Breakdancing has become an integral part of Bay Area culture; practice studios, competitions, and classes can be found in nearly every Bay Area city. Berkeley High School sophomore Santiago Flores-Knapp is part of this tight-knit community of people who get to share what they know and learn from each other.
Flores-Knapp found his love for breakdancing when he began lessons in third grade. According to him, music and dancing were prevalent at family events, which gave him a natural connection to dance, even before taking lessons.
“In my household, there’s always music and dancing whenever I have family reunions so I’ve always loved to dance,” Flores-Knapp said.
Another local resident, 20 year old Justin Chan from across the Bay in San Francisco, struggled to find his place in a community that was far away.
“I would take a two and a half hour bus ride before I got my driver’s license, all the way up to Marin to go practice with Double Down (breakdancing crew),” said Chan. Chan shared how growing up he had a difficult time finding people in his community that looked like him and had a common love of breakdancing.
21 year old Bix Thompson, who currently lives in Mill Valley, recalled watching his brother in ballet at ten years old. That studio happened to offer hip hop and breakdancingn classes, which Thompson took interest in. 11 years later, breakdancing has become more important to him that he ever could have imagined.
“Breaking is a very big chunk of who I am and my identity. It’s given me a lot of my friends, a lot of the people who are the closest to me,” said Thompson.
According to Thompson, he was able to find a father figure within the breakdancing community, something he did not have while growing up.
One of Flores-Knapp’s teachers, Jeff Wong, who goes by the dance-name “ARK” is now a Creative Director and Producer for The 808 Breakers in Hawaii. Wong taught Flores-Knapp for two years in the Bay Area before deciding to return to Hawaii.
“He was my teacher for about two years, and he was just incredible. He taught me a lot of what I know today,” said Flores-Knapp.
Flores-Knapp believes that breakdancing earned itself a bad reputation after the 2024 Olympics where Australian dancer Raygun performed a version of breakdance that became mocked and ridiculed on social media platforms. According to Flores-Knapp, after her performance he noticed a misconception about what breakdancing truly is.
Despite the somewhat negative portrayal, Chan emphasized that the inclusion of breakdancing in the Olympics was a big deal for the community.
“It was a chance to show ... the world that we didn’t die in the 80s. This is us. This is what we represent. This is what we are. All that training, all the qualifiers, all the people going to the battles and literal blood, sweat and tears to get us there,” Chan said.
According to Flores-Knapp, there are few individuals who make it to a professional level of breakdancing, and those that do are rarely comfortable when it comes to money. Flores-Knapp still hopes to dance in the future, but from a career standpoint he isn’t sure that it would be sustainable without working a seperate job in addition to dancing.
“Even some of the greatest breakdancers in the world, who managed to make a living off of it, I think it’s just such a stressful lifestyle, and they barely make any money,” Flores-Knapp said.
Many breakdancers set goals for themselves to meet a certain achievement at a certain point in time; however, Thompson has a different point of view.
“Personally, something that I see a lot is people who have set goals like ‘win this competition,’ or ‘get this far in this thing,’ or ‘get sponsored by Red Bull,’ or something like that. And it tends to kill their joy of breaking,” Thompson said, “And breaking is a very competitive dance, and it is a way a lot of people make money, but it’s just a dance. It’s just something that you’re supposed to do because it’s fun. For me, five years, 10 years from now, I just want to be actively enjoying what I’m doing and making progress.”