The New York Myth on poppin

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Now this is a heavy controversial subject to bring up in the dance industry but I feel that it should be thoroughly explained.Now according to your average Joe, poppin is called breakdancing and it came from New York.Now I will say that yes I was guilty of saying the exact same thing back in 1999 when I didn't know the history behind this dance.As years went by you will be suprised Ywith how many people I had to correct about this myth.For the record, NO poppin did not come from New York nor was it ever classified as breakdancing.However I do understand why your average Joe wouldn't know any better.See back in the 1980's the New York dance scene blew up tremendously.If you were old enough to remember,you could turn on your tv back then and easily tune in to a station that showed someone breakdancing.Dance movies from the 80's era showed a lot of breakdancing but here's where the confusion kicked in.Breakdancing consists of mainly ground moves,head spins,uprock,flares,and the list goes on and on.While the dance was being created in the streets of New York,poppin was already created in California.The east coast came up with their own version of poppin called "Electric Boogie" labeled it as a style of breakdancing.Now since NY blew up with marketing and promotion of Breakdancing,your average Joe would have never known that poppin actually came from California.Poppers from Cali would travel to NY, to teach poppin in exchange for learning breakin.All NY did was put their own twist on it and boosted it's commercial success.To conclude,NY is a great area for dancing, but for the record they did not create poppin and it is not considered breakdancing.