Legacy & History
In the early 1970s, the South Bronx was at a crossroads. Out of a climate of struggle and street conflict, a group of young people chose to create culture instead of chaos. Among them was Willie Estrada, a young gang leader whose journey reveals how music and dance became powerful tools for peace and transformation.
What began as local gatherings soon grew into something larger. The Latin Hustle and Rock dance, born in house parties, school lunchrooms, and St. Mary’s Recreation Center, gave teenagers a new way to connect. Rivalries began to fade through the efforts of the 1st Division Imperial Bachelors, as movement and music replaced violence and chaos. It was short-lived, but the peace did not die.
From those beginnings, the culture spread beyond the Bronx, reaching Manhattan clubs and eventually influencing communities worldwide. The decision of one gang to adopt a cultural identity, rather than their traditional gang colors, sparked a ripple effect that shaped a generation. The Royal Javelins followed in their lead and developed their own successful dance-inspired peace process at the Hoe Ave Boys and Girls Club, spearheaded by Luis Lugo in 1975.
Today, Willie’s legacy continues, not only through his firsthand role in these pivotal years, but also through his memoir, upcoming documentary, and feature film, which together bring this untold history to life.
At The Boombamakaoo Home of New York's Best Hustle Dancers, with friends Diana, Lilly and Ricky in early 1975
Two Lineages, One Erasure: Why the History of Rocking to Bboying Needs Correcting.
By Willie Estrada
First-Generation Rock Dancer, Choreographer, and Cultural Historian, Co-founder of The Rock Masters, 1975
For more than forty years, the history of Bronx street dance has been flattened into a single, convenient origin story. It is a story that privileges naming over innovation, simplifies complex cultural development, and erases the architects who built the movement vocabulary the world now celebrates.
That story is wrong.
What we call “Bboying” today did not emerge from a single source, nor did it originate solely at DJ Kool Herc parties. The truth is more complex, more interesting, and more respectful of the people who actually created the dance.
Two distinct lineages were operating in the Bronx, and collapsing them into a single lineage has distorted the historical record.
The first lineage traces back to DJ Kool Herc’s parties in the early 1970s. Herc coined the term “Bboy” to describe dancers who moved to the break of a record. This was a musical descriptor, not a dance system. At these parties, dancers were broadly upright, responding to rhythm, drops, freezes, and crowd energy. Herc did not teach floor moves, power moves, combinations, or choreography. His contribution was revolutionary in music and culture, but it was not a blueprint for the movement language later called Bboying.
The second lineage began earlier and elsewhere. It grew out of a Bronx Street dance tradition known as Rocking, which dates back to the late 1960s. Rocking was an upright, battle-based dance defined by footwork, rhythm, direction, and symbolic confrontation. It was already a fully formed cultural practice long before hip hop entered the public conversation.
Importantly, the Bronx did not use the term “Uprock” during the early 1970s. No first-generation dancers referred to their dance that way. The term “Uprock” became widely known only in 1984, when Rock Steady Crew released a music video by that name. That moment did not create the dance. It renamed and packaged Rocking for a global audience.
This distinction matters because the movement system that later came to be known as “Bboying” did not emerge from Herc’s parties. It grew out of Rocking culture.
Contrary to popular belief, floor moves did not suddenly appear in the late 1970s. Dancers like Rubberband were already performing floor-based movement in the early 1970s, at a time when most dancers were still upright. Many first-generation practitioners consider Rubberband the father of floor moves, a fact rarely acknowledged in mainstream narratives.
Gymnastics entered the culture even earlier than most accounts suggest. Trac 2, one of the original Rocker-Bboys and a trained gymnast, introduced handstands, balance work, spin mechanics, and technical control into Rocking and early floor movement. This did not originate from Hollywood, the media, or later commercial influence. It originated with Bronx dancers with formal physical training, who applied it to street dance.
By the mid-1970s, Rocking had already crossed into professional performance. In 1975, Willie Estrada and Robert “Lucky” Feliciano performed under the name The Rock Masters, becoming the first professional Rock dancers. Their work moved Rocking from street battle culture to the stage, presenting it as a disciplined, choreographed urban dance form.
Both dancers were members of The Latin Symbolics, founded in 1972 by George Vascones as a Mambo dance team. The Latin Symbolics later expanded to include emerging urban street styles, like Rock, and the Latin Hustle making them the first professional Urban Street Style dance team. This bridge between Latin social dance and Bronx Street dance existed years before hip hop films and global media attention.
Two years later, in 1977, Hector Berrios and Pete Martinez joined The Rock Masters, forming the first professional four-man Rock routine. Choreographed by Willie Estrada, the group performed at major venues such as Roseland Ballroom, The Corso, Latin Times, and other clubs in and beyond New York City. This was ensemble choreography, staged and rehearsed, years before street dance was marketed worldwide as something new.
It is also essential to address a persistent misconception regarding Rock Steady Crew. Ken Swift and his peers did not originally refer to what they did as “Bboying.” Their identity was rooted in Rocking, movement invention, and technical progression. Their work did not originate at Kool Herc parties, nor was it learned from Herc-era Bboys. It was developed through battle, experimentation, and physical discipline.
The term “Bboying” was adopted later, mainly after the mid-1980s, when the dance entered films, television, and international circulation and required a simplified label. That retroactive naming collapsed multiple traditions into one and obscured the Rocker lineage that actually built the movement vocabulary.
Power moves did not emerge anonymously. Headspins, backspins, windmills, air tracks, halos, swipes, 90s, flares, and freeze innovations were invented by specific Rocker-Bboys, whose names and contributions are documented through firsthand testimony and movement lineage. These moves were not inherited from DJ culture. They were engineered.
The problem with popular sources such as Wikipedia is not malice but repetition. Single-origin myths are easier to tell, easier to market, and easier to remember. But they are not accurate.
The dance later known as “Bboying” did not originate as a single form, nor did it emerge solely from DJ Kool Herc's parties. Rocking is the original Bronx dance tradition. Floor movement emerged early through pioneers such as Rubberband. Gymnastics entered through Rocker-Bboys, such as Trac 2. Professional urban street dance began in the mid-1970s with The Rock Masters and The Latin Symbolics, not in the media boom of the 1980s. The term “Uprock” became public only in 1984, and “Bboying” followed as a media-driven umbrella.
Two lineages exist. Collapsing them erases the architects of movement.
Correcting this history is not about taking credit away from anyone. It is about putting it back where it belongs.
