The resurgence of break dancing
A new documentary at the New York film festival…
OK, true confessions, I broke my thumb break dancing at a chuch dance in 1984. We had formed a circle and everyone was going into the middle one at a time and doing their thing, and I decided to do a worm, where you roll up onto your shoulder and then come down onto your stomach, and landed squarely on my thumb and it cracked in two.
I loved break dancing and organized a group dance to a Michael Jackson song (if I remember right it was wanna be startin somethin’) for our school talent show in 84. I did the breathtaking pop up from flat on your back and land on your feet. One night made it up, and the next night could not get the momentum and rolled back down onto my back and felt really stupid.
In 1985 my mom directed a Stake Dance Festival and I’ll never forget being at the audition for a break dancing group from Detroit. Five guys doing some of the most cool moves I had ever seen. They were not able to be in the show however, at the last minute they quit to be in a dance competition or something, but it was really fun to see them dancing at the audition.
I continued to break dance and met my two best friends in high school at a school dance, Janice and Audie, when they came up to me and asked me to teach them a dance sequence I had performed previously and was doing at the dance.
Jenny Hatch
Break Dancer – even writing that I feel like laughing. Those were the days