An Excerpt from "Foundation"

A very factual and historical book written by Joseph G Schloss. A good read, with great quotes and interviews.

"Knowing which moves work on which surfaces shows a b-boy or b-girl's skill in several ways. First, and most obviously, it allows dancers to choose which moves will work well on the surface they find themselves on. At the same time, by excluding moves that are not appropriate, they are minimizing the chance of having problems, A b-boy who does lose control, then, has actually committed two errors: the loss of control itself and the lack of strategic thinking that led him to attempt the move in the first place. As Ken Swift points out, this reveals an even deeper problem: the fact that he attempted the move suggests that the b-boy had a limited number of moves in his repertoire and thus could not afford to sacrifice any one of them to environmental factors. Skilled b-boys and b-girls, by contrast, can show off by not doing certain moves in certain situations, thus demonstrating that they can do without them and still triumph. This is as true to life as it is b-boying: the more options you hae in any given situation, the more freedom you have to choose the most appropriate one. It also means that you are not tied to any particular strategy and have the luxury of changing your approach as the situation changes. B-boying, then teaches its practitioners exactly how to negotiate change. When this strategy is practiced and internalized through b-boying, it can become second nature in other contexts."