Cypher:  Translation in Dance
The cypher is the circle of spectators and participants in which break dancers perform their dance.


Language of cross-cutting gestures
spins on a radius of equal footing
multiplicity honed
in community of style
from Puerto Rican roots in Brooklyn
to African American and Jamaican 
in the Bronx
now Asian b-boys 
and immigrant Russians
session to the west

wounds of traditions disrupted
always the young
fresh blood to form a scab
before the hardening of the scar

b-boys learn to re-frame mistakes  
invent a larger framework 
interrupt
an integrated groove
bend a beat
circle round a singular center
always to a count of six
and rock it
(impossibly) 
to a driving beat of four

B-boys of Green Bay


Asian b-boys in Green Bay
breakdance in Boys and Girls clubs
in Madison gyms they session, too
Menasha, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee

story re-writes itself in those who move
cultures fuse to dream anew
right foot lifts and steps aside
followed by the left
yet the center always holds
mid-western cyphers ground this dance
gravity partners with defiance
they fly in the placid face of it

South Bronx lynched in ‘70’s style
freeway fuels spontaneous combustion
Kafka jives to a Latin beat where
all that fly are colors
two turntables spin to just one song
layers of loose linoleum whirl helicopter legs
dizzy headspins on cardboard sheets
remnants of desire
windmills shrug off concrete floors

far to the west a mountain people
also lived on slash and burn ‘til opium
smoked their crops to cash
alchemy of imperialism bespoke a 
golden triangle 
secret war and hidden trail
hunger’s flight through clicking steps
of landmines and helicopters hurling souls
scattering winds
extended clans gone nuclear

b-boy flies up off the floor
released from footwork, spins, and one-armed stands
statues himself to a landing freeze
integrity gestures to the ground
because all your pieces and all your steps
and the way in which you rock the beat
dance the very math of funk so that
two against three adds up to One


First Published in Verse Wisconsin