Don Campbell

During the mid-'00s Don Campbell visited Russia. In his mid-fifties, the father of locking L.A loose-limbed, improvisational dance style of precision pointing, wrist rolls, and dramatic knee drops was there to teach Russian dancers some of his moves. After class, kids swarmed the pioneer, clamoring for autographs and photos. Over the din, Campbell saw that Vladimir, the man who had helped him carry his bags, looked on, his eyes filled with tears. When Campbell asked him why he was crying, this was Vladimir's reply: "Did you know that 15 years ago, Russia was a Communist country?" He'd paused, and the tears swelled. " When they do ballet, they all say, 'You have to do it this way!' But to see the kids dance free... to tell them to be free, to improvise ...It is the most beautiful thought." In the late '60s and early '70s kids in America did like kids do: they partied. On the West Coast, funk fueled the feel-good gatherings that inspired the birth of locking in L.A. a few years later popping rippling, jelly-jointed waves of controlled of Fresno. In New York City DJs sucked energy from street lamps and returned it to raucous crowds through speakers pumping funk, soul, and R&B. Set against a raw era of gangs and violence, Brooklyn toughs began to challenge one another in the in-your-face dance fight of uprocking. In the Bronx and, soon, parts of Manhattan and Queens, revelers began to spin, freeze, twist, and tumble on unlikely body parts during the percussion-driven breaks of popular songs, spawning what would eventually become the body incarcerate of Hip Hop culture, the element of breaking.