B-boy

In the early 1970s the craze of B-Boying started during block parties. This involved dancing in front of the crowd to hip hop music in a distinctive style. The term B-boy was coined by DJ Kool Herc due to the dancer waiting for the break section of the hip hop song. It doesn’t always have to be a dancer, b-boy can also refer to someone who has a ready to break attitude!
B-boy is the original name but media attention changed it to break dancing to give it a more professional name.  It is widely used and referenced in advertising, documentary, news as representative of youth culture and hip hop music. You can describe b-boy as the kinetic part to the sound of rap music and the visuals of graffiti art.

B-boy moves are often acrobatic. Famous moves include head spins, hand spins, backspins, moonwalk, the worm and the windmill, where a b-boy/girl spins around on their upper body with their legs simulating the blades of a windmill. There are variations to this move such as nutcrackers and handcuffs! A suicide move is a standing back flip which ends with the dancer flat on their back or bottom. The flare is a move borrowed from gymnastics and it looks as though someone the dancer is using a pommel horse to move themselves. Eventually hip hop dancers started placing bets with each other on skill.
A modern hip hop dance is called Krumping. This is a very expressive and energetic form of dancing which is rarely choreographed. It involves breaking, clowning, modern dance and tap. It has been used in a number of contemporary music videos such as ‘Hung Up’ by Madonna, ‘Hey Mama’ by the Black Eyed Peas and ‘Galvanize’ by the Chemical Brothers. If you would like to know more about Krumping check out the documentary called Rize by David LaChapelle which discusses krumping in L.A.