Flexing (Bone Breaking / Bruk Up)

Flexing is Brooklyn's contortionist street dance, and the one major New York street form whose musical parent is not hip-hop but Jamaican reggae and dancehall. It descends from bruk up, a Jamaican street style found in Brooklyn's dancehall and reggae clubs — Stefan 'Mr. Wiggles' Clemente described it as 'a reggae style of animation,' distinct from popping. The scene consolidated around Flex N Brooklyn, a talent show and local cable television programme started in 1992 out of Rocky and Sandra Cummings' home, and later around the borough's Battlefest battle circuit. Practitioners recognise roughly eight modes that dancers braid together: bone-breaking, the rhythmic disarticulation of joints; bruk up, simulating broken limbs; connecting or k'nect'n, tutting-like hand animation; get lo, floor-level work; grooving, the dancehall-derived rhythmic base; gliding, air-walking illusions; hat tricks; and pausing or pauzn, frame-by-frame stutter movement. Producers call the accompanying music Flex Dance Music, built on chopped riddims such as the 'Volume' riddim. Reggie 'Regg Roc' Gray became the form's chief organiser, and in March 2015 he and director Peter Sellars premiered FLEXN at the Park Avenue Armory with twenty-one dancers choreographing their own material.