The ‘World Cup’ of breaking returns to Seattle after two decades

Dufon “Orb” Smith remembers when Seattle’s breaking scene was truly underground.

In 1996, after Orb moved to the city from Las Vegas, he found a dance community that was still getting its footing. Seattle breaking pioneers DVS Crew were mentoring some teenagers in Beacon Hill who’d later become the internationally known Massive Monkees and start The Beacon Studio, the city’s unofficial breaking hub. Dancers in their 20s like Orb, meanwhile, shuffled between now-defunct clubs around the city. While managers worried over the gravity-defying moves in their midst, B-boys and B-girls would battle at raves.

But a member of Orb’s influential Seattle crew, Circle of Fire, found an opportunity to give the overlooked community more visibility.

In 2001, Circle of Fire member Bob “The Balance” Foxhoven helped arrange the first Red Bull Lords of the Floor competition in Seattle.

Held in an abandoned hangar at the former Sand Point naval air station, the competition invited eight top crews from around the country, along with eight more qualifiers, to compete in a city at a remove from breaking hotbeds such as New York City and Los Angeles. The event featured a shiny wooden floor, jampacked bleachers and acclaimed disc jockeys. Breakers, meanwhile, received fancy hotel accommodations and massages from physical trainers. They were treated like stars; an art form operating in the shadows was now in the spotlight. 

“They knew how to pull out all the stops to make people go, ‘Whoa, this is a big production,’” Orb said of event sponsor Red Bull, then a rising energy drink company with some astute marketing campaigns.

A DVD of the event ensured the enduring influence of the novel power moves and footwork on display for an international audience — so much that, more than two decades later, Red Bull is bringing Lords of the Floor back at another potential turning point in breaking’s history.

On April 6, two-person crews from around the world will battle in front of a ticketed crowd at the WAMU Theater. Comedian and original Lords of the Floor emcee Jo Koy will return as host, and Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist Common will perform. But it’s the dancers — known as B-boys and B-girls — including Massive Monkees’ Jeromeskee and JD “Twixx” Rainey, who will take center stage as they try to step, spin, drop, freeze, flip and twist their way to first place.

“This is the World Cup times five in breaking,” said Jeromeskee, “because they’re bringing it back 20-plus years later, and they’re bringing back the best of the best.”

Sixteen duos will square off, one battle at a time, in a single-elimination tournament that includes B-boys and B-girls. Among the competing crews announced so far: California-based Style Elements Crew’s Ronnie Ruen and Crumbs, a B-boy world champion who competed in the first Lords of the Floor, and Project Soul’s Physicx and Hong 10, a three-time winner of Red Bull BC One from Seoul, South Korea. The remainder will qualify through prelims held at Washington Hall in the Central District on April 5. (The prelims event is open to the public, but with limited capacity, it’s first come, first served.)

Red Bull Lords of the Floor returns to Seattle at a pivotal moment in breaking’s history. This August, breaking will make its Olympics debut. It’s both an opportunity to expand the dance’s audience and a threat to move its style and presentation further away from its underground origins, according to Orb. He worries that restrictions, including on fashion, will mean “the true expression of hip-hop is going to be lost just a little bit.”

At the same time, with more attention in the run-up to the Games, there’s greater opportunity for breakers to demonstrate the art form’s connection to the other elements of hip-hop — deejaying, emceeing and writing (often graffiti) — and its improvisational, rebellious ethos.

“The culture doesn’t need the Olympics. The culture doesn’t need any mainstream event,” said Orb, who competed in the first Lords of the Floor and will judge the 2024 event. “It’s always going to be grassroot streets, in the club, in the park and whatnot.”

It was certainly that way when Orb moved to Seattle in 1996. Shortly thereafter, he met a group of dancers with backgrounds in hip-hop, house, capoeira, new jack, freestyle and breaking at a now-defunct club down by the Seattle waterfront. Despite their different dance styles, their personalities jelled, and soon they started performing together as Circle of Fire.

Nation, a club under the Seattle Center Monorail on Fifth Avenue, eventually took a chance on them, giving Circle of Fire the city’s first recurring club night for breaking. Later, when Circle of Fire held that event at The War Room on Capitol Hill, the younger Massive Monkees started showing up.

By then Jeromeskee and company had begun their ascent to a world stage. Crew members performed at the 2001 and 2002 Red Bull Lords of the Floor events, which Red Bull discontinued to focus instead on Red Bull BC One, today the world’s largest one-on-one breaking competition.

In 2004, Massive Monkees won the four-on-four World B-Boy Championship at London’s Wembley Arena, where rapper LL Cool J hosted and reportedly 6,000 spectators attended. When the dancers got back to Seattle, then-Mayor Greg Nickels proclaimed a Massive Monkees Day that the crew has since celebrated annually. It’s also toured with Macklemore, appeared on MTV and gone toe-to-toe with crews representing entire countries.

In 2012, Massive Monkees won R16 Korea in front of Orb. Though it was less organized than its fellow Seattle crew, Circle of Fire had also performed around the world, particularly in South Korea, where member Johnjay Chon had settled. But Orb was judging R16, giving him a front-row seat for a legendary Massive Monkees battle that has garnered nearly 98 million views on YouTube.

Digital streams are one way the next generation of B-boys and B-girls learns six-steps and power moves these days. Jeromeskee and Orb agree that the easier access to breaking expertise has raised the bar (“these kids are levitating,” Orb said) and limited originality.

“Since there’s so much video out there, people get to see the high level — and it’s higher than ever, I would say, the level of moves and concepts — but with that, people start to look a little similar,” said Jeromeskee.

Kulani Chan, a 20-year-old Massive Monkees member, acknowledges that many peers now learn via videos online. But he said nothing can mimic the experience of seeing breaking in person, and Seattle’s familyesque breaking culture fosters the exchange of knowledge between generations. 

“Everyone is very close and tight with each other,” Chan said.

Massive Monkees’ studio, The Beacon, has been a hub for breaking and other dance classes since it opened in 2013 in the Chinatown International District. After COVID shut down its King Street location in 2020, The Beacon eventually reopened on Rainier Avenue South in 2022 with some help from generous donors. “It’s the community that showed up for the studio,” Jeromeskee said.

And at Washington Hall, what Orb considers an underground gathering still goes off every week. The open session, 206 Zulu’s Soulful Mondays, is barely advertised but can draw up to a few dozen B-boys and B-girls from across the city and skill levels, who line the perimeter of the historical ballroom with water bottles and backpacks, practicing moves, preparing for battles or just getting their hearts pumping.

At a late March gathering, Lords of the Floor was top of mind. Imran “Run” Islam, who lives in Seattle but competes with storied crew Renegade Rockers out of the Bay Area, was mulling entering the preliminary competition at the Central District ballroom. Anna “Naj” Nagy, who teaches adult breaking classes at The Beacon, was planning to watch the main event with Cypher Queenz, a B-girl collective that recently celebrated its fifth anniversary of monthly events in Rainier Valley.

They’ll see a unique competition, Jeromeskee said, because it will pit up-and-comers against more seasoned dancers than normal.

“What’s going to be phenomenal is that you’re going to see people in their 40s, the ones who are disciplined, have been staying disciplined, you’re going to see them dance and go all out,” he said. “And seeing [them] will reshape the idea of what boys can look like in breaking.”

The 20-somethings, meanwhile, will continue to show how far breaking has come, Jeromeskee said, with increasingly audacious moves that blend athleticism and art. He’s not worried about breaking’s future, short-term or long-term, with the Olympics coming up.

“This art form is beautiful, and if we can share it, and if the world can see it, how it brings everyone together from all different backgrounds, from all different walks of life … just having that joy and having that happiness that breaking can bring,” he said, “it’s going to shock the world.”