by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Reporter

Urban Legacy has found function in feeling the funk flow.

Urban Legacy is a four-year old break-dancing club.

“[Our mission is] to expand awareness of hip-hop culture and art,” Urban Legacy founder Robin “Kosay” Ward said. “We do a lot of stuff in the community with DJs and graffiti artists and stuff like that, but we primarily do the break-dancing stuff. We sort of have just started moving more into doing competitions and stuff like that.”

Senior Sara E. Parks performs “old-school star” in Old Varsity Gym. Photo by Holt Menzies

Break-dancing is a style of dancing, brought up in the Bronx in the 1970s, that involves series’ of power moves, freezes and athletic hand and footwork.

The majority of these movements place close to the floor, but can also be performed standing, drawing upon a vast array of dance styles and even Kung-fu, according to essortment.com.

The group performed at the step show’s after party Oct. 5, at a competition in Lenoir last Saturday, and at Appalachian State University basketball games in the past.

“I started when I first came to school… it was like three of us who would dance,” Ward said.  “Then when they graduated, I was working as [a resident assistant] up in  the [Living and Learning Center] and they asked me to sort of start a program for students, and that’s when I started the official Urban Legacy club on campus.”

The group is full of people of varying skill levels and experience levels.

Some of the dancers have been break-dancing for several years.

“In middle school, one of my friends could do one of those crazy spinny moves and I was like, ‘hey, could you teach me,’” junior marketing major and Urban

Legacy member Pete “Asup” Biles said. “So I kind of dinked around with it in middle school, and then when I came to App, [Ward] had the club started, so I just joined it.”

The group likes to set themselves apart from other break-dancing outfits at competitions.

Their style is unique compared to the majority of groups.

“We’re normally pretty different. We do a lot of group stuff,” Ward said.

The group stays pretty close to the traditional musical style of break-dancing, hip-hop, but also dances outside of the box.

“We can dance, pretty much, to anything – just hip-hop in general,” Biles said.

Urban Legacy is really into dancing to James Brown, Biles said.

Another important part of break-dancing is the aspect of b-boy and b-girl names.

Biles’ b-boy name is Asup and Ward’s is Kosay.

“Sometimes people just give [the names] to you or you could just attribute them yourself,” Ward said.

Ward got his name from a story he had written in high school and his friends just started calling him Kosay.

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