A breaking and popping crash course from J. Dante

Breakdancing might be the most widespread art form that still remains mysterious to many. Ever since American pop culture first took note in the '80s, B-boys and B-girls have proliferated across neighborhoods and countries, developing their own variations on breaking, popping, locking, and other adventurous forms of dance, occasionally converging on events like Madison's annual Breakin' The Law battle (which returns to Monona Terrace this Friday and Saturday). Last year's event packed the Goodman Community Center with everyone from little kids to teenagers to settled-in near-East Siders—in other words, people you don't usually see in the same venue together. And that's just the audience. This year, the organizers promise to bring back competitors from places as diverse as China, Cambodia, Brazil, Bulgaria, and, of course, Madison. One of last year's local contenders, UW-Madison student James Dante (stage name J. Dante), created the illusion that he was giving himself very precise, localized electric shocks during the popping competition. This twitchy, incredibly controlled style of dance (related to breakdancing but distinct from it) also includes moves like "head isolation," in which a performer appears to hold his or her head in place while the rest of the body moves around it. Dante's also an MC—he recently released Whole New World, a collaborative EP with Madison producer Man Mantis—so he has some experience with how the different aspects of hip-hop culture intersect. As he prepared to return for this year's competition, Dante told The A.V. Club what newcomers to breakdancing should watch for.

Vocab: Breaking, popping, locking…
James Dante: A lot of people see breakdancing as everything. There's different classifications. People say "popping and locking" all the time, but popping and locking are two different things. Popping comes from the pop, and locking is a whole other dance style. They're grouped together, because popping and locking are both things you do standing in one spot. Then there's breakdancing, which comes from dancing in the breaks of songs, back in the '80s. Then you have hip-hop dancing, which follows hip-hop choreography, which is not too far from popping but is not popping. Then martial arts tricking, a lot of people use it in breaking—like people who specialize in doing tricks and flips and kicks and martial-arts actions and things like that. Or there are people who go across and do everything, which is usually the case nowadays—everybody does a little bit of everything.

How dancing is like MC-ing
JD: It's just figuring out, "How do I go over this beat, and what style would I have to use?" Some beats are slow enough that I could seriously just focus on tutting, or I could just focus on waving. Same thing with music: I'll have a producer send me something really fast. Then it's like, that's so fast, I can go over it slow, and with this cadence. Or, that beat's so slow, and the way that I pace myself over it, I can actually go over it really fast. Dancing over music kind of taught me that I can kind of do whatever I want to, and it made me way more versatile with my cadences, my rhyme schemes.

Song selection
JD: I don't like popping to electro-hip-hop, like Planet Rock, Afrika Bambaataa. I like it, I just don't like battling to it. I told [my mentor] Dancin' Dave at this battle in Minneapolis that I just won, "I just hope they don't give me Planet Rock or anything like that," and I got it twice! It's so fast. I like being in the pocket, with [slower] stuff that you can play with. Disco-funk, house, just any soulful but fast-paced funk song, I really like. I really like house, I really like techno. Anything that I can really just have fun with, has some sounds I can play with.

International inspirations at previous battles
JD: There was a group from Brazil and there was this guy who was extremely strong for some reason. He was doing push-ups with both of his hands on three fingers. Overseas—especially in Japan, Korea—it's all about the power moves, so you see ridiculously intense power moves over there. In Korea, they actually pay for them to come over here, and they come over here, just whoop us, and go back. Every place has their thing. In Europe, there's a lot of dancers who are into rock music. We call it "abstract breaking." They do really flexible things. The flare—it's like gymnast move where your legs go around [under you]—they'll do that with their foot [behind their head]. They're really flexible. Every place has their thing, but there's still the same B-boy mentality everywhere.

It's like being good at math, and knowing that you're really good at math, and then going to college and meeting math majors. Then it's like, "Okay, I see there's stuff in math I haven't paid attention to."