Hey! You Locked My Beat Box!

Brooklyn has a graffiti museum. Manhattan has a break-dancing school. Your little sister traded in her Girl Scout merit badges for a pair of Technic 1200s, and your mom knows who shot Biggie Smalls. While hip-hop established itself as a form of underground social expression decades ago with rebellious acts like tagging and break-dance battles, it has since seeped into every aspect of popular culture. Don't know the difference between popping and locking? Look it up on Wikipedia! Want to learn to DJ? Take a class! Feel like witnessing an hour and a half of high-energy break dancing and power tumbling by some of the best b-boys and b-girls in the world but feel uncomfortable in "urban settings"? Well, now you're in luck with that too.

Break! The Urban Funk Spectacular! is worming its way into West Palm Beach's Kravis Center on Wednesday. The performance is a testament to hip-hop's influence on modern dance and music. Although there have been some miserable mainstream attempts to choreograph break dancing for public consumption (nobody got served!), Break! boasts a traveling crew of 12 highly respected boys and girls to help give it some street cred. B-girl lifer and mother Honey Rockwell (Rock Steady Crew) will be poised with cardboard in hand, and b-boys Aqua Boogie and Dizzy will strap on their helmets. The show consists of 12 acrobatic vignettes, each exploring explosive elements from East Coast break dancing to West Coast popping and locking, with the entire soundtrack created by a three-man powerhouse (DJ Shake, percussionist One-Time, and beat boxer Anointed S.)

With all the b-boyin' and b-girlin' going on, you can strike a b-boy stance and nobody will scold you for frontin'. Try this one: Drop a hip, cover your eyes with one hand like a visor, and... Oh, I'm sorry, your white orthopedic Hushpuppies are untied.