Battle, competitive breaking involving two or more dancers, almost always with music, and done in turns, called rounds, runs, or throwdowns. The preconditions for a battle are otherwise minimal—they may happen "anytime, anywhere." For Ken Swift, battles were "people trying to out skill each other using their personality, their body and the music" , which to a large extent remains the modern understanding.1
The modern form of battling emerged by the mid-1970s. Mike G described how battles "normally" occurred in 1975, where breakers would take turns dancing in the cypher . For Clark Kent, however, "Dancing was done simultaneously!!! That stuff that you see that one guy jumps in and one guy jumps out....that's later on. The art of dancing and burning somebody is to go against them simultaneously" . The practice of dancing in turns would then have emerged between 1973, when Clark Kent was most active, and 1975.