Foundation, concept concerning the underlying principles of breaking.

Foundation is carefully articulated by Ken Swift and Yarrow Lutz in the essay "Foundation: Context and Components of Breaking Fundamentals" . Their object is no less than the "foundations of the art form." It concerns the context—all the factors, mental and material, that influence the practice of the dance—in which exist the components, or movements. The context contains, most directly, the music, the people, and the cypher, as well as the informal social expectations inherent in the cypher ("'rules' and structure") which include the format of a round and all the values, personal and general, held in breaking. Inseparable from this is the historical context, through which the immediate context is recognized in the first place. The components, placed in context, gesture towards potential forms of breaking, becoming its "starting point," while at the same time inhabiting a conceptual common ground that, in establishing relations between present and past, is the "glue that holds Breaking together." Foundation is thus the framework through which the dance is both constructed and understood. From this their claim arises, "foundation is the definition, the master plan, and the manifesto of this dance."

This concept of foundation is apparent in Ken's oft-quoted 2006 interview with Jung Hyun-hee:^1,2

Foundation is the combination of the mental approach, the philosophies, the attitude, the rhythm, style, and character, combined with the move.

And just as consequential:

Foundation is consciousness of the history of the art combined with passing that down.

This use of the word seems to have developed in the 1990s. In Banes' 1981 article, Fab 5 Freddy is quoted saying, "the younger kids keep developing it, doing more wild things and more new stuff. We never used to spin or do acrobatics. The people who started it just laid down the foundations" . Already some form or structure is implied, although "foundations" appears to be used in the colloquial sense, rather than in its modern usage. The latter is what Alien Ness refers to when he opines that "people don't know what foundation is. In the '80s I didn't know what foundation was. That word was never used in the '80s" . In some early recorded uses, Ken in 1996 and Maurizio in 1998 emphasize "foundation" as a resource to develop moves . The 1999 DMC B-boy Foundations and Kujo's essay "What does Foundation really Mean?" are evidence of growing awareness of the term, as well as disagreement over its formulation. This is not to say that foundation did not exist much earlier—its theory is adumbrated throughout the dialogue in Style Wars, as in Lenny Len's, "other crews, they're not as good as us, y'know, 'cause we have the breaking form, y'know, the– (Crazy Legs: Original style!) Yeah, original style" or in Doze's charged, "that's not even breaking man, that's all faerie flying" . It is not an anachronism to contend that breakers in the 1970s and early 1980s "laid the foundation," though the word came into use later.³

Foundation suggests how past movements, including the "foundation moves," interact with modern breaking. The understanding of a move that allows its unforeseen transformation, necessary for any convincing breaking, is gained not only through its physical exploration (in which history also plays a role) but its context. How a move is done, its style, its relation to the round, its connection to the music, and its refraction of what has been done before are all visible aspects of any move. This is captured in Ken's dictum that "no move can be a foundation move unless it has style" . He elaborates, "foundation is a combination of the attitude and disposition, the understanding of the song, and then putting that on top of the top rock, on top of the move, on top of who you are" . Foundation moves are still necessary, however, as components of foundation. An analogy in music is the "irreducible core of Yoruba dance rhythms" in Nigerian jùjú described by Waterman, which Monson interprets as "the framework that facilitates the incorporation and transformation of diverse influences while maintaining a 'traditional' sound" . What Monson emphasizes in connecting this to jazz is also true for breaking: that content is embedded both in a genre's formal elements as well as how these elements are used. Any attempt to separate moves and context, or in its crudest form dirempted "power" and "style," buries this insight. It ignores what is specific to a move, restricting all appearance to imitation. Stunt Man's view, shared by Ness, that "it's not what you do. It's how you do" is as much a comment on style as a caution against seeing moves in isolation. In fact, a move can hardly be imagined without consideration for how it is done; in practice, style and moves are inseparable. Confusion over this point leads to questions like "is doing a windmill biting?" or "when do moves become foundation?" In reproducing Born's six step or Cloud's kingspin, just as much is sacrificed. Biting erases the individual in history—it is completely opposed to foundation. Storm condemns biters as those "who just copy and profit from the creative work of others" , revealing the broader context. Even naming moves is a forgetting of their context, in part, as the concept drowns out the move itself. Rather, foundation seeks to remember history in its entirety.

Style, in breaking, means individual style. It follows that, as Focus observed in 2006, "everybody who's, 'Foundation BBoys' as you could say, to me they all look different because they have their own character and own identity" . If individuality is to be realized, history, so decisive for foundation, must ultimately be moved beyond. For Ken and Lutz, "foundation is not about having an 'old school' style or dancing like people did in the late 1970s. It is simply the starting point from which this art form has developed, and it still provides a platform to build on" . Traditionalists who only imitate the old miss this—their mistake is to concretize a history cut off from the contemporary, when it is in fact their very dialogue that constitutes foundation. Concerning art in the modern age, Adorno claimed "style considered as mere aesthetic regularity is a romantic dream of the past" . Style, so imagined, is as academic and unauthoritative as it seems, becoming just another tool of coercion. It was perhaps this point that Kujo made in 1999 . Uncritical preservation of the past inevitably produces hostility towards what is new—an ideology of the simple. Although phrases like "lacking foundation" are used to indicate that the basics are missing, foundation actually requires departure from the basics. Poe1 gives a clarifying account of this crucial tension:

I don't like just one style but I like everything that Breaking has to offer. As long as you got flow and hit your shit and you look fresh, do whatever you want! Because, if it's fresh, then it's fresh! [...] I prefer a B-Boy flow but that doesn't mean that they are always going to win because you can have the dopest outfit and dopest B-Boy style, but if you don't have the tricks to win over the opponent, you can't win. Some people think that B-Boying has to be about the basics, but no man! Me and Kenny are not basic. Flowmaster is not basic. Our Foundation is the approach of the dance. We attack like a B-Boy. It's not about the basics to be a B-Boy, it's the approach that makes you a B-Boy. Cats like Kamel, Luigi and Venum, all these guys have the approach of it, they look raw and they keep up with the time. People that are looking at this interview, man, don't separate what this dance has to offer! It's all a part of Breaking, it's all in a Foundation tree and bunch of branches.

At the same time, individuality cannot be reduced to an originality that claims to start from a blank slate. Originality is historical—it is defined by its time and place, and by what came before it. Alleged creation from nothing merely hides what is borrowed. Storm writes, "to be creative without any foundational references, however, is like floating in space, with no coordination and nothing to hold on to" . The content and possibility of originality are derived from foundation. Unmoored, the value of originality is supplanted by exhibition value, which, ever-rational, diffuses anything else as naïve or pretentious. Individuality itself becomes a theatrical effect; novelty replaces the content of what is new. This approach to breaking reserves originality only for "signature moves," which must be conserved as a limited resource. Rather, originality resides in style as much as any move, and in the dancer's entire body of work as much as any round. When breaking is described as "overly abstract," it is not the originality at issue—often it is all that succeeds. However, it is of less consequence that the dancer grabbed their head instead of their crotch, or did two spins instead of one, than that a new direction is pointed out. Trac2 describes how originality can inhabit even "foundation-type steps":

You're going to see different flavors. 'Flavor' meaning each individual, their originality, their creativity. That's where flavor comes from. When you see them add something different to something so simple. You can see somebody do a chair move. They're not— two people aren't going to do it the same way. Each individual's gonna have a flavor to it. They're going to add what they feel. How they see it, how they interpret it.

This cannot, then, be what is entirely without precedent. Evaluation "point-blank" of originality ignores that what we can perceive as precedence or sameness is itself historically conditioned: "To seek in the great accumulation of the already-said the text that resembles 'in advance' a later text, to ransack history in order to rediscover the play of anticipations or echoes, to go right back to the first seeds or to go forward to the last traces, to reveal in a work its fidelity to tradition or its irreducible uniqueness, to raise or lower its stock of originality," Foucault summarizes, "are harmless enough amusements for historians who refuse to grow up" . The related, equally absurd conclusion is that nothing new is possible. For Adorno, "nothing is more damaging to theoretical knowledge of modern art than its reduction to what it has in common with older periods. What is specific to it slips through the methodological net of 'nothing new under the sun'" . The retreat to Kohelet's aphorism is resignation to what is ever-the-same, if not outright theodicy of biting.

"Breaking is always evolving," according to Ken and Lutz . If foundation requires the historical category of originality, then as history accumulates, foundation must also evolve. The evolution of foundation is an accepted premise for Storm , Poe1 , and Crumbs , among others. The great achievements of the late 1970s and early 1980s were not the first or last contributions to foundation. However, if foundation evolves, it does so only in the development of individuals' breaking. At the same time, as Ellison realized, identity possesses a transient quality if an art "finds its very life in an endless improvisation upon traditional materials" . Reception of foundation, value placed on certain moves or ideas, mediated through the individual and context, is what might be called "personal foundation." For Roxrite, "there is a bboy foundation but then I believe that each person has their own foundation [...] There wasn't a set way where you learn it from" . Individual development of foundation, as artistic development, contains a subjective element. There is much in common with Berliner's description of jazz artists:

Emerging improvisers, in coming to terms with jazz's varied conventions, do not simply absorb them. Rather, they interpret and select them according to personal abilities and values, formative musical experience and training, and dynamic interaction with other artists. Ultimately, each player cultivates a unique vision that accommodates change from within and without. It is clear, then, that from the outset an artist's ongoing personal performance history entwines with jazz's artistic tradition, allowing for a mutual absorption and exchange of ideas.

Evolution and transmission are closely linked—this was explored in detail by Fogarty . As is evident to any breaker, breaking itself transmits foundation to anyone who watches and hears the music (the removal of music, or its overdubbing, does not entirely obstruct this). Fever One offers this aural-visual aspect in negation: "You can see whether they [have foundation] or not. And they're doing a lot of freezes—one-handed freezes—a lot of power moves. No rhythm, no dancing" . In Goblin's description, "if I love something, you can see right away that I love it" . Awareness of the transmissive quality is apparent in Ness' conviction, "I don't sit there and tell people, 'You're doing this wrong. Foundation is better. You gotta learn foundation.' No, I'm gonna show you" . There is again an analogy in Lonnie Hillyer's observation that "all the great jazz musicians have also been great teachers. Their lessons are preserved for students on every recording they made" . Such considerations are perhaps why Ken and Lutz consider it important "that the foundation stays visual and strong" . Kant, who realized that "fine art" could not be produced according to a formula, reasoned that, for judgements of taste, "the rule be gathered from the execution" . But this process is not linear, and it proceeds only with resistance. In Crumbs' example of people doing a move but "don't know where it comes from so it's like you asked them 'What is that move?' and they are like 'It's Foundation'" , foundation has hardly evolved. Kant considered the distinction between "imitation" and "following" . What distinguished Ruen's style was the realization that already by 2000 the airflare no longer radiated the "force of the untrodden" . In breaking, the following of even "exemplary" breaking that results in evolution takes the form of critique. Each round casts silent judgment on all those preceding it. The evolution of foundation therefore occurs as individual works confront tradition. It is as Adorno describes, "tradition is to be not abstractly negated but criticized without naïveté according to the current situation: Thus the present constitutes the past. Nothing is to be accepted unexamined just because it is available and was once held valuable; nor is anything to be dismissed because it belongs to the past; time alone provides no criterion" . The abrasiveness inherent in original art led both Adorno and Kant to compare individual style to a "blemish."

The primacy of form—that is, everything available to the senses—should not suggest a purely formalist conception of foundation. This is revealed by some of the values Ken and Lutz describe: "daring and radical," "underground," "creativity, innovation, and improvisation" . The values of improvisation and musicality deserve particular attention. It should first be established that the "multifaceted nature of improvisation" contains a continuum of approaches with respect to planning, pre-composed elements, and communality, and that musicality—far from meaning that one is merely "on beat," or that a freeze is well-timed—covers similarly broad territory, not least of which is "to go off to match the intensity of the drums" . Now, it is simple enough to observe that dancing benefits from establishing some relation to the music, and that improvisation is a prerequisite for any such real-time response. Music and improvisation are also useful in the process of creating new things, which might additionally undermine planned responses from an opponent in a battle. However, a round that to all appearances is spontaneous and music-driven may be an entirely prefigured set. It must be concluded that the process has value independent of form. Kant suggests that in considering process, sympathy is confused with beauty , but demonstrates that such knowledge indeed affects aesthetic experience—a point Adorno also concedes . An early effort by Hamilton is prescient in its consideration of improvisational artforms' own alleged values, and its bold claim of the primacy of performance over text⁴ (Okiji read such a claim also in Gates ). However, Hamilton attempts to rescue improvisation into form by assigning the "improvised feel" a "distinctive form" , tending toward a crude effect-aesthetics. Hamilton's "aesthetics of imperfection," which references Bill Evans' analogy to Japanese calligraphy, is insufficient for foundation. While possibly appropriate for the impressionistic Evans, the tastes of Sei Shōnagon or Kenkō differ significantly from those in breaking, coming from quite disparate contexts. The improvisation in breaking is less the acceptance, the finding harmony with, than resistance. Hunched-over or bent-leg form is preferred (by some) not for an ideal of "imperfection," which breakers take great pains to avoid, but in rejection of the perceived form of disco, ballet, and the always-maligned gymnastics. Moreover, Saito has pointed out the sociopolitical dimension of a philosophy where "the most precious thing in life is its uncertainty" . The Völkisch movement has shown what interests might be served by contrived returns to nature. Where there is agreement is that "there are important aesthetic differences between a vase whose handle broke off by accident and an identical vase whose handle was intentionally broken off" . Rather than avoid the intentional fallacy out of habit, one must confront how invested breakers are in if someone runs a set or ignores the music, just as much as if they bite or crash. This could be accomplished through a "historically emergent" approach to improvisation like that of Lewis . Such considerations led Monson to see freedom⁵ in the "feeling of improvised musical self-determination that is both the joy and challenge of every improvised performance" . For Moten, improvisation is a "willingness to fail reconfigured as a willingness to go past" . Iyer sees improvisation as essential to narrative meaning , drawing on dialogue within Coltrane's group. For Coltrane, improvisation should avoid merely following chord progressions and instead tell stories, which he specifies are "black stories," and are in opposition to "lies" . Okiji builds on these ideas, expanding storytelling beyond the individual work, and centers the open-endedness of improvisation . Reyes-Schramm's pioneering work on conga improvisation in East Harlem in the 1970s uncovered the social content of the "inconclusive effect [...] characteristic of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Brazilian black traditional music" . The "rawness" that accompanies open-endedness perhaps also avoids the vulnerability of the final, objectified work. The unimprovised set, exhibited from venue to venue, appears detached, from music, other breakers, and tradition, complicit with "purposes outside the work" —advertisement, usually. The repeated round is like Benjamin's mechanically-reproduced artwork: "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" . Turner overestimates dance's resistance to the fatal objectivation of aura. Foundation remains opposed to the "repeater pencil."

Schloss' Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York City captured a moment in "New York City in the early and mid-2000s" . It represents one pole, one specific view, of foundation that has informed breaking's evolution since its early existence. It includes "the history of the movements and the form in general, strategies for how to improvise, philosophy about dance in general, musical associations, and a variety of other subjects" . In outline, foundation, for Schloss, identifies breaking as a tradition, transmitted from teacher to student, whose framework enables a narrative mode of self-expression whose form promotes the acquisition of "life skills." Foregrounding a static "tradition," however, obscures evolution and originality. The archaic, "almost mystical" foundation crystallizes into a set of received truths, leaving breakers with little else to do but perform the rites. Naturally, Schloss himself recognized "traditionalist" and "self-policing" attitudes as such. Foundation so constructed overlooks the many complex ways in which the transmission of breaking is mediated—Fogarty's theme —precluding the transformative potential of individuals that vivifies breaking. Value is properly found in connections to tradition, but it is tradition itself that is made valuable, rather than allowing value to reside in the dance, revealed through foundation, and then only as one exceeds it—what for Ken is "ill shit" is reduced by Schloss into "contemporary additions to the repertoire" . This is perhaps a consequence of Schloss' undercurrent of establishing hip hop among "other, more universally recognized cultures" . DeFrantz contends that "because black performance aesthetics tend to be fed by [...] invention—rather than some need to master or preserve preexisting regulations—these dance practices hold special significance in identity formation and social development" . Schloss seems to place the same values external to the dance when he claims that breaking's "aesthetic lessons allow the dancers to define various aspects of their identity, develop strategies for integrating that identity into a larger social world, and then actually practice doing so" . Only the immanent historicity of foundation reveals the process between world and identity, and confronts the emergent value of self-expression under present conditions. Such methodological concerns are voiced by Johnson , and Gilroy more generally . This is precisely DeFrantz's thesis that it is possible, in hip-hop dance, that "the social component of these moves have been carefully evacuated" . If "ultimately, what b-boying offers is an increased consciousness of one's life options and a set of techniques for mastering them" , then the art of breaking is reduced to functional art; a self-help sotsrealizm. This is to be confronted by Trac2's claim, that "in an oppressive society, we had something that we needed to say, through this form of aggression" . Schloss in fact uncovers this fundamental aspect of art in his historical excavations of the battle, the break, and hip hop itself, which reveal a "form of expression that allows them to make abstract statements" .

The content of those statements, which should not be confused with subjective intention, is what is objective in breaking. Ken and Lutz declare that foundation keeps "the art form true to its traditions and history," which qualifies one as "best situated to bring it into the future" . Foundation is therefore not just a record of tradition, but contains an implicit standard of judgment. It stops short, however, of any concrete prescriptiveness that would reduce it to ideology. What is true, to which crass "loyalty" is extrinsic, is ἐτεός, accordance with reality, and ἀλήθεια, what is not concealed or forgotten. This is not confined to imitation of the present or past, but to what is possible; reality is set into relief. This cannot be equated with catharsis, as escapism, nor any functional device, which is hardly more than the extent to which breaking can mold itself into a product. Williams linked the content of hip hop to authenticity —a dubious concept since at least Heidegger. Yet Gilroy has shown what authenticity signifies where identity is "constantly undermined" . Related is Lewis' postulate of (musical) improvisations' "social instrumentality" as "resistive repostes" . At the same time, the limit of any representation that resides completely in the realm of art is what is circumscribed by the "place prepared" for cultural products described by Gilroy ; Karatani and Kohso explore this at a national level . Ken and Lutz indeed declare it "imperative to have your own way of doing things that represented who you were as a person" , but this necessarily considers what is external to oneself. The content of breaking is what goes beyond the world as it exists. It is nothing specifically expressed, but hip-hop dances themselves, in DeFrantz's words, confirm "something beyond reach" . It is something "fresh," which for George "signifies something good, exciting, positive, different, and new. It represents a culture that celebrates innovation and rejects blatant imitation and stagnation. [...] striving for the fresh means hip-hop culture has faith in possibilities yet to be explored, ideas yet to be proven" . This sustains technique, when it refers to difficulty or complexity, more so than any such category in itself. This might be Ness' insight that "it's more about me bringing you into my run than me doing a run showing off moves" . It is only this experience of the work from within that reveals its content. The degree to which this can be achieved depends on the logic of the work, its internal coherence, that relates content to form. This is tied to Ken's concept of "text," through which content is subjectively mediated. Flow is then better understood as the following through of each move's logic, which involves the relation of each part to the whole, rather than the exterior smoothing over of a round shorn of its content. Likewise, there is relevance in Adorno's assessment of musicality (Musikalität) as "the ability to rediscover the sublimated contents in the form, as well as to respond to the changes in their function, their migration into the specific [musical] instance" . Ken's rounds against K-Mel unfold according to their inner laws of motion; their flow, replete with musical rupture, is the product of exposure to the irreconcilable energy of the break. It is the attempt to solve the problems of form that carry breaking's historical trace. As Rose argued, "life on the margins of postindustrial urban America is inscribed in hip hop style, sound, lyrics, and thematics" . History inheres in form. This includes not only the gang context, often emphasized to the point of caricature, but all the varied identities whose configuration at park jams and parties in community centers, clubs, streets, and empty buildings shaped early breaking. The outmoded ahistorical narrative belies the competitive dance tradition of Harlem, or that some future breakers were going off to the rhythms of congas. This was already noticed by Banes, who identified "moves from the Afro-American repertory, which includes the lindy and the Charleston and also includes dances from the Caribbean and South America" . It is the overriding disaster of daily life, however, whose negative imprint is perhaps most deeply ingrained. The form of breaking responded by opposing the cruelty of disco and culture's facade, and what is childish in the ideal of maturity. The influence of James Brown, too, was not confined to the formal aspects of his dancing and rhythm section. Modern breakers confront their own specific circumstances. Without resistance, breaking is reduced to mere play; though without an element of play breaking is hardly possible. For analyses that ignore this, it would make no difference whether the dance is breaking or something from Saturday Night Fever. The critical distance breaking has been able to achieve probably reflects the development of hip hop in what George called an "insular world" , or Gilroy a "partially hidden public sphere" . The underground dance confronts the "subterranean" history of corporeal exploitation . Marcuse makes the prognosis, "when the body has completely become an object, a beautiful thing, it can foreshadow a new happiness. In suffering the most extreme reification man triumphs over reification" . The severe physicality of breaking is the rebellion against what has made the body a "cadaver, no matter how trained and fit it may be" . What resounded in Issei's first freeze against Pocket was the accusation of the entire project of power at that moment. The situation is described by Adorno: "to survive reality at its most extreme and grim, artworks that do not want to sell themselves as consolation must equate themselves with that reality. Radical art today is synonymous with dark art; its primary color is black" . However, foundation does not collude with the surfeit of poverty; it is not a photograph of "the Bronx on fire." In fact, as Ken has described, "hip-hop is a colorful culture. It's vibrant. It's a culture that just has to be larger than life. When you look at the graffiti characters and you see the way they're exaggerated, you know, we have to be exaggerated as b-boys" . Thus, historical conditions push the most convincing forms towards difference from the empirical world. When Ken and Lutz lament that people "do not understand what they are seeing" , it is not moves, but the particular beauty of the art form that fails to be recognized.

1. Ken also outlines his definition in a 2001 interview with The Mighty 4 .
2. Jung has uploaded a clip of his 2006 interview with Ken. I use my own transcription for this portion.
3. That foundation exists is just Kant's observation that "every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of art, to be represented as possible" .
4. Emphasis on process is not necessary to accomodate "incompleteness." Adorno, who presupposes "the primacy of the text over its performance," still allows for the "superiority of major fragments, and the fragmentary character of others that are more finished, over fully complete works" . His argument critiques what the greatness of "total" artworks has come to require, and emphasizes the interplay of whole and parts, or totality and details, which does not require the absolute authority of the whole. Kant also admits "irregular beauty" for the contrast it provides against its other .
5. Monson's "freedom" in the quoted passage should be understood to involve, in addition to self-determination, "individual relationships to social forces and ideas beyond any one person's control" .