While it may look like a unique special effect straight out of a horror film, the New York City-inspired dance technique of "bone breaking" isn't as painful as it looks. Actually, the dance has become a popular style across the five boroughs and is now a force of habit for all that participate.
It's as extreme as one would imagine--double-jointed dancers contorting their limbs, appendages, perhaps even fingernails to produce moves that look so excruciating, even Hitchcock would make a movie about it.
As The New Yorker points out, it has roots as a technique in flexing (which they will cover in a future episode to date), but in recent years, has "flourished as it own distinct dance form."
The article followed two young dancers, Khalil (Killa) Williams and Xavier (X) Days, who are nineteen and twenty one respectively.
The article continues: "They are champion bone breakers, undefeated in dance battles throughout Brooklyn. Killa began dancing Bruk Up, using its glides and glitchy pops to enliven traditional bone-breaking moves; X has focused on a purer version of the style. The two best friends are members of Next Level Squad, a Brooklyn-based group of élite dancers who specialize in bone breaking. Recently, they traveled from Bed-Stuy to lower Manhattan to dance through the bone-white World Trade Center Transportation Hub."
Check out the "Bone Breaking" episode below and if you're in the greater metropolitan area, be on the look out for the duo.
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