Is Popping and Locking Breakdancing? Breaking Down the Difference
No. Popping and locking are not breakdancing.
Breaking, popping and locking are separate street dance forms with different histories, techniques and geographic roots. They have crossed paths, influenced dancers in the same generations and eventually appeared together in movies, television shows and dance crews, but they are not the same dance.
So why are they so often lumped together?
If you were introduced to these dances through mainstream television and movies during the early 1980s, you may have been taught to call almost all of it breakdancing.
That is where a lot of the confusion began.
Movies like Flashdance, Beat Street, Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo helped introduce street dance to audiences around the world. But breaking was not the only type of street dance people were seeing.
California already had its own established funk-based street dance traditions.
To understand the difference between breaking, popping and locking, we have to separate the dances before putting their histories back together.
What Is the Difference Between Breaking, Popping and Locking?
Let’s use geography as our first tool.
Breaking developed in New York City during the 1970s, particularly within Black and Latino communities in the Bronx. B-Boys and B-Girls danced to the breaks in records, developing a vocabulary that included upright dancing, footwork on the floor, freezes and eventually increasingly acrobatic movements.
Locking developed in Los Angeles from the dance created by Don “Campbellock” Campbell around 1970. Campbell’s style became known as the Campbellock, and the dancers who later became The Lockers helped take the dance to television, stages and audiences across the country.
Popping is connected to a broader California funk-dance family whose history includes Oakland boogaloo, robotting, strutting and other styles that developed during the 1960s and 1970s. Fresno became especially important to the development and popularization of popping through Sam “Boogaloo Sam” Solomon and the dancers who eventually became known as the Electric Boogaloos.
That is the first major distinction.
Breaking is rooted in New York.
Locking comes out of Los Angeles.
Popping developed within California’s larger funk-style dance tradition, with important histories in places including Oakland and Fresno.
They eventually began sharing stages.
That did not make them the same dance.
Is Breakdancing the Same as Breaking?
Another part of the confusion is the word breakdancing itself.
Within the culture, the dance is known as breaking, and the dancers are B-Boys and B-Girls.
“Breakdancing” became the mainstream term used by television, newspapers, movies and other media as the dance exploded into popular culture during the early 1980s.
Once that happened, the term became much broader in the public imagination.
A dancer could hit a robotic movement.
Breakdancing.
Somebody could pop.
Breakdancing.
Somebody could lock.
Breakdancing.
Then a B-Boy could hit the floor and start spinning.
Still breakdancing.
To people who knew the dances, those were different things.
To much of the viewing public, it all arrived in one package.
How Movies Helped Create the Popping, Locking and Breaking Confusion
Four movies in particular helped street dance explode into mainstream culture during 1983 and 1984:
Flashdance, Beat Street, Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Those movies were enormously important.
They were also being watched by audiences who often had no previous vocabulary for separating the different dance styles they were seeing.
For many people, this was their introduction.
I know because I was one of them.
How Flashdance Introduced Me to Breaking
I was about 10 years old in Virginia when the new dance craze everybody was calling “breakdancing” hit.
The television called it breakdancing, so as far as we knew, that was what it was.
Then came Flashdance.
The 1983 movie contains a now-famous street dance sequence featuring members of the Rock Steady Crew. Crazy Legs, Ken Swift, Frosty Freeze and Mr. Freeze appear in the scene, which became one of the first times huge numbers of moviegoers outside New York saw breaking on a movie screen.
Mr. Freeze starts the sequence with an umbrella, moving as though he is being pushed backward by the wind.
His style was fresh.
But that was not the part that shocked me.
I had already been watching Soul Train. I had seen robot-style movements and dancers creating illusions with their bodies.
What I wanted to understand was what happened when those dancers hit the floor.
The footwork.
The freezes.
The spins.
Those movements were different.
I just didn’t have the language for why yet.
Breaking Was Already a Culture Before the Movies Found It
Breaking did not begin with Flashdance.
By the time Hollywood put breaking on movie screens, B-Boys and B-Girls in New York had already been developing the dance for years.
Breaking grew alongside the early culture that became Hip Hop. DJs extended the instrumental breaks in funk, soul and other records, and dancers developed increasingly creative ways to move during those sections.
The relationship between the DJ and the dancer matters here.
Original B-Boys and B-Girls were dancing to breaks.
Funk records were a major part of that musical foundation.
That becomes important when we turn our attention toward California because funk was also feeding completely different dance traditions on the other side of the country.
Popping and Locking Have Their Own History
California did not have to wait for breaking to arrive from New York before young people began creating innovative street dances.
They already had their own.
Oakland had a thriving boogaloo culture during the 1960s and 1970s. Dancers developed free-form movements, body isolations, robotic techniques, hits and other visual styles that became part of a much larger West Coast dance vocabulary.
That history matters because modern summaries sometimes reduce the entire story of popping to one person or one city.
The real history is more complicated.
Oakland dancers were developing boogaloo and related styles before popping became nationally known. Those ideas moved throughout Northern California and influenced other scenes.
Fresno would become another crucial location.
Sam “Boogaloo Sam” Solomon became one of the central figures associated with the development of popping and electric boogaloo. In 1977, he formed the Electric Boogaloo Lockers in Fresno. The group evolved into the Electric Boogaloos, whose appearances and performances helped bring popping to much wider audiences.
Even researchers documenting Fresno’s dance history acknowledge that the precise origin story of popping contains competing accounts.
That is why it is better to understand popping as part of a developing California dance lineage rather than reducing decades of street innovation to a single moment.
Where Did Locking Come From?
Locking has a more clearly documented origin.
Don “Campbellock” Campbell developed the Campbellock in Los Angeles around 1970 while attending Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.
The movement grew into its own dance form.
By 1973, the group that would become known as The Lockers had formed. The original lineup included Campbell along with dancers such as Toni Basil, Fred Berry, Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones, Bill “Slim the Robot” Williams, Leo “Fluky Luke” Williamson and Greg “Campbellock Jr.” Pope.
The Lockers became enormously important in bringing street dance onto major television programs and stages.
Fred Berry later became nationally known as Rerun on the sitcom What’s Happening!!, where audiences could still see pieces of that dance background coming through.
Long before many Americans heard the word “breakdancing,” California street dancers were already building something of their own.
Is Popping the Same Thing as Locking?
No.
This is another myth hidden inside the larger myth.
Popping and locking are often spoken about together as “popping and locking,” but they are not one dance.
A pop is generally created through quick contractions and releases of the muscles that produce a visible hit in the body.
Locking has a different movement vocabulary. It developed around Don Campbell’s style of moving rapidly and then suddenly stopping or “locking” into distinctive positions before continuing.
The two traditions became closely associated because dancers from California funk scenes interacted, exchanged ideas and sometimes performed different styles within the same shows and crews.
But being cousins does not make them twins.
Oakland Boogaloo Complicates the History of Popping
There is another reason we should be careful when talking about where popping came from.
Oakland’s contribution to street dance history has often been overlooked.
Boogaloo was already developing there during the 1960s. Oakland dancers created styles involving hits, animation, robotic movement, strutting, gliding and other techniques.
Some Oakland dance historians describe a movement called the Oakland Hit as an important predecessor to what later became known more broadly as the pop.
As these dance ideas moved through California, styles changed.
That is what living culture does.
People see something.
They build on it.
They change it.
Another neighborhood adds something.
Another city gives it a different flavor.
Eventually the rest of the world sees the finished product and assumes it appeared overnight.
It didn’t.
Why Did Everyone Start Calling It Breakdancing?
Now we can start putting the pieces back together.
Imagine being a kid somewhere outside New York or California in 1983 or 1984.
You turn on the television.
You see a robot.
You see somebody gliding.
You see somebody popping.
You see a Locker hit a pose.
Then somebody drops to the floor, hits a freeze and spins.
The television tells you this new thing is called breakdancing.
What are you supposed to call it?
Breakdancing.
Movies brought dancers and techniques from different traditions together at exactly the moment mainstream audiences were trying to learn what this culture was.
That was fertile ground for confusion.
Breakin’ and West Coast Street Dance
The Breakin’ movies make the confusion even easier to understand.
Released in 1984 and set in Los Angeles, Breakin’ showcased West Coast street dancing prominently. Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones, who played Ozone, had been a member of The Lockers.
Audiences were therefore watching dance traditions with histories that long predated the movie itself.
But the films arrived right in the middle of America’s “breakdancing” explosion.
For mainstream viewers, everything was being filed into the same cultural folder.
The label was easier than the history.
Dancers Could Cross Styles Even When the Styles Were Different
There is another piece of the puzzle.
Actual dancers did not necessarily stay inside neat categories.
A dancer could know breaking and popping.
A crew associated primarily with breaking could contain somebody influenced by funk styles.
Mr. Freeze was a member of Rock Steady Crew. Mr. Wave was associated with the New York City Breakers. Mr. Wiggles would become known for his connection to both Rock Steady Crew and the Electric Boogaloos.
That crossover can make the history confusing if we make one mistake:
confusing the dancer with the dance.
A musician can play jazz and funk without jazz becoming funk.
A painter can work in watercolor and oil without watercolor becoming oil painting.
Street dancers can learn, borrow, exchange and master multiple forms without those forms becoming identical.
Are Popping and Locking Part of Hip Hop?
This is where the conversation becomes more complicated than a simple yes or no.
Breaking developed as one of the foundational dance expressions of Hip Hop culture in New York.
Popping, locking, boogaloo and other California funk styles have their own histories that developed outside that original Bronx context.
Over time, however, these traditions interacted heavily with Hip Hop culture and became deeply connected to the larger world of Hip Hop dance.
Today you will routinely see popping and locking taught, performed, battled and discussed alongside Hip Hop dance.
Historically, though, putting them all under one label can erase the distinct communities that created them.
That distinction is important.
We do not have to separate the cultures in order to respect their individual histories.
Breaking, Popping and Locking Grew From Similar Creative Energy
This is where I have my own theory.
I call it a Theory of Culture.
Young people in different American cities were creating new forms of expression from the environments around them.
They had music.
They had neighborhoods.
They had competition.
They had imagination.
They had very little interest in waiting for somebody else to tell them what art was supposed to look like.
New York produced breaking within its particular environment.
Los Angeles produced locking.
Oakland, Fresno and other California communities developed boogaloo, popping, robotting, strutting and related funk styles.
Different places.
Different dances.
But some remarkably similar creative impulses.
That may be one reason these forms eventually fit so naturally beside one another.
They were not the same dance.
But the young people creating them understood something similar about turning limited resources into unlimited expression.
So, Is Popping and Locking Breakdancing?
No.
Breaking, popping and locking are separate dance traditions.
Breaking grew from the New York B-Boy and B-Girl tradition of the 1970s.
Locking grew from Don Campbell’s Campbellock and the Los Angeles funk-dance scene beginning around 1970.
Popping developed within a broader California funk-dance lineage with important contributions from Oakland’s earlier boogaloo culture and Fresno dancers including Boogaloo Sam and the Electric Boogaloos.
The reason people confuse them is not mysterious.
During the early 1980s, mainstream audiences encountered several street dance forms almost simultaneously. Movies and television placed them beside one another, while the media popularized breakdancing as the catch-all name for the craze.
The name stuck.
The history underneath it is much richer.
Breaking is not popping.
Popping is not locking.
Locking is not breaking.
Understanding the difference does not divide the culture.
It gives the innovators who created each form their proper place inside it.
I dedicate this piece to Pop Master Fabel, who has passionately lived, researched and worked to keep the history and essence of these dance forms right and exact for those of us studying Hip Hop history, research and future pedagogy.
Peace.
Frequently Asked Questions About Breaking, Popping and Locking
What is considered breakdancing?
The mainstream term “breakdancing” generally refers to breaking, also called B-boying or B-girling. Breaking includes upright movement, footwork, freezes and power movements and developed in New York during the 1970s.
Is popping a type of breakdancing?
No. Popping is a separate funk-based street dance tradition associated with California. It uses muscle contractions or “hits” to create sharp visual accents in the body.
Is locking the same as popping?
No. Locking and popping are separate dance forms. Locking developed from Don Campbell’s Campbellock in Los Angeles around 1970. Popping developed through California funk-dance traditions associated particularly with Oakland and Fresno.
Where did popping and locking originate?
Locking developed in Los Angeles. Popping has a more complex California history involving earlier Oakland boogaloo traditions and the later development and popularization of popping in Fresno.
Where did breaking originate?
Breaking developed in New York City during the 1970s, particularly among Black and Latino youth in the Bronx.
Why are popping and locking called breakdancing?
They generally should not be. The confusion grew during the early-1980s breakdancing craze, when movies, television and mainstream media presented several different street dance styles to mass audiences at roughly the same time.
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