Breakdancing - Gender Inequalities, Battles and Crews

Breakdancing isn't all fun and games. This subculture phenomenon frequently suffers from gender inequalities, battles and crews.

Gender Inequalities

Breakdancing had been a battler of gender inequalities since it is dominated by male even from the time it had started some years ago. One reason for this are the three major components of breakdancing namely the turntabalism, emceeing, and graffiti, which are obviously showing less influence to women. Women in breakdancing are often seen as outsiders in most dance groups. If a group is dominated by most males rather than females, the group or crew would still be labeled as b-boys. However, in some cases that female are more dominated in the crew that's the time that it would be called as b-girls. As you can see in this concept, the gender is pretty obvious in the world of breakdancing.

Another reason for the gender inequalities of men and women in the breakdancing world is the lack of promotions between female-only battles. Though there had been a generalization that women have begun playing bigger roles in the breakdancing scenes, promoters are not putting enough effort on the promotions. In the recent years, more and more women are addressing the fact that women should be given the influence and perception that they can play and inspire leaderships and roles in the world of breakdancing that includes the future generation.

Battles

It is known that battles are vital part of the b-boying culture. They can take the forms of an organized battle and cipher battle wherein these two types have confrontations of head to head between groups and individual dancers who are about to try out breakdancing performances with each other.

When we speak of organized battles it refers to setting a format for the battle with time limits. The number of dancers is also limited from each side as long as representation is present. These battles also have judges, who are carefully selected based on contributions to the breakdancing scenes, ability to judge in unbiased manners, level of deep dance culture knowledge, and of course years of breakdancing experience. Organized battles are more known to the mainstream community since it includes famous competitions on international levels such as the R16 Korea, Freestyle Session, UK B-Boy Championships Redbull BC One and countless more.

The cipher battles are also know as the circle battles. These battles involve a circle of b-boys and b-girls who do dancing turns in the center of the stage, which is more traditional. In this battle, there are no judges involved only the participants and cipher himself. The cipher is the one who concretes the restrictions and rules of the breakdancing performances. However, cipher battles are more personal and confrontational. Since this battle is more traditional than the organized one, cipher battles are commonly seen in most communities. In some situations, the cipher battles are used by some breakdancers to settle issues between fellow breakdancers.

Crews

Crews refer to the group of two or more b-girls or b-boys who prefer to dance together for whatever reasons, either separately or simultaneously. Because of the presence of crews in the world of breakdancing, battles are more likely to happen. Some of the famous crews in the breakdancing world are the Shebang!, Flying Steps, New York City Breakers, Rivers, Gamblerz, Super Cr3w, Last For One, and Rock Steady Crew.