Practitioner
Honey Rockwell
Legend of Dance
Why They Matter
Honey Rockwell matters as a bridge between several environments in which breaking developed and circulated: Bronx community practice, crew membership, touring hip-hop theater, screen performance, and long-term youth education. Her trajectory also documents the labor by which b-girls sustained…
Known For
Biography
Ereina Valencia, known professionally as Honey Rockwell, is a b-girl, performer, and educator born and raised in the South Bronx. She began training in gymnastics and dance at the Bronx Academy of Dance at age seven, competing in school and club gymnastics throughout her teens before entering breaking in 1994. That transition came through Louie "New Wave," a gymnast and dancer who encouraged her to channel her acrobatic training into breaking and introduced her to artists in GhettOriginal Productions, who became her mentors.
Rockwell's stage career spanned theatrical hip-hop and crew-based breaking across multiple decades. She performed in *Jam on the Groove*, an Off-Broadway hip-hop musical that toured nationally and internationally. Later stage work included *Madhattan* and *Break! The Urban Funk Spectacular*, which drew on breaking, power tumbling, popping, and locking. She also appeared in MTV's New Year's Eve 2000 programming and the VH1 Fashion Awards. In 2008, she worked as a dancer and actor in the video game *Grand Theft Auto IV*.
Over her career, Rockwell participated in several breaking communities and crews, including GhettOriginal Productions, Rock Steady Crew, Seven Gems, and currently represents Tru Essencia and Bgirl Mafia. She produced and distributed video work devoted to b-girls, and her biography records that work within early documentation of women's breaking practice.
In August 2013, Rockwell and her husband, b-boy Orko Romero, founded Rockwell Dance Academy in Acworth, Georgia. The school teaches breaking alongside popping and locking, framing those forms through hip-hop history and foundational knowledge rather than as generic commercial dance. A 2018 television feature documented Rockwell teaching students at the academy and traced her journey from Bronx gymnastics through b-girling to international performance.
Her recent work has concentrated on youth education, battles, workshops, and cultural transmission. She directs programs including Rock Da Floor Kids Dance Battles and Rock-A-ViZion Productions and leads breaking-teacher certification partnerships. In 2023, she reflected to *The Bronx Ink* on breaking's inseparability from her Bronx identity while acknowledging its global expansion.
Legacy & Impact
Honey Rockwell matters as a documented link between Bronx community breaking, crew membership, touring hip-hop theater, commercial screen work, and sustained youth education. Her career records the labor by which b-girls maintained visibility and artistic legitimacy in a field often centered on male performers. By teaching technique alongside the names, histories, and social context of breaking, popping, and locking, Rockwell has extended that advocacy into pedagogy, making her academy a model for transmitting hip-hop dance as both a physical practice and a cultural form.
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