The brutal encounters of a novice b-girl

I am a 50-year-old novice b-girl and in this article, I examine how breaking has prompted ontological and epistemological shifts that move me literally and metaphorically. I reflect upon the brutal encounters of learning the improvisational technique of breaking as a middle-aged woman. In conversation with a practice-as-research methodology, I employ excerpts from my breaking journal, instructions and tips from my technique notebook, and a reflective voice that place ‘doing’ at the centre of knowledge production. From this I come to understand concepts of drilling, grit, flavour and cyphering, and I engage in alternative models of learning, collective pedagogy and community belonging. With a commitment to description as a mode of theorizing, I demonstrate how the process of learning breaking enables me to encounter the aesthetics and history of the b-girl body, confront my present identity position, and begin to reimagine the social and physical expectations of my body.