"Breakdancing" all started with James Brown and the explosion of his hit song "The Good Foot" in the 1960's. During his on stage performance, he got to the ground with some footwork for a couple of short seconds, which at that time wowed the crowd. After that, people started going to the floor for longer periods of time with their own unique blends of style. What encouraged the growth of this new dance was the new way DJ's were spinning their records. They would only play the breakdown of the record, or the part of the record where there are no lyrics, just "break" beats. Since kids started diving toward the ground for the break beats, they got the name "break boys" which later became "b-boys". Many people also started calling this new craze breakdancing. Not too long after breakdancing started however, it died out because the moves became too simple and people got bored with it. Thanks to the world famous Rock Steady Crew, it came back with a bang in the late 70's. They incorporated many more acrobatic moves, like the windmill from Chinese martial arts, the swipe from Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) and the flare from gymnastics, with the style of the original "breaking" and created something that has to this day not died out. With the help of movies like Flashdance (half a million kids went to a see it for it's 30 second breakdance clip), Beat Street (a great hip hop culture tribute) & Breakin, breakdancing became established and has continued to grow across the world. Since the 80's, crews have formed to wage war on other crews in "breaking battles". The winners of these battles were determined by who could "take out" the other with better style, speed and dexterity. A division between b-boys has also occurred. The separation involves people taking a liking to the "old school", the old style breakdancing with less acrobatic moves but more technically difficult dancing, and people coming out of the "new school" with all of their crazy powermoves. In addition to b-boying on the ground, people started popping, locking and uprocking which all have the flavor of hip hop but don't go all the way to the ground.
