The Black Xperience in Collaboration with The Battle Manifesto centers Philly’s Black breakers

Breaking will makes its debut as an Olympic sport in the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. As exciting as it may be to have breaking included in one of the most respected international sports competitions, some breaking practitioners and enthusiasts are working hard to prevent the erasure of breaking’s African American and Latin American roots.

**b-girl Macca**
Photo by Brian Mengini.

Breaking, like much of hip hop culture, has transcended cultural and geographic boundaries to become one of the world’s most popular forms of dance. But its origin story begins in the South Bronx in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is a part of the collective cultural phenomenon of hip hop music, clothing, and graffiti writing.

Their project, The Black Xperience in Collaboration with The Battle Manifesto, included a virtual panel discussion and a video series of oral history interviews conducted from June – September 2021 featuring some of the most influential dancers in Philly’s Breaking scene.

In an era of cancel culture, where instances of cultural appropriation and public figures are called out – or in – for their bigoted views, b-girl Macca (Macca Malik) and b-boy Box Won (Ben Barnes) along with Dr. Sherril Dodds created a space to acknowledge the contributions of Black breakers who contribute to the dynamic Breaking scene in Philadelphia.

“Our research project is focused on centering and privileging the Black contributions of breakers within the city of Philadelphia, figuring out how black b-boys and b-girls have contributed to the scene historically and currently,” Box Won said. “We want to bring to attention to what’s at stake for this community and how we should recognize and support their creativity and labor.”

**b-boy Box Won.**
Photo by Albert Shin.

With funding from Temple University’s Vice Provost for the Arts Grant, the collaborative project encouraged intergenerational dialogue amongst Philly Breakers.

B-boys Fame Vasquez (Theron Reed), Husain (Husain Abdul-Zahir), Cricket (James Colter), Metal (Mark Wong), and Steve Believe (Steven Lunger) participated in the virtual panel discussion held on June 12. The artists discussed who created the dance and the politics around who is dancing the dance, how “guests” or non-Black breakers should come into the space, and the cultural and class tensions that exist between college breakers and the b-boys situated in the local neighborhood.

**b-boy Steve Believe.**
Photo by Tony Kruth.

Box Won and Macca also conducted a series of oral history, one-on-one video interviews with Cricket, Husain, and Viazeen (Raphael Xavier) chronicling their careers and paying homage to the Breakers who inspired them.

Cricket, a founding member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, mentioned the importance of mentoring young b-boys during the early 1990s the way Rennie Harris did with him.

“As Breaking started coming back into style it was getting to be a mix of breaking with house [dance] and freestyle in the clubs and raves, so to get more information on breaking we had to go to DC or NYC,” he said. “The young kids in both places were getting better and I started to feel like Philly would soon be out of the loop. I realized there were younger cats breaking. Because I’m black and Rennie, as my elder, gave me the info to be able to work and make money off of doing what I loved to do, I felt that we had to do the same thing. I was mainly doing it for everyone, but I had a sweet spot for a lot of the younger Black dudes because we were the minority. It was mostly Asian and Latinx. people I felt there had to be an investment in black B-boys and in the b-boy scene in Philadelphia.”

Cricket and Viazeen began teaching classes at Kumquat Dance Center to train the next generation of Black b-boys in the 1990s although the dance trend in the Black community in Philly had changed to party dancing, thus leaving space for people in other cultures to excel at breaking.

Both Husain and Cricket attribute the lack of Black presence in Philly’s breaking scene during that period due to the rapid change of cultural evolvement in the Black community, and not just cultural appropriation from other cultural groups.

“When we were slaves, the only freedom we had was creative freedom and that’s why we didn’t sing like everyone else. Folks felt like they couldn’t be free anywhere, so they were going to be free in the way they dressed, free in their music. They decided to change the way they talked,” Cricket said. “We were constantly flipping stuff. Black Americans, especially black youth, took that trend of flipping things and ran with it. Black artists will leave something behind, and other cultures will be like ‘let me get that’. We do get marginalized in a way, but we also just evolve.”

Husain echoed Cricket’s sentiment.

“When I really started Breaking nobody was breaking,” he said. “Everyone in uptown in Germantown was doing party dancing or a version of popping, the Philly-style popping.

Breaking wasn’t the “in” thing anymore. The Black community creates so many dances. You have to do and focus on what’s in style at that moment.”

While Husain and Fame Vasquez, students of Cricket and Viazeen, said they were both focused on learning from and battling the best breakers in the city regardless of race or gender, they both noticed the lack of Black presence in the Philly breaking scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Husain spent several years in Europe and Asia teaching and performing. When he returned to Philly in 2011, he noticed an increase in the presence of Black breakers at hotspots in the city like The Gathering, a weekly gathering of graffiti artists, DJs, breakers and MCs.

Fame Vasquez, who started breaking in what he calls the “You Got Served exploitive era of the early 2000s”, was the host of The Gathering prior to the pandemic. When he focused on training and battling, he was eager to learn from anyone, regardless of race. However, Fame said that race became an issue for him when he became a curator of The Gathering. He realized that people from other cultural groups oftentimes had an unfair advantage over the Black Philadelphians at The Gathering because most local breakers lacked resources such as adequate rehearsal space and funding to support regular practice sessions.

Dodds, b-girl, professor and author of The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, said that she felt that it was important for the project to be led by Macca and Box Won.

**Dr. Sherril Dodds AKA b-girl SDot.**
Photo by Jerm Gonz.

“I was incredibly inspired by the discussion panel hosted by Macca and Box Won, titled “The Black Xperience,” which invited the breaking community to reflect on the dance’s origins from within the Black community, she said. “I was keen to focus on the Black contribution to breaking within Philadelphia, but Macca and Box absolutely led the direction of this project and the people involved. It feels really important to know the histories of the culture that we embody, especially for those of us who do not identify as Black.”

Dodds also suggested that The Black Xperience in Collaboration with The Battle Manifesto will help put Philly’s breaking scene on the map and shine a light on breaking in other regions outside of NYC.

“As someone who is relatively new to the city. I’ve been here for about 10 years now. In some ways I’m very far removed in terms or age, nation, race and to some extent gender. It’s really inspiring and humbling to hear you [the breakers] map out some of the contributions and history particularly of Black b-boys and girls to the Philadelphia breaking scene. We hear a lot about NYC and it’s gone into the historical record, but I feel like the vibrancy and distinctness of other regional cities often gets overlooked. Being here I know how central Philly is to what’s going on in terms of breaking and hip hop more generally. I feel having you all here is like this living, dancing, breathing archive of breaking knowledge that today specifically really centers black artistry, teaching, organizing that are really important to know about.”

For more information on The Black Xperience in Collaboration with The Battle Manifesto and to gain access to the oral history video interviews, please contact Dr. Sherril Dodds at sherril.dodds@temple.edu.

Disclosure: In addition to her role as the Founding Publisher/Editor of Black Dance Magazine and the President of the Black Dance Resource Center, Norma also works as the Dance Admissions Coordinator at Temple University.