PUBLIC EVENTS
Breakin' and Rockin' on Your Block:
Street dance in Willy-B
Dance Workshop/Lecture
Led by Break Easy with Master Mind Rockers
Wednesday June 16 6:30-9:30pm
$10 general admission/$5 students/low-income
Spend an evening with old school b-boy and community dance historian Richard "Break Easy" Santiago as he dances you through two world-famous traditions from your neighborhood: Breaking and Rocking. With legendary Brooklyn rock dance crew, Master Mind Rockers, Break Easy will provide a photo/video overview of the genres' history in the neighborhood.
Vernacular street dances such as Brooklyn rock, followed by breaking, as well as social dances like the hustle and salsa have been danced in North Brooklyn including Williamsburg, Bushwick and East New York since in the late ‘60s. Old school rock dance crews like Master Mind Rockers and break crews such as Breaking in Style, both founded in the late ‘70s are still getting down today. The Bronx may have caught the world's attention early on as a birthplace of b-boying and dance in hip hop culture, but Brooklyn dancers' innovation and skill in early street dance history, often unrecognized, are making a comeback.
BREAK EASY 
Richard "Break Easy" Santiago, a.k.a. "Richie Rock" was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is a veteran member of the break crew Breaking In Style, established in the neighborhood in 1979. His beginnings in hip hop culture were first as a popper with a crew called Popping Unlimited and as a graff writer with The Street Partners. Breaking in Style often battled and competed - including for the territorial right as "Breaking Kings" of the Williamsburg area against local rival crews like TWC (Together we Chill), TWB (Together we Break) and Scrambling Feet Incorporated.
Break Easy is now a sought-after teacher of the dances and history of breaking and rocking; international students take his free classes in McCarren park and in Bushwick. Whether he's combing through crates for rare LP gems in a Greenpoint basement record shop, dj-ing a Brooklyn party or dancing with Bushwick-based crew Dynasty Rockers, Break Easy represents street dance culture and community history with uncommon knowledge, skill, and generosity.
MASTER MIND ROCKERS
Master Mind Rockers was founded in 1978 at Grover Cleaveland High School in Ridgewood. Epifanio "Fano" Colon was then vice-president, and is still an active member. Although Fano was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Bushwick, many other young members came from Greenpoint and the Cooper Park Houses of Williamsburg.
Master Mind Rockers was known their style of the rock dance or uprock, with James Brown inspired moves like slides and the grapevine, and for their tight organization -- they were one of the first rocker crews to choreograph routines and hold auditions. Regular practices were in the back of neighborhood bodegas, at crew members' houses and at pubic parks like Cooper Park (in Cooper Park public housing), Lindsey Park (at Leonard St. and Lorimer), and at the, then, newly constructed Boriquen Plaza.
Fano bowed out of the uprock dance scene in 1984 after a performance at a church in Los Sures that ended in a violent accident. At that time, guns and drugs were spreading, and breaking was gaining popularity. As rock dance faded, Master Mind Rockers incorporated breaking into the mix, and b-boys joined the crew.
In 2010, following a long hiatus, the crew reformed. Today it boasts new members; most have history dancing different styles since the ‘70s and ‘80s, and have come together to rock under the respected name of Master Minds. Current members are: Fano, Dash, Rubberband, Ringo, Tiny Love, James, King, Mighty Mike and Lenny. This generation of Master Mind Rockers is known for remixing Brooklyn rock dance in a new way, adapting styles influenced by modern dance, phasing, and boxing, and dancing to songs popular at today's b-boy events, instead of sticking to jams popular in rocking's heyday- like "Just Begun".
ABOUT DANCE IN THE HOOD: WILLIAMSBURG TRADITIONS
Presented as part of CPR's series, New Voices in Live Performance, and curated by Nicole Macotsis, Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg Traditions is a week of workshops, performances and discussions recognizing neighborhood dance traditions and expert local artists - from the late '60 to today.
For many New Yorkers, North Brooklyn's Williamsburg embodies the waves of gentrification that have transformed parts of the city in the last decade. As its neighbors, geography and prices changed, the area began to be represented by media and developers as trendy, hip and creative.
But despite its recent recognition as an "artistic center", the creation of art, and especially dance, in Williamsburg isn't new: hipsters in the hood were dancing long before it was safe to ride the L train. From Los Sures to the North Side, generations have made a tradition of innovating dance genres, such as Brooklyn rock dance, reviving older ones, such as bomba, and mixing culturally specific dances and neighborhood narratives into contemporary forms, as does CARAS El Puente Dance Ensemble'.
Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg Traditions week-long program is only able to highlight a few dances, but many others not included, such as Dominican, Polish, and Italian social dances, have a long history in the neighborhood and are still performed today.
The purpose of Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg traditions is three-fold: to draw attention to the legacy of dance artistry in the neighborhood; to get neighbors talking about changes in cultural expressions due to social and economic changes; and finally, to stimulate collaborations between CPR's modern dance regulars and other neighborhood dancers who have been performing and perpetuating vernacular and formal forms for generations - each with their own story to tell from the hood.
The New Voices in Live Performance Series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; The Mertz Gilmore Foundation; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
