‘When breaking you make your soul dance’ Utopian aspirations and subjective transformation in breakdance

ABSTRACT

This article is based on a study of the Naturalz crew, a ‘breaking’ or breakdancing group in Quito, Ecuador. Breaking is commonly analysed as a subculture of resistance. We analyse two – often neglected – dimensions of this resistance: the significance of utopian aspirations and the role of the body in subjective transformation. We argue that participants enact utopian values in breaking, for instance by affirming the value of street life and people from the streets. Furthermore, we see that breaking leads to subjective transformation among its young practitioners and that the body plays a central role in this change of subject position. It is interesting that girls use breaking to rebel against dominant images of ideal womanhood, resulting in changes in gendered subjectivity. Hence, from disempowered, marginalised young people, breakers turn into determined agents with physical strength and emotional resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Breakdance
• youth
• culture
• resistance
• utopia
• body

Introduction: different dimensions of breaking

This article discusses the importance of utopian aspirations and the role of the body in subjective transformation through breaking, a style of dance also known as breakdancing.¹ We follow the Naturalz crew, a breaking group in Quito, Ecuador, consisting of eight young men and two young women around the age of twenty. Coming from lower-class neighbourhoods in a highly segregated and violent society, these youngsters refuse to take on conventional family roles or to join gang life. Instead, they engage in breaking, a dynamic and physically demanding form of street dance.

Breaking is generally analysed as a subculture of resistance (Ahassi 2009; Deyhle 1986; Fogarty 2012; Langnes and Fasting 2014; Shapiro 2004). In this article, we show two important dimensions of this resistance. First, the role of utopian aspirations. We argue that breakers enact utopian values, for instance by affirming the value of street life and of people from the streets. Second, we contend that breaking leads to subjective transformation among its young practitioners and that the body plays a central part in this change of subject position. It is interesting that girls use breaking to rebel against dominant images of ideal womanhood, resulting in changes in gendered subjectivity. Hence, from disempowered, marginalised young people, breakers turn into determined agents with physical strength and emotional resilience. The  dedication and discipline required to become a breaker demonstrates that these youth hold socially valued qualities, with which they aim to claim a dignified place in society.

Breaking as a subculture of resistance

Breaking is commonly known as ‘breakdance’, a street dance that became popular in the late 60s and early 70s among African American and Puerto Rican populations in the ghettos in the Bronx, New York. Breaking arose as part of hip-hop culture. This culture is known to have four elements: breaking (dance element), MC (singing element, MC means ‘master of ceremonies’ and is the one who raps/sings and animates the parties), graffiti (the art element) and DJing (music element, the DJ is responsible for the production and mixing of beats) (Ahassi 2009). In this article, the focus lies solely on breaking. When breaking emerged, participants and onlookers formed a circle in the street, while youngsters challenged each other through dance. A ‘crew’ is the term for a group of dancers, called b-boys and b-girls, who train together and do performances. Young men dominated breaking in the early years, though with time, young women entered the scene; however, the number of b-boys in comparison to b-girls is still much higher.

In the 1980s, breaking came to Ecuador, and becoming a breaker was often an alternative to the world of consumption and trafficking of drugs (Ahassi 2009). Breaking ‘served the purpose of reducing gang fights, through competitive dancing’ (Deyhle 1986, 117). The origin in the streets of disadvantaged neighbourhoods explains several similarities between gangs and breaking crews. For instance, both groups organise ‘battles’ (batallas). Yet, while in gang battles people are killed, in breaking battles, crews compete over their dancing skills. Breaking crews ‘fight’ (lucha) without touching each other. Being part of a crew tends to be very important to the members, as it is their substitute family. The crew becomes a brotherhood (hermandad) for them. This again shows similarity to drug gangs, which tend to become substitute families and use a language of brotherhood (Rodgers 2013).

The expression of resistance via music and dance is well documented (Adelman and Ruggi 2015; Henriques 2011; Langman 2008; Martinez 1997; Reed 1998; Shapiro 2004; Shilling 2012). Breaking can be analysed as a subculture (Hebdige 1979) or counterculture (Whiteley 2012), both of which set a group apart from mainstream social conventions and thus contest the existing, exclusionary order. The world of breaking has several elements of a distinguishable subculture, such as its particular clothing, movements, behaviour and language. Breakers also adopt breaker names, which are more than just nicknames. These names offer a new identity ‘and prestige from below’ (Langnes and Fasting 2014, 9). It is a way to position themselves in the breaker scene as well as in the world around them, as friends, family and everyone in their wider social circle calls them by their breaker name. Adopting a breaker name also symbolises a distancing from the names they received from their parents and ‘normal life’. The breaking subculture is well explained by the b-boys of the Naturalz crew. They describe breaking above all as un estilo de vida (lifestyle). For instance, according to Swift, breaking should never be taken as a hobby; it is the way you live your life:

It doesn’t matter where you go, whether it is just to the store at the corner to buy something, you take the breaker with you – you enter as a breaker and leave as a breaker. You do everything as a breaker. Breaking is the way you dress, walk, and how you talk.

This quote illustrates the importance of breaking for their entire being.

According to Flash,

Being a breaker is linked to your whole environment, from the moment you start to dance and become a b-boy or b-girl everything in you changes: it’s like an armour [armadura] you put on and you will never take off. If you go to the store or go to sleep or wherever you go you will always take this with you. In your mind, in your thought you will always be wearing this armour.

Flash’s reference to armour resonates with what Hebdige (1979) calls the identity of a subculture, which is created through one’s clothing style, way of talking, posture and attitude. However, the term ‘armour’ also reflects the notions of toughness, survival and resistance that the breaker subculture stands for.

Utopian aspirations and subjective transformation through the body

For people who feel oppressed and excluded, to imagine a utopian world can be a way out of personal misery (Bauman and Tester 2001). As Sargent argues, ‘dissatisfaction is the beginning of utopianism’ (2010, 49). Because marginalised people have fewer opportunities to gain political visibility, they tend to create spaces in which they imagine and actualise these desired futures (Swilinski 2016, 431). In this way, subcultures create room to perform values based on utopian aspirations (Van Leerzem, Nuijten, and Peter 2016).

As mentioned in the introduction to this special issue, there is a particularly strong relationship between youth and the aspiration for change. In the period from childhood to adulthood, when young people are expected to take on certain prescribed roles and identities, they are particularly prone to contesting societal structures and striving for utopian alternatives (McRobbie 1990). Breaking is a good example of a subculture that is particularly attractive for young people who look for a different life, a new sense of belonging and a new role in society (Langman 2008; Moore 2016).

Utopian aspirations are part and parcel of subcultures of resistance. Carnival is of course a well-known example of popular culture, in which music and dance are used to mock conventional social codes and invert the existing hierarchy (Turner [1966] 1977). Langman explains:

[A] transgressive festival, carnival can be understood as an expression of cultural ‘resistance’ to the lifestyles and values of the aristocracy – it provided a ‘second life’, a moment of utopian equality that opposed the ‘official life’ demanded by a hierarchical society. (Langman 2008, 660)

These utopian hopes and the expression of resistance against conventional social codes in a hierarchical society are clearly displayed in the breaking subculture, as well.

In breaking, the expression of resistance and utopian aspirations takes place through the body. Being denied access to sources of power, status and prestige, marginal people use their bodies to define themselves, as it is that over which they have the most control (Shilling 2012; Wacquant 2004). They use bodily expression to resist domination and 'invert disciplinary codes’ (Langman 2008, 657). As Hall writes, in relation to black popular culture: ‘think of how these cultures have used the body – as if it were, and it often was, the only cultural capital we had. We have worked on ourselves as the canvases of representation’ (1993, 109).

As the body is strongly related to subjectivity, it is worthwhile to delve a bit further into the nature of this relationship (Adelman and Ruggi 2015; Shilling 2012). In several ways, dance influences subjective transformation. For instance, feeling ‘present’ in their bodies through dance can make people feel empowered (Foster 2003). Beal (1995) discusses how having ‘control over one’s body’ gives skateboarders a feeling of fulfilment and empowerment. This empowerment can help people to challenge dominant cultural values concerning class, ethnicity and gender (De Casanova and Afshan 2016). In this way, new subject positions can develop. Reischer and Koo (2004) talk about ‘the agentic body’ because of the body’s capacity for resistance and transformation, writing: ‘the capacity of the body to signify the social also entails the power of the body to transform social reality’ (315). Thus, the appearance and movement of the body can become a potent instrument of subjective transformation. It can transform a subdued, subjugated subject position into a free and liberated one. A particular form of subjective transformation through breaking concerns gender. Social constructions of gender are to a large extent created through the body, in the way people dress and move their body (Reischer and Koo 2004). As we will show, a young woman can use breaking to rebel ‘against the dominant images of ideal womanhood that limit her ability to realize her own image’ (ibid., 302).

Research on breaking in Quito

Ecuador is one of the smallest countries in South America with a population of 16 million inhabitants, of which a large part is indigenous (IWGIA 2016). The illegal drug trade thrives and has close links to Colombia, a powerful northern neighbour. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, has experienced significant demographic growth in the last decades because of migration from the countryside. At present it has a population of 2.5 million, which is 15% of the national population. Ecuador has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and the differential between the extraordinarily wealthy and the poor – 70% of the population – is enormous (Whitten 2004, 445). Ecuadorian society is characterised by racial and class discrimination and few chances for upward mobility.

As in most Latin American cities, in Quito urban space is characterised by the segregation of different socio-economic groups. Better-off families live in heavily protected gated communities, while poorer families live in dodgy neighbourhoods and slums characterised by deprivation and criminality. The mobility of youngsters in public space also differs according to class. Young people from wealthier families are transported by car from their homes to securitised spaces, such as private schools, shopping malls, restaurants, sport clubs and other privileged parts of the city. In contrast, youngsters from poorer families use public transport and spend much time in the open streets and unprotected public space. Although worldwide breaking has gradually become accepted as a respectable form of dance (Fogarty 2012), in Ecuador it is still seen in a negative light and as closely related to crime and violence.

The Naturalz crew, which is the focus of this article, was formed in 2009 with dancers who mainly come from Calderón, a suburban parish of Quito.² One of the authors, Maritza,³ got into contact with the Naturalz crew through Sofia, who worked many years with Maritza’s family when they lived in Quito and became a good friend. When Maritza told Sofia about her intention to do research on breaking, she offered to introduce her to the crew to which her son belonged. The research for this article was conducted during five months of fieldwork in 2014. We do not claim that the Naturalz crew is representative of the breaking scene in Quito. Yet, it can provide some more in-depth understanding of dimensions of breaking that are commonly found (Ahassi 2009; Langnes and Fasting 2014).

The research mainly took place in La Marin, where the Naturalz crew trained in the Centro Cultural every morning from Mondays to Fridays. Maritza also accompanied the crew in the streets and watched them dance at traffic lights and in public squares. Doing faro (light) refers to work at a traffic light: when the traffic light turns red they perform an act and right before the light turns green they pass by the cars to ask for money. Doing ruedo (ring) is also street work, but in a public park or square. After the performance they pass a hat around to collect money. Maritza followed the crew daily for five months, and in that time they shared their frustrations, hopes and aspirations. The focus lied on their life course and their daily activities. Everyday life is undeniably the site of routine and habit, but also the site through which given scripts of normativity can be resisted (Das 2010, 374). What the young breakers of the Naturalz crew have in common is frustration with their life so far. They are annoyed at discrimination, violence and crime, mainstream norms of a decent life and gender expectations. Their childhoods and the way they grew up strongly motivated their decision to become b-boys and b-girls.

The trajectory of the Naturalz crew

The breakers of the Naturalz crew come from low-income neighbourhoods. They self-identify as mestizos (mixed ethnicity). During their childhood, their parents had to work long hours in order to make a living. In some of their families, the mother raised the children on her own. As children, it was common for them to come home to an empty house and to hang out on the streets. Although the streets gave them a certain sense of freedom and liberty, it was not a particularly safe environment. Drug gangs in these neighbourhoods are the cause of much violence. Moreover, they try to recruit young people.

The public schools these youngsters attended did not offer them the possibilities to move up the socio-economic ladder in a strongly segregated society. Coming from deprived neighbourhoods, and thus seen as lower social class, the youngsters experience discrimination and humiliation on a regular basis. They do not have a good relationship with their parents either. The parents, who themselves suffered a lot, criticise and scold their children and tell them that they should make more efforts to get ahead in life. Their parents are not pleased at all with their interest in breaking and tell them that they should get a ‘real’ job. Hazzle, for example, explains that he does not have any support:

Right now I also don’t have the support of anyone. I don’t have the support of my mother or my relatives, no one’s support. But I don’t care because I keep trying to meet my objective, and I will do so and then the satisfaction will only be for myself, an internal satisfaction, and that will be great.

There are hardly any employment possibilities for the youngsters. Moreover, the breakers want a life that is not like the ones their parents wish for them. The crew members do not want an ‘ordinary [normal]’ life. This ordinary life means an eight-to-six job, striving for material well-being and economic progress in a society dominated by conservative values, a society that looks down on people from poor neighbourhoods, and on people who live and work on the streets. The crew members detest this ordinary life.

This results in volatile mixtures of feelings in these young adults, moving from anger, frustration and hopelessness to the utopian desire for a lifestyle of difference. This frustration is what made the members of the Naturalz crew, each in their own individual manner, find their way to breaking. For them, breaking is a kind of resistance to their hostile social environment and is the creation of hopeful alternatives. Breaking is vital to their social and physical survival in an insecure and violent environment.

The Naturalz crew was originally formed by Focus, Raxy, Dash, Swift and Sonic, who all met during their individual practising at Carolina Park in Quito. They decided to form a crew and began to meet at the El Recreo shopping mall to train. There Flash, who was part of another crew, saw them and joined right away. Their performance improved and caught the interest of a dance producer named Carlos. Carlos wanted to help them professionalise and in this way acquire a more stable income. As Carlos said: ‘to survive through art is different than living off it’. So far, they have earned very little with their performances. Carlos made them supporting dancers in several shows on big stages and has also tried to facilitate the development of their own show.

During the summer of 2014, when the Naturalz crew actively took up the idea of their own show, they sought some additional dancers and asked Dyzee and Hazzle, breakers who occasionally trained with them, to join. They also believed it would be good to have a female member in the group and therefore invited Roxy. Trinity joined soon afterwards.

Yet, the road to developing a professional breaker show was a bumpy one. The crew had to juggle earning money to sustain themselves and improving their dance so that it could generate income. They tried to train every day from 10 am to 2 pm. During these sessions, they no longer only practised their moves but also created choreographies for their own show. The fact that they still had to earn income through odd jobs meant that they could not train as much as they would like to, and they often had to practise with an incomplete group. Based on conversations with several crew members, it was clear that there were regular frustrations because people felt different levels of commitment to the show. At the end of the fieldwork period, the crew put on a show in a small theatre. Although this was an important step towards professionalisation, they still had a long way to go before they would be able to earn a regular income from breaking.

Their professionalisation is important for the Naturalz crew because it can offer them a stable source of income. Yet, it is also important for them that breaking be recognised as a decent profession, one that demands dedication, skill and commitment. They want to prove to their parents and society that it is possible to break away from both conventionality and criminality, and lead a different and positive lifestyle. The crew hopes to receive acknowledgement and respect for who they are and the professional trajectory they have chosen. As b-boy Raxy explained:

Other people think that it is easy. They think anyone can do what we do. They don’t see the effort we put into it, the falls, the injuries – they don’t see all of that. […] If someone says we are gangsters then we try to demonstrate we are not like that […] telling them to learn to respect us.

Because breaking has been a way for many to stay out of drugs, the crew finds it annoying that mainstream society sees breaking as closely related to gang life and crime. Some outsiders also think breakers have to be drugged in order to make their complicated moves. These stereotypes make it particularly hard for breakers to get recognition for their chosen trajectory in life.

Flash: from gang to breaking

Flash’s story is illustrative of the trajectory of youngsters who move from engagement with gangs to breaking. Flash grew up with divorced parents and at a young age already had to work on the streets to help his family earn an income. Flash’s first job was helping sell merchandise at the market, followed by shining shoes, and then by selling candy on the bus. When he was 11 years old, he began to work as a mechanic. Flash was aware of his vulnerability as a child on the streets. He sometimes suffered from hunger and his mother hit him when he came home without having earned any money. In his own words, life as a child on the street ‘teaches you things – good things, bad things – but it makes you stronger. Still you do run a lot of risks, not everyone comes out unscathed from all of this’.

Flash had to choose his own path and he said that ‘often the bad road is the easiest’. Around the age of 14, he became rebellious, he said, and was always looking for trouble and seeking a fight. He recalled that, at that time, he felt that people respected him more when he fought. If someone just looked at him the wrong way, he would immediately hit him. He became engaged in gangs, smoked weed and seemed to be trapped in a circle of crime.

One event had a huge impact on Flash and made him decide to change his life. Flash had invited his younger brother to join the gang, and one day their gang battled with another. Flash knew that weapons could be used and realised that he had exposed his younger brother to a lot of risk. So, he told his brother to go home. When the fight started, Flash ran away with the rest of his gang mates. But someone told him that his brother was still there. Flash returned and saw that his brother was indeed in the fight. A guy had grabbed him, and was about to stab him. Luckily someone else came and kicked the guy with the knife, and pulled Flash’s brother up by his hair so that he could run away. The guy had saved Flash’s brother. This incident made Flash decide that being part of the gang world was no good. He and his brother left the gang and ‘disappeared’ from the neighbourhood for several years. They returned when Flash was 18. From then onwards, they had no trouble with gangs.

This is when Flash entered the world of breaking. Flash had always liked hip-hop music and breaking moves really impressed him. He became friends with some people in the breaking scene and started to train rigorously. He soon received the breaker name Flash. He himself likes to add ‘Peace’, to be called Flash Peace, because he has changed since he started to dance and likes peace instead of fighting. Today, Flash is a charismatic guy who jokes around and gets along with everyone. He says dancing helped him grow as a person and find a new life: ‘The moment you start to dance and become a breaker everything in you changes’.

Flash now socialises with people who did not take drugs or fight in order to prove themselves. In the past, he would feel great when he fought because others would admire him and think he was cool. When he started breaking, he noticed that people in the braking culture also admired him, but now for doing sophisticated dance moves. Flash is aware of the way he has used his body to get access and demand respect.

His mother never knew about Flash’s involvement in fighting, drugs and gangs. She is very harsh and Flash is still afraid of her. He made sure that she never found out about the things he did on the streets. Yet, this also means that she never saw the positive transformation in his life when he started to dance. She does not support his dancing, which she perceives as something bad. She always tells Flash that it will not take him anywhere, that it is something for lazy people and part of life on the streets. Flash laments that people do not see that breaking can be something positive and that it has great significance for people like him: ‘I see a very big difference. [Dance] is what saved me and people think it is what drowns us’.

We see how Flash used his body in different ways to gain respect in a marginal neighbourhood, first as a gang member in fights and then as a breaker in dance performances (see also Langnes and Fasting 2014). In both cases, he used his body to gain inclusion within an alternative community (Langman 2008). In her article on ‘the body as revolutionary text’, Jaeck shows how the body can become ‘an instrument of battle with which order is restored amid chaos’ (2003, 48). This insight is very applicable in the case of Flash. Through decisions that involved changing the use of his body, Flash managed to restore order and bring more peace in his life.

Utopia and the improvement of the human condition in the present

We see the hopes and dreams of the Naturalz crew as part of an attempt to improve the human condition, a defining characteristic of utopia (Sargent 2010). As is common with utopias, the crew members do not have a detailed picture of the alternative society they long for, but they know very well what they do not want. They detest a society in which your future is decided by the area and family into which you are born, your future possibilities are closed off because of the bad school you had to attend, and you have to choose between joining a gang or living without economic prospects. They reject a society that looks down on people who live and work on the streets.

The youngsters aspire for a more equal society with less discrimination and more possibilities for young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Furthermore, Roxy and Trinity, the two young women in the crew, challenge dominant gender roles and hope to empower women through breaking. These utopian aspirations condemn normalised conduct, rules and beliefs, and strive for a life based on different normative standards.

For the Naturalz crew, their utopian aspirations are partly expressed through their choice to live a life on the streets (La calle). In Ecuador, the street is seen as a dangerous place with no opportunities for a decent life. The youngsters wish to create a new imaginary of the streets and of the ‘people from the streets’. As Hazzle stated, ‘I don’t think the street is bad; it is you who makes it good or bad’. Hazzle is very explicit about changing the image of the street, saying:

We all have the mindset of wanting to do something good on the street. There are people who do bad things, but the ones who do faro – mark the difference – are the ones who want to make the culture of the street stand out in a good way, so that people know that people on the street also have their art, they train, and put their time into something good.

They want to show that the streets can also be a place for positive experiences. Especially by engaging in faro and ruedo, the crew turns the street into a place of opportunities. The work in the streets shows another important aspect of breaking too, presenting them as survivors, people with strong bodies but also much discipline and personality, who manage to survive in difficult circumstances. They want to show that ‘people from the street’ are not necessarily lazy, criminal vagabonds but can be disciplined and professional. Within their small community of breakers, they are trying to live this utopia but they are still not widely accepted or recognised by the rest of society.

These desires for a utopian society that values the streets and people from the streets are enmeshed with wishes for their personal futures. The youngsters have troublesome relationships with their parents and do not want to follow in their footsteps. They want to overturn accepted ideas about what constitutes a ‘normal’ life for people in low-income neighbourhoods. The crew members do not want to enter gangs, but they do not want a life with hard work and few opportunities either. They imagine an alternative life that gives them more satisfaction. What they all hope for and fantasise about is to make a living off breaking, based on the values that are fundamental to them: love, peace and equality. For the longer future, the members of the crew hope to combine dancing with a course or study, from electric engineering to graphic design or physical education. Some want to travel, while others have their own shop or breaking school in mind.

The fact that their desires for a better future include personal as well as social goals does not make their project less utopian. In fact, social and individual ambitions can often not be separated in utopian thinking (cf. Sargent 2010). The importance of breaking in their current life is reflected by the fact that the crew members often use the word ‘survive’ (sobrevivir) when talking about the role of breaking in their life. They feel that breaking is vital to their personal survival. This illustrates that, while being a utopian future-oriented project, breaking is also central to their present life. Hence, breaking can be analysed as an expression of a utopian desire among young people for a better way of living and future through the creation of a subculture, where utopian values of love, peace and equality are practised in the here and now.

The body and subjective transformation through breaking

Breaking is extremely demanding on the body and requires much discipline. By showing pride, strength and control, the breakers create a subjectivity that is active and empowering rather than passive and disempowering, despite the lack of a prestigious job, high income or college degree. Disciplining the body among breakers implies the purposeful work of self-deprivation (enduring pain) in order to achieve a certain professional ideal. As Shilling writes, ‘it is important to recognize the sense of accomplishment, empowerment and even partial transcendence experienced by those who prosper within such bodily disciplinary regimes' (2007, 14).

The youngsters of the Naturalz crew showed a high level of reflexivity concerning their body and their emotions. This refers to subjectivity ‘in the more psychological sense, in terms of the inner feelings, desires, anxieties, intentions and so on, of individuals’ (Ortner 2005, 34). For instance, Hazzle said: ‘[When breaking] you make your soul [alma] dance. It is as if your soul is expressing what it feels’. The breakers of the Naturalz crew also mention that breaking is an important means to channel strong emotions, such as anger or sadness. For instance, Flash said: ‘When dancing you take out everything, all your frustrations, your pains, your preoccupations’. Swift mentioned that breaking keeps him out of trouble when he is mad about something; it helps him, he said, ‘to get bad energy out’.

According to Raxy, ‘A Breaker is peaceful and calm. At the moment of dancing he expresses all his feelings, he expresses his anger, his love, his sadness, everything. While dancing he develops’. Breaking transforms them, he continued, ‘it turns them into better people’. Hazzle is also adamant about the importance of breaking for him:

If I were to become invalid or hurt my hands I would kill myself. Because of my son [who will be born in a couple of months], I wouldn’t kill myself. But if I was alone I would, because this is what I love the most, it is what makes me, it is why I keep on fighting, the reason why I am still standing, it is the reason why I can keep on following my dream. Just imagine if something were to happen to me that I couldn’t dance anymore then everything is screwed, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of living anymore. I may live until I get old but I would probably die sad because I never did what I wanted.

In particular, when discussing injuries they reveal how essential breaking is for their entire being. Because it is so physically demanding, breakers often get injured. Injuries prevent them from earning a living but also from expressing their inner selves. At first Maritza did not understand why the dancers would not take better care of their bodies after an injury and why they would continue dancing. However, later she realised that the pain felt by their inner selves when they stopped dancing could hurt more than the pain they felt from the physical injury. As b-boy Hazzle explained, an injury ‘is the worst thing that can happen in your life, the worst. If you get injured this takes away your job, your way of life, it leaves you invalid. […] An injury is like immobilizing us’. Even with the pain the breakers often continue dancing because not being able to dance feels worse.

We contend that expression via the body helps breakers to free themselves from unwanted social expectations and simultaneously shape new subjectivities. It shows their aspirations for subjective rupture, a break away from the mainstream ensemble of modes of perception, feeling and thinking (Ortner 2005). As Henriques (2011) argues in his book Sonic Bodies, our thinking is to a large extent governed by the practices and potentialities that our embodiment provides. Thus, ‘the dynamic coupling of movements within and outside individual bodies […is…] a process through which subjectivities are managed’ (Henriques, Milla, and Pasi 2014, 15). This explains that the body is pivotal in the subjective transformation through breaking. In the next section, we will show how breaking can contribute to the shaping of new gendered subjectivities.

Transforming gender subjectivity through breaking

McRobbie (1990) stressed the importance of paying more attention to the position of women and the question of sexual division in the study of youth culture. In that respect, breaking is an interesting example. Breaking draws on stereotypically masculine qualities like aggression, competitiveness, risk-taking, strength and endurance (Ahassi 2009). This makes it challenging for young women to engage in breaking. However, these masculine practices can also offer a space for female empowerment and the transformation of gendered subjectivities. As McRobbie argues, subcultures can offer an escape from the demand of traditional sex roles (1990, 74). Female breakers are often happy to be ‘one of the guys’ as Langnes and Fasting mention (2014, 11). Roxy says that she saw breaking as an opportunity to show her own female power and demonstrate that women can also be part of a masculine space.

By practising this ‘masculine’ style of dance, b-girls go against notions of ‘ideal’ womanhood and push the boundaries of conventional gender standards. What b-girls do is not considered to be socially acceptable, as Trinity explained:

Often people see you dancing, and then they think or say, ‘Poor girl, she is crazy’, ‘Poor girl, she behaves like a man’, or ‘Look at that girl, she dances like a man’. But for me it is not like that. I want to show people that women can also do things that men can do. It is great to be able to do things a b-boy does as well, all of that, and to show that we also can, and we are not just the ‘babes’. I like to show otherwise.

Hence, by practising a masculine dance, Trinity and Roxy feel empowered rather than ‘crazy’, and in so doing they express an ‘embodied resistance to abstract and objectifying modes of thought and experience’ (Butler 1990, 324). Their agentic bodies express dissatisfaction with predetermined gender roles and actively engage in the creation of new subject positions.

Roxy’s life story clearly shows how she uses her body as an agent of change in her fight against conventional gender expectations. She grew up with her mother and brothers as her father left them when Roxy was quite young. Her mother had a rough life, working and taking care of the kids on her own. While growing up people would tell Roxy that her destiny was to become a maid. She says that she always refused to accept this. Roxy continued:

My mom is very male chauvinist [machista]. She always says, ‘Roxy, you have to get prepared because some day you will become a mother and you will have to take care of your husband’. […] But my goal is not that. My goal is to keep on working after I have a family and do what I like and show my mom that male chauvinism is slowly changing. Show her that we women can do what they do, not everything exactly, but we can achieve great things and it only depends on whether you put [in] the effort or not.

When Roxy was young, people saw her as a typical nerd, as she was diligent in school and dedicated to studying. In the living room at home, several pictures show Roxy as primera escorta (carrier of the flag) for the Dia de La Bandera (National Flag Day), which is something that only the best students are allowed to do. At home, several diplomas hang next to pictures of her on the wall. Roxy always planned on studying, going to university, graduating and then becoming a businesswoman. When she finished school, she started to work in order to gain some money to pay for her continuing studies.

Once she discovered breaking, however, she started to change. From then on she became louder and more outgoing, and, she says, she finally started to live. She soon became unhappy with her office work.

It wasn’t the same. I felt suffocated, I felt like I wanted to scream, cry, take off my shoes, and start dancing there in the office. Then I would have to tell myself, ‘Roxy, no, calm down’, and I would stay seated. But then I realized, ‘if I keep on doing this, this won’t make me happy. The only thing it will do is give me money. It doesn’t make me happy’. So I left my job. My mom got very angry and told me to get a new job but I told her, ‘No, I don’t want a new job. What I want is to dance’.

Dancing liberated Roxy, who explained that it brought out her true personality that she had been pushing down. Breaking also gave her an opportunity to go against the view of women as just maids or dependent on men. She soon discarded the idea of becoming a businesswoman:

If for some reason I ever have to stop breaking and devote myself to being a businesswoman like I thought in the beginning, well, then I would be the most unhappy woman in the world. It would be like having no life, being like a robot and nothing more, and just doing what people tell me. But dancing on the other hand […] is awesome because you follow your own law, your own rhythm.

Once she chose to follow the b-girl path, she felt she had a lot to prove, being one of the few b-girls in Quito. This makes her even more passionate in trying to break the boundaries of male chauvinism (machismo).

The b-girls use breaking to create a new image of femininity, one that can take on masculine qualities but in a feminine way. Reischer and Koo write, ‘[A] muscular female physique embodies a new image of femininity that challenges naturalized social distinctions between men and women’ (2004, 314). B-girls turn the body into a site of resistance. According to them, it is not only important that they enter a male-dominated space but also that they make breaking their own, that they create their own style. The b-girls do more than just take on a masculine dance: they do so in a unique way. Roxy, for example, explains the importance of keeping her own style. While she asserts that she is ‘tough’, she does not mean that she dances like a b-boy. She finds that if a b-girl dances just like a b-boy, that does not show any style. She feels it is extremely important to show you are entering the breaking world as a woman and you are not just emulating a man.

Hence, breaking has helped Roxy to discover what she felt was her true self. Through breaking, b-girls take matters into their own hands and become empowered. They create a new ideal of womanhood: women who are tough and who can show masculine traits without losing their femininity. By breaking, they break gender expectations and create new possibilities for themselves. Through the use of their bodies in breaking, they express their agency in an embodied form and create new gendered subjectivities.

Conclusion: utopian aspirations and the embodiment of subjective transformation

Breaking has generally been studied as a subculture of resistance for young people. In this article, two dimensions of breaking were analysed that tend to be overlooked in the discussions: its utopian dimension and the vital role of the body in subjective transformation. We argue that attention to these two dimensions contributes to a deeper understanding of the workings of resistance.

Breaking is commonly seen as a form of dance that originated in bad neighbourhoods, where young people engage with this dance as a way to defy bad social conditions. Breaking is a way to create close relationships, establish reputation and to stay out of drug trafficking, and this explains some of the similarity between dance crews and gangs. Yet, while drug gangs engage in actual fighting, in breaking ‘battles’ crews compete over the best dancing skills.

In our study of the Naturalz crew in Quito, we noticed the importance of utopian visions in breaking. The youngsters of the Naturalz crew do not want an ‘ordinary life’, a boring eight-to-six job in a socially and economically segregated society based on conservative and material values. They do not want the violence of drug gangs either. It is less clear what the youngsters strive for, but they do know that they want a society based on the values of peace, love and equality. They express these values in their dancing and their lifestyle as breakers.

We argue that this utopian dimension is fundamental for resistance as it provides the energy that is necessary for their engagement. Breaking is not socially accepted in the circles from where the crew members come. In addition, it is physically extremely demanding. Hence, they need much perseverance to engage in this activity. Utopian aspirations are an important mobilising and energising force.

It is also important to note that future aspirations are different for each of the members of the Naturalz crew. This becomes particularly clear with the two women in the group, who use breaking as a way to change their gendered subjectivity. Their utopian visions imply a society which takes distance from the monolithic heterosexual norms that surround them. Thus, the utopian project in breaking contains a diversity of personal missions.

A second significant phenomenon that came to the fore in our study was the role of the body in subjective transformation. The importance of the ‘agentic body’ (Reischer and Koo 2004) in resistance has been widely documented and analysed. Yet, what has been less highlighted is the role of the body in subjective transformation (Henriques 2011). For the Naturalz crew, breaking is central to their entire being and for the ‘expression of their soul’, as Hazzle explained. We argue that the physical strength and discipline required for breaking has a transformative effect: it changes them into different people. From defenceless and disrespected youths, breakers transform into determined people with physical power and emotional strength.

The importance of physicality explains why personal injuries are so hard for breakers to deal with. Being injured takes away ‘who they are’. The young breakers themselves reflect much about their body and its importance for their life. Other authors have also mentioned the importance of personal and emotional reflection in subjective transformation (King 2006; Ortner 2005). Our study of breaking shows that subjective transformation can take place through striving for utopian aspirations as enacted through the body. This is an important addition to studies about subcultures of resistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Naturalz crew uses the terms ‘breaking’ or ‘b-boying’ when referring to this street dance. Worldwide, the dance is more commonly known as ‘breakdancing’. However, many breakers find ‘breakdance’ a commercial term and prefer to use ‘breaking’. Both terms refer to the music to which they dance, which is called ‘breakbeat’.

2. All the names in the article are pseudonyms.

3. The ethnographic material for this article was collected during five months of in-depth fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador, by Maritza in 2014. Maritza grew up in Ecuador. She holds a MSc degree in International Development Studies. Monique is associate professor in political anthropology. The authors equally shared in the writing and conceptual framing of this article.