B-boying or
breaking, also called
breakdancing, is a style of
street dance that originated primarily among African American and Puerto Rican youth, many former members of the
Black Spades, the Young Spades, and the Baby Spades, during the mid 1970s. The dance spread worldwide due to popularity in the media, especially in regions such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Russia, and South Korea. While diverse in the amount of variation available in the dance, b-boying consists of four kinds of movement:
toprock,
downrock,
power moves, and
freezes. B-boying is typically danced to
hip-hop,
funk music, and especially
breakbeats, although modern trends allow for much wider varieties of music along certain ranges of tempo and beat patterns.