I'd rather just dance: D'Andre Deshields, a lifelong b-boy
D'Andre "Dre" Deshields has wanted to be a breaker his whole life.
Dre, who lives in York city, started break dancing ("breaking") at just a few years old, when he saw his parents dancing around his house — his parents even have an old VHS video of Dre, then just a boy, dancing. particularly after seeing the swift moves of Mr. Wave, a member of the famed B-Boy New York City Breakers, in the 1984 film "Beat Street."
Breaking, which started in the Bronx in the 1970s, quickly became a fourth "element" of the hip-hop life — along with DJing, MCing and graffiti painting — and helped the black population creatively respond to black nationalism and racial tension, according to a Southern Illinois University-Carbondale report. By the 1980s, the culture had spread across geographic and racial lines. But the scene went underground as the 1990s neared.
As the Internet grew more popular in the 1990s and 2000s, young men and women like Deshields brought life back into the dance. In 2004, the film "You Got Served" inspired dancers everywhere with its fired-up dance battle scenes, Deshields said. All the kids wanted to be like the dancers in the movie.
Emulating his dancing idols, Deshields danced for years as a kid. A sixth-grade talent show at Hannah Penn Middle School was the turning point.
"After performing there, that just told me, this is what I should do with my life," he said with a smile that lit up his face. "After sixth grade, that's when I really started to take it seriously and start learning about it as a career."
Many competitions and dance crews later, Deshields, an aspiring entrepreneur, still breaks with other dancers in the south central Pennsylvania region.
"It's just something I can't live without," he said. "Every since I started seriously dancing, it's been always an outlet. Instead of talking about how I feel or expressing my feelings — I'd rather just dance instead."