Practitioner
Luis Angel Mateo, professionally known as Trac 2
Legend of Dance
Why They Matter
Trac 2 matters as both a dancer and a witness. His chronology supplies names, places, crew relationships and movement ideas from a period with little surviving audiovisual documentation, helping later generations understand breaking as a collective Bronx development shaped substantially by Black…
Known For
Biography
Luis Angel Mateo, known professionally as Trac 2, is a first-generation b-boy from the Bronx who helped shape breaking during its emergence in the mid-1970s. By his own account, Trac 2 attended a formative schoolyard jam at Junior High School 82 in 1974 and witnessed a rocking battle between Vinnie and Beaver in 1975—moments he identifies as crucial to his understanding of the form. He began rocking and b-boying in 1976, bringing gymnastic vocabulary into his movement vocabulary. In 1977, he co-founded StarChild La Rock alongside Bos and Blue, a crew through which he developed a move he called "Tracks."
Trac 2's early practice emerged during an era before breaking had standardized competition formats or instructional media. His dancing belonged to a period when the form itself was still taking shape, drawing on the gestural language of rocking—imagined strikes, blocks and weapon-like actions—and translating it into floor work and athletic risk. He participated in an early b-boy contest in 1978, contributing to the competitive culture that would define the scene.
Beyond his role as a dancer, Trac 2 has become an essential oral historian of first-generation Bronx breaking. Through interviews and documented testimony, he has worked to preserve the names, places, crew relationships and movement innovations from a period with sparse audiovisual record. His accounts are particularly significant because early Latino contributors to hip-hop dance were often omitted or simplified in mainstream retellings of the form's history. Since the 2000s, his recorded testimony has appeared in archives and public presentations, including coverage tracing breaking from Bronx sidewalks to its inclusion in the Olympics.
Legacy & Impact
Trac 2 remains vital to breaking history as both a practitioner and a witness. His chronology of the mid-1970s supplies documented names, locations, crew structures and movement ideas from breaking's emergence, helping dancers and historians understand the form as a collective Bronx development shaped substantially by Black and Puerto Rican youth. His testimony fills gaps in early documentation and corrects the erasure of Latino voices from hip-hop's foundational narrative.
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