Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Breakin’ On the One’ on Hulu, a…

Let it be known that the phrase “electric boogaloo” is never uttered in Breakin’ On the One (now streaming on Hulu), a short documentary reliving a critical moment in breakdancing and hip hop culture. Directed by the Brooklyn duo known as Jams and Bash (Jamaal Parham and Bashan Aquart), the film chronicles how two New York City breakdance collectives, the Dynamic Rockers and the Rocksteady Crew, popped-and-locked and headspun their way through a high-profile dance battle at the Lincoln Center in the summer of 1981 – and helped launch hip hop as a mainstream cultural force. So before you watch breakdancing’s debut in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, pop some fresh D-cells into your boombox and lay down your sheet of cardboard for this in-depth snapshot of the Moment Everything Changed. The Gist: New York was a grimy, hardscrabble city in the late 1970s and early ’80s. It was in the throes of an economic downturn, and President Ford famously responded to pleas for federal help by telling the town to go pound sand. It was a tough place to live, but underground art thrived in that context – an ingrained sense of competition pushed the best punk, disco and...