User:G-tay617

Critique on Wikipedia Article: "Breakdancing"

As a practitioner of the dance myself, I was very intrigued and delighted to see how strongly the article has been written. After a solid general overview, the article did a fantastic job covering the terminology. "Breakdancing," although most commonly known as such, is a misnomer coined by the media and corporations that were profiting from the art form in the 80s. The article extensively and successfully affirms that the correct name of the dance is "breaking" or "b-boy/girl-ing" by using numerous sources including both primary (interviews with the pioneers and OGs) and secondary (research done on the culture) sources.

Although the "History" section was generally solid, I wish the article talked more about the spread of the dance throughout the nation. It begins by talking about the origin starting with the emergence of hip-hop culture in New York but then all of a sudden goes on to talk about uprocking - which is a related but separate dance form - and how the art form spread to different countries around the world. But, I shall with confidence claim that each region in America took the dance and developed its own vernacular style. The b-boys/b-girls in New York and the ones in California, for example, dance differently. I would argue that even the Boston scene differs significantly from the scene of its fellow East Coast neighbors such as New York or Philadelphia.

The section called "Styles" needs a lot of revising. This is a confusing and controversial topic even among the breakers but nevertheless an important one. The section basically talks about how different b-boys/b-girls focus on different aspects of the same dance. I, personally, focus on footwork, and musicality while other dancers might focus more on coming up with difficult moves and combinations. I am not suggesting any specific way to change or edit the section (although I think the title is quite misleading) but the author (or the Wikipedians) should rename, restructure, and elaborate on the topic to improve the article.

I also briefly looked over the Talk page for this article, and witnessed ongoing lively discussions about the topic. Considering the lack of scholarly work done on hip-hop culture (even outside breakdancing), the article did a very good job compiling credible sources and using them to create an informative article about the dance form which I happen to practice and love as well.