More On Dance
Fukiko Takase in Henka Dance
SPARK: A Meeting of Geometry, Classical Dance, and EDM
Brief Candle
1 of 34
next
As its name suggests, popping is a dance style defined by the popping of one's muscles and joints. At its best, popping is a time-lapsed spasm or a stop-motion convulsion highlighting intricate movements in even the tiniest muscles. Like many street dance styles, popping is a product of working class youth of color making the most of limited resources. However, popping is unique because its roots trace back not to quintessential deindustrializing communities like the Bronx or South Los Angles but to the capital of California's breadbasket, Fresno.
Popping first entered national consciousness on the backs of a series of mid-1980s Hollywood breakdancing films. Breaksploitation films, as they became collectively known, like Beat Street, Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, featured actual poppers like Bruno Pop N Taco Falcon and Michael Boogaloo Shrimp Chambers showing off the dance's characteristic pops, ticks, jerks, and spasms. However, even when Breaksploitation films depicted authentic representations of popping (which they did not always do), they created the impression that popping was simply a particular set of steps under the broader breakdancing umbrella. In the ensuing breakdancing craze that spread across the nation, morning news show profile pieces, suburban dance studios and even an episode of the sitcom Silver Spoons, similarly depicted breakdancing as a unified dance genre no different than the waltz or the tango. However, these various attempts to popularize and commodify breakdancing typically missed a crucial point, namely, that breakdancing was actually an amalgam of various dance styles, each with their own distinct histories and geographic contexts. Popping was one such dance style.
Many American's first introduction to popping came from Breaksploitation films like 1984's Breakin' which featured Bruno Pop N Taco Falcon, a dancer who trained under Boogaloo Sam and Pop'in Pete.
Historian Robert Farris Thompson describes popping as: rhythmic angulations of the torso and limbs executed at a moderate tempo if one is poppin' or very fast if one is tickin'. 1 Pioneering popper, Timothy Solomon aka Pop'in Pete offers a more direct definition when he says popping is hittin' your joints, hittin' hard with your leg, your neck, your head. 2 Contemporary popping encompasses a range of movements, steps and styles including boogaloo, animation, ticking, strutting, roboting, strobing, tutting to name a few; the common denominator in these styles is the fluid popping or htting of the joints and muscles. By the time kids in Kenosha, Wisconsin marveled at Pop N' Taco's spastic, yet simultaneously fluid, dance routines in the film Breakin' or even Michael Jackson's flawless execution of the backslide3 during his Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever performance, they were bearing witness to a dance whose kinetic genealogy was rooted not in the Bronx or Hollywood, but in Fresno.
Origin stories are tricky; on the one hand they provide an easily digestible narrative that pinpoints a specific starting point; on the other hand, however, they often over-simplify complex histories or otherwise obscure conflicting details and alternative origins. Popping's most popular origin story credits the genre's creation to Fresno's Sam Solomon, aka, Boogaloo Sam. In this version of the dance's origin story, popping's characteristic rhythmic angulations were rooted in the holy ghost-inspired spasms and contortions exhibited by sanctified women that Sam encountered at Fresno's First Corinthians Baptist church.4 By 1975, Sam began constructing secular interpretations of these divine movements which he shared first with other Fresno dancers and eventually with his brother, Pop'in Pete, who had moved south to Long Beach.5
--
--
A competing origin story traces popping back to Fresno's Tulare housing project where William Green Jr., aka Tick'n Will and Ricky Darnell McDowell developed foundational popping moves like the old man, the twist-o flex and the neck-o flex over the course of numerous weed-fueled dance sessions held in their respective apartments. Will and Darnell eventually met Sam Solomon at Fresno's Roeding Park in 1976 while practicing their unique dance moves; immediately impressed by their talent, Sam invited Will and Darnell to join a dance group he was forming. The newly constituted Electric Boogaloo Lockers perfected their routines during practices at the Mary Ella Brown Community Center, and created local buzz while performing at talent shows, the Fresno County fair and eventually shows further away from home in San Jose and Sacramento. The last piece of this origin story puzzle came when Sam moved down to Long Beach where he taught the new dance that Will, Darnell, and he developed to the aforementioned Pop'in Pete who then joined the group and helped further polish their routines.6
While these differing creation stories offer conflicting takes on the precise moment of popping's birth, they have an important commonality; namely, a focus on Fresno community institutions. Both accounts specifically feature institutions from the city's economically depressed and largely segregated, west end. The centrality of the First Corinthians Baptist Church, the Tulare housing project and the Mary Ella Brown Community Center, all highlight the fact that Fresno's west end was an important player in popping's evolution.
Boogaloo Sam and his Electric Boogaloo lockers practiced their early routines at the Mary Ella Brown Community Center in west Fresno. | Image: Sean Slusser
In recent years, howeve
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
More On Dance 
