Breakdancing Shaped Who I Am As a Black Man and Father

I discovered breakdancing in that VHS time capsule, and that was as close as I’d ever get to a culture that did not exist where I lived.

My three-year-old daughter and I practice dancing on her gymnastics mat in front of the television. We’re watching Missy Elliott’s “Gossip Folks” video on YouTube where three young girls, older than her, are dancing. She says, “I want to do that!” Standing on her mat, she shuffles her little feet—heel to toe, heel to toe. But it doesn’t look like the girls in the video and she knows it.

I tell her to keep watching, and now, two guys balance on one hand in a handstand. She’s excited, jumping on the mat as if she’s stomping on bugs. “I try it!” She sets both hands, lifts her legs, and is steady for a second, then does it again and topples. I tell her to let me show her, but my girl is stubborn and says, “No, I do it!” She uses the crown of her head to balance herself. And when she falls, she rests on her back, frustrated.

When she settles, she says, “Daddy, you try,” and I smile at her like I always do when I’m giving her something she wants. This is muscle memory. I plant my right hand, rock my hips, stick the left leg forward, and grab the left foot with my left hand. “Again, again!” She’s jumping, and whirls of her brown curly hair bounce. So I do it again and hold it longer. She says, “My turn,” and I’m relieved because my body doesn’t move like it used to.

When I was a kid, much older than her, I spent hours watching hip-hop music videos on MTV Jams. And just like my daughter, I practiced how to dance—how to breakdance. I try to tell her about it, how good I was. I want her to know that I could throw myself backward in the air and, with confidence, land on my feet. I could balance on either hand while upside down. I could spin on my shoulders, my back, and my head like one of her top toys.

But I don’t want my daughter to define herself like I did. And she’s not interested in listening; she just wants to move.

We search “kid breakdancing,” and I select “Unbelievable 6-Year-Old Girl Breakdancing.” My daughter sits comfortably in my lap as we watch B-Girl Terra. I say, “That could be you.” B-Girl Terra’s footwork is better than mine, and when she does a headspin, my daughter hops up and tells me to get out of the way.

*

In the early 2000s, there were no how-to videos, no YouTube. My introduction to breakdancing was the 1984 film Breakin’, which I found in my parents’ tape collection in my childhood home’s basement. I’d toggle at the buttons on the VCR, taking me to my favorite scenes—the rattle of bass and drumbeats crackling from the mono-speaker, the cuts and scratches of the turntable, the claps of the crowd, the DJ’s lyrics and ad-libs, and then the bodies in motion: how they spun and flipped, how their joints popped and locked, how they synced to the music as if existing in rhythm. It was fascinating.

In my suburban town and the almost-entirely-white school I attended, their idea of dancing was do-si-dos, promenades, and allemande lefts. In gym class, we line-danced to “Cotton Eye Joe.” Everyone counted the steps and sang along with the lyrics, and then there was me, the Black kid, like a lone peppercorn in a salt grinder. In that gymnasium were fifteen four-person groups who belted, “Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?”

I changed the dance steps—turned them into a grapevine, a take-it-back-now, a one-two-three-hop-this-time, a stomp or slide—and they watched, clapped me on, shouted my name. Instead of feeling alone, I turned the spotlight on myself as if to say, “I will beat you to it.”

Breakdance, in comparison, was freedom; it was without order—fluid motion, stops and simultaneous starts, contortion, risk—a body upside down, balancing on one limb, a body in revolution.

Every day after school, I returned to my favorite scenes in Breakin’ and for hours rewound, played, stopped, and learned.

Every day after school, I returned to my favorite scenes in Breakin’ and for hours rewound, played, stopped, and learned. On top of a flattened cardboard box, I practiced the break-moves I saw. While other kids in high school played sports and participated in clubs, I discovered breakdancing in that VHS time capsule, and that was as close as I’d ever get to a culture that did not exist where I lived.

*

I am Black, at least, half of me, and in the town I grew up in that meant Black enough. Though I had a typical childhood—with friends, bike rides, sleepovers, school dances—I also felt like an outsider, like I was always peering in. I was different; I knew it. The other kids knew it and expected me to play sports well, know the lyrics to every rap song, know why Black peoples’ hair was different, why Black people couldn’t swim or if we were all on welfare, and a litany of other widely assumed truths.

I was cool if I could fit popular tropes, like the athletes in my town who ran fast, slam-dunked, and scored touchdowns. If you could be categorized, stereotyped, people felt safe. I decided that hip-hop and breakdancing was the part of Black culture I’d celebrate. I wanted to learn it all, from breakbeats from a boombox and Kangol hats and Adidas. I wanted to absorb it, for it to become me. But in this rural town, down these streets, sometimes paved and sometimes dirt, were lifted trucks barreling by with loud exhaust pipes, Confederate flags, banjo-and-beer blues, flannel, and hunting camo—everything that felt un-Black.

At fourteen, my identity and image was a collage of a single Black narrative. I wore FUBU, Timberland boots, and baggy pants. My hair was in cornrows. My Walkman CD player housed mixes of my favorite rappers. At school and in the hallways, someone would say, “Davon, do that thing,” and the halls would split, all eyes on me, a chorus of “go, go, go.” I was compelled to do whatever they asked because I had become The Black Kid Who Danced. I’d perform whatever new break-move I learned—my body flipping, fluorescents blurred, faces looking down at me—pointing, laughing, amused. I was a spectacle.

My peers wanted to play a role in my Blackness. Like when I’d wrap a kid’s head in a durag—lapping the strings around the back, the front, and then tying a knot. He’d smile, showing the glint of his braces, and say, “Yo, that’s dope.” He’d become a character in my performance, and I felt obligated to let him play, as if giving him a ticket to a minstrel show. He’d then contort his fingers into shapes and wave them, “Yo, yo, yo, gangsta!” He’d attempt an excessively intricate handshake, and I’d engage—white and brown hands clasped. He’d think I was cool, think I was like whatever Black character he knew from TV. But in reality, I was more like him, more like those white kids, flattening what it means to perform Blackness, to be Black.

*

I don’t plan to tell my daughter any of this until she’s older. When she dances, I just want her to have fun because the body in motion is beautiful, joyous, and her tot-sized frame and lack of rhythm fills me with a love for her that I never felt for myself. Because she flails her limbs and thinks what she’s doing is perfect, and it is perfect. Because she’s not dancing to be anything. Because she doesn’t understand race, her color, or my color yet.

My daughter—this beautiful fair-skinned, brown-haired, and gray-eyed child—doesn’t see me as incomplete; she just wants to dance with her daddy. So she’s wiggling her butt like it’s a tail and laughs. I tell her to raise her hands in the air like she doesn’t care, and she does, and then I say that the roof is on fire, and she tells me it’s not, and I tell her to look up, and when she looks up, I hug her.

Dancing with my daughter has become our thing. When I’m cooking dinner, I’ll ask Alexa to play a song that my body remembers. “Alexa, play ‘B-Boy Stance’ by K-OS.” The drumbeat starts and the nostalgia is instant. In between cutting vegetables, I moonwalk from the counter to the fridge. My daughter walks backward. While seasoning the chicken, I cross my legs and feet, spin, drop a dash of salt, and she plants her hands on her hips and twirls. While the water is boiling, I tell her to lie on the kitchen floor, press her knees to her chest, and wrap her arms around her legs, and I spin her on her back. I never care if I overcook the pasta or burn the chicken. I only care that dancing, now, means something different. Something freeing.

*

I won the superlative “Best Dancer” in high school. It was me against one of the three Black guys in my graduating class. Our classmates pitted us against each other and talked it up for weeks. It wasn’t just about who the better dancer was, but who the cooler and Blacker Black guy was.

I was in direct competition with AJ, who was from Nigeria and would quickly say his nickname before teachers could mispronounce his full name. We were both afraid to be our true selves. AJ wore Abercrombie & Fitch, and I wore Rocawear. AJ sang country songs, and I recited raps. We both assimilated under this white gaze, were expected to behave stereotypically, but also to be like everyone else, everyone white. Still, we had an understanding of each other—between classes giving a glance or a nod, something that said, “We’re in this together.”

For prom, we were to battle, like our classmates wanted; even the teachers took stakes on who was the better dancer. On the dimly lit dance floor, the DJ playing some version of Now That’s What I Call Music, the bulwark of bodies, suits and dresses pushing us in, demanded us to perform. AJ started with a one-two-step, lean-wit’-it-rock-wit’-it, Harlem-shake, and dirt-off-your-shoulder and finished with a side-foot-slide into a James Brown–esque split. Everyone cheered and cameras flashed. Then he crossed his arms to say, “You’re next.”

I took off my black suit jacket and threw it to someone in the crowd, then told my buddy to hold my foot and push on three. We counted loud enough for everyone to hear, and he pushed me as hard as he could. I backflipped. For those seconds, I soared, and I felt good and like my Blackness was finally confirmed—that without a reasonable doubt, I was the Blacker of us two. I landed smoothly and hopped into a handstand freeze with one hand pointed at AJ, down to a six-step, and, finally, as if hitting a crescendo, to a headspin, and my black tie took on the motion.

Chanting my name, I was declared the victor. AJ and I met in the middle of the circle to dap up and embrace. But really, AJ was the Best Dancer. He lost because he looked too Black, and I was just Black enough. I practiced those moves weeks leading up to the prom. I even rehearsed the backflip outside my house with the kid who catapulted me. Nothing about it was freestyled, but it gave the impression of improvisation, which in many ways was like me—an impression of something else.

Nothing about it was freestyled, but it gave the impression of improvisation, which in many ways was like me—an impression of something else.

Though we never talked about it, AJ’s Blackness seemed without effort, without consciousness, without intention. To me, he moved through white spaces with such grace and cultural dexterity, knowing when to be himself and when to assimilate. I had no balance between being Black and acting Black. The two were inseparable. I was just a replica of the things I saw on television. But looking back now, AJ and I couldn’t have existed without wearing the masks we wore. They wouldn’t have accepted us any other way.

*

Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones, the actor who played Ozone in Breakin’, died right at the end of 2020, and, since then, I’ve watched Breakin’ more than I have in years. I’ve replayed those dance sequences in my mind and can smell the VHS case and cardboard box that was on top of the unforgiving linoleum floor in my parents’ basement. I can hear the crackling bass booming from those mono-speakers on the TV/VCR set and Chaka Khan’s voice singing “Ain’t Nobody.” I remember the thrill when replicating a break-move from the film. I remember feeling like I belonged to this abstract thing, this culture, while living in white-picket suburbia. It was the only place I felt welcomed—in a screen, on that cardboard. Before I was me, I was the Black Kid, and my Blackness was an act for my all-white peers. But breakdancing also gave me a sense of self when I didn’t have one.

Shabba-Doo’s death reminds me of who I was when I was pretending to be him. Now, I’m a father, and I wonder if he danced with his daughter like I dance with mine. I wonder if she laughed at him the way my daughter laughs at me. I wonder if she didn’t see his breakdancing but just saw her father as something silly, as someone she loved. I tell my daughter that I will teach her how to breakdance, but it’s okay if she doesn’t want to—if she just wants to dance because she likes it.

Sometimes we dance together as a family. My wife and I follow our daughter’s lead. We shake our butts like her, wiggle our arms like she does, jump in circles as high as she can, and then we all collapse to the floor. We rest there, out of breath and laughing, and Georgie, our daughter, doesn’t notice the differences in our skin colors. Georgie just knows one of us can dance better than the other, but she’s not sure who.