Breaking
Dance
The history of Australian breaking in five essential crews
The local breaking scene has evolved time and time again. From the 80s to today, here are some of the crews that have helped to shape it.
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Breaking was born in the boroughs of New York in the 1970s. By the following decade, it had started to reach popular culture, enjoying an – ahem – breakthrough moment in 1983. That was the year breakers appeared on the silver screen in Flashdance, in the video clip for Run DMC’s hit single It’s Like That, and even on Letterman, when the pioneering US crew Rock Steady nabbed a spot on that talkshow.
Australian audiences were quick to tune in and it didn’t take long for breaking to be embraced Down Under. Five decades on, it’s still going strong on our shores. In fact, next month, Australia's biggest breaking comp, Red Bull BC One, will return. The Australian final hits Sydney on August 25th.
One of the names who’ll be competing at this year’s Red Bull BC One is Kid Tek, last year’s Australian winner. He’s a leading figure in the local scene and has been breaking for over a decade now, having started when he was just 11-years-old. A student of all things breaking, Kid Tek knows his local history. And as he tells it, the Australian scene has seen some major stylistic changes across the decades. Those shifts can be charted alongside the rise of five essential crews, who reflect the wider trends of the decade in dance.
This is the history of Australian breaking in those crews. It's not a complete round up of every important homegrown breaking crew, but is a loving look back at some of the pioneers who led the way – and are keeping the fire burning today.
Kid Tek takes the trophy at BC One 2022.
© Ken Leanfore / Red Bull Content Pool
1990s: B-Boy All Stars
By the start of the 1990s, breaking had well and truly reached Australian shores. And it didn’t take us long to start making a name for ourselves on the global stage.
“In the really early stages, Australia was a world leading power move country,” says Kid Tek. “We were known as the best power movers and people from all around the world are watching tapes of breaking crews and breakers from that era.”
Everyone just wanted to be an acrobat
One of the pioneering crews of the decade was The B-Boy All Stars, who came out of Brisbane. Alongside other Australian crews of the era, they were innovating power moves that hadn’t been before: perfectly executed flares, consistent head spin drills, and combinations.
“I feel like there was a fearlessness that was attached to that generation when it came to power moves,” says Kid Tek. “Everyone just wanted to be an acrobat.”
The crew even made it to the small screen -- appearing on the talent quest TV show Star Search TV back in 1992.
2000s: Fresh Sox and SKB
The 2000s saw an important evolution in style. While the 90s had been power moved focus, the turn of the century was all about a return to foundations.
“Back then, a Melbourne breaker called Scotty Do-Rock was organising a lot of events and he would invite international judges from America to come over,” says Kid Tek. “And a judge called B-Boy Alien Ness, who is one of the godfathers of breaking globally and is from The Bronx in New York, he came here and he had a pretty big influence on a lot of the breakers in Melbourne.
“We’d been really power move focused. And then we had an actual pioneer of the game come to Australia. And he kind of told us like, Nah, that's whack. We need to see foundation, we need to see the original approach to dance being adopted here.”
That shifted the winds of breaking in Australia. And no one mastered the return to basics quite like Fresh Sox, who were pioneers in the foundational style. Fresh Sox were a super crew comprised of already-established Melbourne breakers like B-Boy Lamaroc and they immediately turned heads.
“They carried a lot of that traditional, raw, street B-Boy energy,” says Kid Tek. “And they came onto the scene like crazy – they were winning everything at the time. They were considered the best crew for a really, really long time.”
Their biggest rivals were SKB (aka Street Kulture Breakerz), another “absolutely legendary” crew – this time out of the Harbour City. The two crews would go toe-to-toe at every event in the early aughts.
“They are probably, historically, the greatest crew to come out of Western Sydney, at least for now,” says Kid Tek.
They weren’t just winning comps in Australia but abroad as well. And SKB even recruited two legendary breakers from Korea – B-Boy Blond and B-Boy Blue, which had a huge impact on the scene.
“They were absolute power innovators, globally, during the early 2000s. And then they ended up moving to Australia and SKB absorbed them into their crew. So that added a very strong international appeal to SKB."
SKB are still going strong today. And you might have seen B-Boy Blond compete in recent years of Red Bull BC One. (In fact, the noughties was also the decade Red Bull started breaking, launching Red Bull Lords of the Floor in 2001 followed by the inaugural Red Bull BC One World Final in 2004.)
“His videos are the ones that get all the views. Even now, at 40 years old, he’s still got that influence. So you can only imagine him in his prime coming to Australia and joining an Australian crew [in the 2000s], what kind of effect that may have had on the scene.”
And it wasn’t just the east coast where breaking was popping off in the 00s. Over in Perth, a crew called Zourock were making waves as well.
2010s: Team Cream
When Kid Tek began breaking in 2011, the scene was “huge”. A big part of breaking’s popularity was down to TV shows like You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew, which “everyone was watching”.
“When I came about, breaking was huge. Everyone was doing it. We’d come to practice every week and you could almost guarantee you’d see a new face you hadn’t seen before. We were always trying to do big moves; everyone was trying to get the next flare combination or transition using windmills. It was all about mixing skill and creativity.”
In those early 2010s days, the breaking scene in Sydney was so healthy that you could even spot differences in style from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
“Each major area had a crew that represented them. Every suburb had its own kind of flavour. Back then, Parramatta was known a lot for its high difficulty moves and high character. Everyone was a bit of a comedian; everyone would show off. We were always very loud, always very belligerent. But we always had big moves to back it up. That's the reputation we had.”
Every suburb had its own kind of flavour
One crew who were big during the era was Team Cream, out of Brisbane. They started out under the name Skill@Will in the early 2000s, but evolved and created a new team with a lot of the same members down the track.
“The reason why they’re so important now is because of their academy – Team Cream has a dance academy where they train a lot of the new generation. So they were able to pioneer a lot of the big names of the early/mid 2000s, and they still have guys coming up now who are considered some of the best,” explains Kid Tek, shouting out the likes of B-Boy Gaz and B-Boy Fongo. “So I have to give it up to Team Cream for being so consistent. Probably the most consistent crew in Australian history, in my opinion.”
Later in the decade – around 2013 to 2017, Kid Tek estimates – breaking suffered a dip in popularity.
“Part of that is that the generation before, which consisted of SKB and Fresh Sox, they did so much for the scene and they made such big names for themselves. By the time they took a step back, I don’t think anyone was ready to take the torch from them. So breaking was a little bit quiet during that period.”
2020s: Flowtality
By the time 2020 rolled around, however, breaking was back. The shift started when breaking’s inclusion in a certain upcoming global event was announced.
“I feel like everyone wanted to make moves and I could feel the collective energy of the scene,” Kid Tek says of that turning point. “Everyone was kind in a rush to do something – like, let's capture this somehow.”
But the other factor in breaking’s resurgence was, funnily enough, the pandemic.
“Covid had a big part to play in the sense that a lot of people didn’t have anything to do but to break. So they kept doing it,” says Kid Tek. “And I think and I can say that for me personally, all I did during Covid was break every single day. And it made me realise that even if I have nothing, I have breaking. And I think that a lot of people felt that way.”
Lockdowns and social distancing measures meant breakers had to find creative solutions for how to practise – often taking battles online, via Zoom or Instagram.
“And I think because of these innovative methods of thinking, we realised that oh, wait, there's a little bit more potential in dance … And if we put our creativity into it, and think of it a little bit more strategically, we can actually create something out of that. I'm very grateful that Covid gave us that thinking process.”
Once international borders did open up, breakers were able to travel abroad and bring back fresh influences from overseas to inject new life into their local scene. It’s made the Australian scene stronger and more exciting, Kid Tek says.
“I’d say the breaking scene in Australia now is innovative. We are pushing international barriers, more so than we have in recent years. I think that the new generation is very hungry.”
And Kid Tek has to tip his hat to his crew, Flowtality, for the moves they’re making.
“We’re the new generation of Western Sydney breakers. Competitively, we're doing really well. But I think it's more so the energy that we're bringing.”
Kid Tek founded Flowtality back in 2011 with another friend called B-boy Zees. Every day, they would hang out in front of the local shopping mall, “causing trouble and learning how to dance”.
“And I think it’s because of that inherent street rowdy energy that we kept going strong and left that raw impression on the scene.”
Flowtality has evolved a lot from those early days. Today, like with many others in the scene, they’re mixing a lot of other dance styles into their breaking.
“There's been different evolutions in dance – first the focus on power moves, then we had the very foundational approach. I think what Flowtality is doing now is bringing back the character, bringing back the original attitude, being really open with our personalities and dance and showing that we can do a bit of everything,” Kid Tek says.
“Because the thing with Flowtality is we have dancers who mix in a bit of krump, we have dancers who mix in a little bit of hip-hop and house. And I think we're showing a new way of breaking, where you can mix all your influences into one style, and be successful that way … we're having a new evolution of breaking where everyone is becoming very diverse and creative with mixing in all the elements.”
But whatever evolution comes next, for Kid Tek the ultimate goal is to ensure breaking can continue thriving for years to come. He wants to see the legends stick around and the new generation come through.
“To this day, my mission as a dancer is to create an infrastructure to allow people to keep dancing.”
The final of Red Bull BC One Cypher Australia happens August 25th at Sydney’s Metro Theatre. Head here for more info.
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