came from the break of the record. The deejays would throw on a record and loop [the best part of the song] so that’s where we get the break, which stands for the beat, so you have B-Boy.” The art of B-Boying soon morphed into other styles of dance like Locking and Popping, glamorized in hit films like "Breaking" and "Lockin". There are, though, other dance forms like Popping which originated in Northern California that’s more animated and completed with angles. When it comes to Eazy Roc’s own emergence into the B-Boy dance scene, though, he said he was drawn to its exciting mix of culture, style and freedom. “We gotta go way back to 1983,” he explained, “that was the year for me. That’s when really the explosion hit the West Coast and world wide. A lot of people got hip at that time. Basically, the thing that started me off was [the film] Flashdance and I got to see the original members of the Rock Steady Crew and I was just blown away by it. Later that week I can remember going to school and I had a couple of Samoan friends who were really into poppin and lockin. They were like “Hey, there’s a new dance called breakin, you know, check it out.’ I was like ‘Oh yeah! I saw that on TV.’ Vaguely I just remember that and that’s just how I got hooked. Then I started going home and just practicing.”