What is body popping and where does it come from?

Body popping has been around since the 1970s we explain the style

In the late 1970s, a popping group called Electric Boogaloos (earlier known as the Electronic Boogaloo Lockers) from California greatly contributed to the spread of popping, partly because of their appearance on the television program Soul Train.[3]

The Electric Boogaloos themselves state that around the years 1975-1976 their founder Sam Solomon (a.k.a. Boogaloo Sam) created a set of movements that evolved into the styles known today as popping and boogaloo after being inspired by one of the pioneer locking groups known as The Lockers[7] as well as a fad dance popular in the 1960s known as the jerk.[8] While dancing, Sam would say the word "pop" everytime he flexed his muscles, eventually leading to the dance being called popping.[1] Many confirm the Electric Boogaloos' story that Boogaloo Sam came up with the basics of popping.[4][5][6]

Other closely related styles, such as the robot, are known to have existed prior to popping,[3] and some state that even popping itself existed in some forms in the late 1960s in Oakland, California before the Electric Boogaloos was formed, and that the style cannot be traced to a specific person or group.[9] This is less controversial regarding various related styles, which the Electric Boogaloos themselves acknowledge: "While Sam was creating popping and boogaloo, others were creating and practicing unique styles of their own. Back in the day many different areas in the west coast were known for their own distinct styles, each with their own rich history behind them. Some of these areas included Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco."[1]

The mainstream media contributed to the spread of popping and its related styles through movies such as Breakin', but also introduced a naming confusion by putting them all under the label breakdance, conflicting with the distinct floor-oriented dance by the same name (at that time known as breaking). Michael Jackson also helped popularize popping related styles such as the robot and moves such as the moonwalk, but introduced a new naming confusion as the moonwalk was already known by a different name in popping contexts (the backslide, see floating) before Jackson made the move famous.[10]

Popping is centered around the technique of popping (or hitting), which means to quickly contract and relax muscles to create a jerking effect (a pop or hit) in the popper's body. Popping can be concentrated to specific body parts, creating variants such as arm pops, leg pops, chest pops and neck pops,[11] and can vary in explosiveness. Stronger pops normally involve popping both the lower and upper body simultaneously

Normally, pops are performed at regular intervals timed to the beat of the music, causing the dance to appear very rhythmic in nature, and are often combined with stopping and holding a pose right before the pop. A common technique of transitioning between poses is the so called dime stop, heavily utilized in robot dancing as well, which basically means to end a movement with an abrupt halt (thus "stopping on a dime"), after which a pop normally occurs.

Poses in popping make heavy use of angles, mime style movements and facial expressions, and the lower body has many ways to move around, from basic walking and stepping to the more complex and gravity defying styles of floating and electric boogaloo. Movements and techniques used in popping are generally focused on sharp contrasts, being either robotic and rigid or very loose and flowing.

As opposed to breakdance and its floor-oriented moves, popping is almost always performed standing up, except in rare cases when the dancer goes down on the knees or even lies down for a short while to perform a special move

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