ABSTRACT
B-boying — known to popular audiences as "breakdancing" — is a dance form that developed in New York City in the early 1970s. In the case of b-boy songs, the required contribution is an ineffably confrontational energy manifested through the b-boy dance. In b-boy canon, negotiations are mainly embodied in, and mediated by, the relationship between b-boys and the disc jockeys who provide the music for them to dance to, many of whom are themselves current or former b-boys or b-girls. The canonical works are therefore the finest expression of a particular language, and may indeed be taken as the expression of a culture's or a nation's identity. Literary theorists in particular have made valuable analyses of the ways in which canons — particularly the Western literary canon — reflect the social and ideological relationships between art and community.
