The good foot: Soul City breakdancing at The War Room

For those of us who grew up listening to the beats laid down by Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang, Eric B. & Rakim and other tracks that make you "throw your hands up in the air and wave 'em around like you just don't care, and if you wanna party let me hear you yell, oh yeah," the old-school hip-hop sound is synonymous with breakdancing — a highly energetic urban dance style that emerged out of the hip-hop movement in New York's South Bronx.

According to the legendary DJ Afrika Bambaataa, the style was born in 1969 in response to a hit James Brown record called "Get on the Good Foot" - a record which inspired the B-boys ("breaker boys" or "boogie boys") and B-girls ("breaker girls" or "boogie girls") of that era to imitate the singer's dance moves.

"When you're dealing with the B-boys and B-girls, you can take it straight back to the Godfather of Soul," said Bambaataa in an NPR interview. "He was flipping his legs from side to side, and doing things with his hands."

If you miss those good old days - or if you wish you could have been there -- you can relive that golden era during Soul City Mondays at The War Room. Around 100 B-boys and B-girls come out to the club to strut their stuff to the '80s and '90s hip-hop and old-school breakbeats, and to show how breakdancing should be done.

Here, you'll find unbelievably limber guys and gals heating up the dance floor with toprocking, uprocking, popping, locking, freezing, windmilling and headspinning. They're doing the worm and the boogaloo and executing other ephemeral acrobatic techniques that can be exhausting just to watch. The crowd is, in a breakdancing sense, stylishly dressed to the nines - spiffed up in fresh nylon tracksuits, retro Adidas sneakers with thick laces, stylin' shirts with collars popped up, and topped off with super-fly Kangol hats.

Soul City Mondays may be fresh news to some, but the local breakdancing community has been flocking to this weekly party for the last four years, beginning at the now-defunct Nation. Soul City celebrates its first anniversary at the War Room on April 3rd.

"Soul City is a dancer's night," says Alfredo Vergara, 28, organizer of Soul City and member of the local dance group Circle of Fire, the host and headliner of the event. He goes by the name of "Free," for freedom of movement. "It's specially catered for the dancers in the area, since most of us are dancers. The regulars are often the B-boys and B-girls in the city representing."

The Monday night crowd draws various age groups, with college kids in their early 20s to businessmen in their 50s joining the circle. "We get all sorts of crowds," Vergara says. "It's a hip-hop night, so we have a lot of folks from the hip-hop community supporting us."

JOANN NATALIA AQUINO

Soul City nights also attracts dancers from around the country and internationally. "When they come out here, we invite them to join us," says Vergara. "It's an open circle. Anybody who wants to go out there and dance, we welcome them."

Dufont Smith, who goes by "Orb" for the shape that moves him when he's on the dance floor, says Soul City is like church for the B-boys and B-girls of Seattle. "We're here every Monday night religiously," says Smith, also a member of Circle of Fire. "We all came from different places-Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and the Bay area, Hawaii, Seattle, the East Coast. We shared the same view about dancing and became a collective."

"There's no other place like this in Seattle," Vergara says. "People come here after a hard day's work to dance or watch. This is entertainment for them."

Though it may seem a daring act to hang out on a work night, Soul City is indeed a chill, bob-your-head-to-the-music kind of party worth checking out. It truly is something special. Dance happens here.

Unlike other trends fading in and out of the scene, breakdancing has never gone out of style - and avid B-boys like Vergara and Smith will make sure it never does.

"It's not your typical weekend night to go out and that's what makes it so cool," says Vergara. "Not everybody gets to go out on a Monday and the people that do, enjoy it."

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