“I said a hip, hop, a hippie, to the hippie, a hip, hip hop, and you don’t stop, a rock it to the bang bang boogie, say up jump the boogie, to the rhythm of the boogie beat.” If you sang these words instead of reading them, you know this article is about Hip-Hop.

When The Sugarhill Gang spit these words out for the first time, they not only created one of the most popular songs, they took a small movement known as breaking from Harlem and globalized it. With their bass that was so low and their highs so high they took the rhythms of the streets and blended them on to vinyl with the hit, Rappers Delight.

Break Free Community Center, located at 9191 Winkler Dr., Houston, Texas, 77017, has taken the art that is breaking and developed a program for young children, adolescents and teenagers to practice and learn the styles and history of the culture.  The culture of Hip-Hop includes not only dance, but rhythm and poetry, art and DJ-ing.

The Break Free Community Center held an open house showcase where kids were able to participate in thirty minute classes in each of the available programs. Six month courses can be taken for as little as $360.00 and begin on January 5, 2015.

Founder of Break Free Community Center, Moises Rivas, has been a B-boy from the age of 14 and has traveled to over fifty countries and been in multiple movies and ad campaigns performing his craft. Rivas had the dream of opening a center where kids could learn the art of B-boy-ing in a safe environment. Rivas expressed his dream with his mentor Robert Trevino who helped him accomplish his goal.

Trevino serves as the behind the scenes expert and helps Rivas run the center smoothly. Also on the staff are artist Mark Deleon, B-boy Jeremy, spoken word artist Sabrina Alvarado and DJ Main Event. All members of the team believe in the center’s motto of “Create Your Escape.”

Deleon is a Houston artist that has been commissioned for private collections as well as sold many of his pieces to the public. You can see his collection of works at www.markdeleonarts.com. Deleon also hosts art parties where he comes out to events and teaches guest how to paint.

B-boy Jeremy is the head director for the Hip-Hop program. He is featured in many films that promote Break dancing. He starts off by teaching the basic steps of Top Rocking and Go Downs before helping each student how to create their personal styles.

Top Rocking is where a B-boy makes himself look larger than he is by using his arms spread out wide or high while doing a basic two step moving from left to right, preparing his approach for the Go Down. The Go Down is just that, where the B-boy goes from a standing position to the floor position. Once a B-boy goes down they then preforms their own moves of spins, locks, hops, dips, pauses and any other possible contortions of their bodies while moving to the beat of the song.

Spoken word performer Alvarado is teaching the rhythm and poetry, or R.A.P., portion of the program where she teaches rhyme patterns and painting pictures through words.

DJ Main Event finishes off the cast with his knowledge of spinning records while masterfully mixing them and keeping his audience moving to the beat that he creates. He teaches his students on how to find the spot on the record where they can scratch or wiggle to create the sound that they desire. DJ Main Event begins with vinyl records and two turntable and moves his classes all the way to the modern programs that are ran by computers but still take a large amount of talent and dedication to master.