Las Vegas breakdancer Jeyna Ponce spends more time on her hands than she does on her feet.

Her upper body strength makes gravity-defying power moves like flares and full-stop freezes look effortless. And when the battle takes a turn, she can whip into a windmill, blurring across the stage in one continuous sweep.

The physicality of her performance is almost superhuman. And yet, breakers like Ponce aren’t born by otherworldly means. They’re made locally. 

“There’s such a strong community here that helps allow the next generation to grow,” says Ponce, a multi-time cypher champion of Red Bull BC One. “I just did a competition in San Diego, and me and a few other b-girls from Vegas were there, and it was a top 16 bracket. In the semifinals, three out of the four semifinalists were Vegas b-girls.

“The scene is very advanced here. Everybody is a tight-knit community. The level is getting higher.” 

Jeyna Ponce of Battle Born crew Photo by: Christopher DeVargas

Las Vegas’ breaking reputation precedes it, even among people who’ve never set foot on the Strip or seen a First Friday dance cypher pop off at Downtown’s Ninja Karaoke.

“It’s a very special place for breaking, and not a lot of people know about it,” says Etienne Carreira, a veteran breaker who co-created Battle Born crew and Alchemy Breaking Academy with his brother Guillaume. “People that aren’t connected in the breaking scene, they don’t think of Vegas and breaking. But anywhere in the world that knows about breaking knows about Vegas.”

Legendary crews like Battle Born, Full Force and Knucklehead Zoo have spent three decades building the Vegas identity—and helping dancers break into bigger things.

Full Force co-founder Ronnie Abaldonado, a world-renowned breakdancer, Red Bull BC One commentator and District Arts academy founder, has seen the fruits of his labor firsthand. Despite larger markets in LA and New York, Vegas remains a proving ground for prominent dancers. 

“We’re showing these kids or teenagers that are coming up that there’s opportunity, whether you want to make a living touring, traveling and battling, or if you want to work in a residency show like Cirque du Soleil and Jabbawockeez,” Abaldonado says. “People come here because they see the opportunity and they see that we have a rich, healthy scene.” 

This community of breakers shares a deep history, one that’s built on the academies that trained them, the shows that employed them, and the founders who built the infrastructure to launch a new generation into the spotlight. 

Cypher City

Before MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew returned breakdancing to the mainstream, Las Vegas needed Full Force. Abaldonado formed the crew with his brother in 1995 at a time when the city’s breakdancing scene had no rhythm. 

Elite competitions like Red Bull BC One didn’t exist yet. The closest thing the culture had was Battle of the Year, hosted annually in Germany. Still, locals took on every battle they could find, joining cyphers—casual gatherings where dancers can show off and collaborate—at Jaycee Park on the eastside and challenging other dancers at the Boulevard Mall.

“There was nothing really structured like you see today,” Abaldonado says. “As kids, we would watch these movies of crews battling. So we were always on a mission to find other crews that shared the same common ground, same interest, and battle them.” 

Everything changed once Full Force started competing beyond Vegas. Word spread of their finessed footwork and crazy style points. By 2007, Abaldonado was a world champion, having taken the Red Bull BC One World Final in South Africa. And Knucklehead Zoo and Battle Born were right there, each crew building a reputation of their own. 

“We grew up together since the late ’90s,” Abaldonado says. “Battle Born came out in the early 2000s, and it was like this healthy competition that we had coming up. It helped us get better.” 

In 2008, the breaking scene they’d quietly been building blew up with ABDC. 

“I think America’s Best Dance Crew even had a stronger impact than the Olympics because it was a standalone event that just focused on dance alone,” says Abaldonado, who was an analyst and commentator when breaking made its Olympic debut in the 2024 games in Paris. 

Jabbawockeez, a San Diego-based crew with ties to the Full Force collective, won ABDC’s first season. Five months later, Super Cr3w, a Vegas mega-squad made up of dancers from Full Force, Knucklehead Zoo and Battle Monkeys, won season 2.

To Abaldonado, those back-to-back wins solidified Vegas as a breaking capital. 

Battling for the Strip

After ABDC, doors opened for its dancers. As word traveled that Super Cr3w featured Abaldonado and other Vegas breakers, teaching opportunities became more abundant. Commercials, tours and TV appearances flooded in. The Strip became an economic engine for Vegas dancers. 

In 2010, Jabbawockeez made history as the first dance crew to headline a Strip residency at the Monte Carlo. Over the next 16 years, the masked crew’s success would lead to long-running productions at Luxor and MGM Grand, proving that street dance could pack out a Strip venue. 

But Vegas productions had begun targeting b-boy talent prior to that. When the aquatic spectacle Splash opened at the Riviera in 1985, it was one of the first Strip shows to feature breakdancers as a specialty act. MADhattan enlisted them again in its 1997 variety production at New-York New-York. Cirque Du Soleil followed suit in 2006, debuting the iconic The Beatles LOVE at Mirage with a mix of acrobats and breakers, including a member of Full Force. 

Jabbawockeez Photo by: Christopher DeVargas

Etienne and Guillaume Carreira share a long history with Cirque, having performed in both The Beatles LOVE and Michael Jackson ONE. Raised by two professional dancers, the brothers grew up steeped in showbiz—a Vegas childhood, they’ve noticed, that is uniquely common.

“We have a bunch of students, a handful at least, where their parents are Cirque performers,” Etienne says. “Just seeing physical activity from a young age, seeing people do amazing things, or watching the shows and being exposed to these things, it opens up a kid’s mind—there is no ‘This is not possible.’ It becomes, ‘This is what the people around me do, so I can do this as well.’”

After high school, the Carreiras moved to LA to dance professionally. But it wasn’t until their mother passed away from cancer that the brothers fully embraced breakdancing as an outlet for their grief. 

“I was still really timid and not confident,” Guillaume says of those early days. “The passing of our mom was kind of the catalyst of like, fu-- that. We just went through the hardest thing that somebody could go through. Why am I scared to dance in front of people?” 

“When you battle somebody, it’s like a fight without fighting,” Etienne adds. “We used training and battling as therapy, to get all those feelings out without really talking. We’re young men and we have all this angst, and honestly I was filled with anger and didn’t understand what was going on. That’s really when I took it seriously. I think both of us did.” 

That therapy never truly stopped. Even now, with successful careers behind them, both brothers say battling gives them something choreographed dance never could.

“I discovered who I was through this dance,” Etienne says. “As a dancer, when you’re looking to get booked for jobs, you’re almost a chameleon. There’s very little freedom to express who you are. You are playing a character or playing a role, whether you’re in a show or in a music video. It’s very rare that they’re like, okay, be you.”

For decades, a Strip gig meant stability, a steady paycheck dancers could build a life around. But the brothers have noticed a recent shift due to fewer production shows and available jobs. 

“The model is just changing,” Etienne says. “I think if you come here and you think you’re gonna get into a show and settle down and buy a house from that show, I think that model is gone.” 

But that’s not to say that the door local breaking crews forced open has suddenly closed. 

“I’m an optimist. If you want to come here and work as a dancer, you can come here and work as a dancer,” Etienne says. “I truly believe people can do whatever they set their mind to.”

Raising Champions

Like many art forms, breakdancing is a young person’s game. In the ’70s, kids in the South Bronx congregated at the cardboard, mastering downrock and dizzying head spins to the sounds of break beats.

That youth is exactly what Vegas’ founding crews have spent more than a decade investing in. 

“We’ve all competed at the highest level all across the world,” Etienne says. “Because of that, our youth in Las Vegas are by far, skill-wise and number-wise, the best in the nation because all three of the Vegas camps teach kids.” 

Abaldonado likens the community of dancers and their studios to Netflix’s Cobra Kai—everyone has a dojo. 

“Our studios actually support each other,” he adds. “We have students that will come and train with [Knucklehead Zoo’s] Zoologic at District Arts, and then the next week they’ll go to Alchemy, which is Battle Born’s studio. At the end of the day, our mission is to represent Vegas. We want the best for our kids.” 

Imani Blake, a professional dancer of 10 years, is proof the model works. Her father was an OG member of Full Force, and while it was watching her older brothers dance that pulled her toward the crew, community is what made her commit. She’s since become a Red Bull Dance Your Style veteran, inheriting her family’s style and ability to become one with any beat. 

“She’s proficient in all different styles,” Abaldonado adds. “She could pop, she could lock, she could house, she could hip-hop freestyle, and she could break, which is very rare.”

“It means the world to me because this is the life that I dreamed of when I was a little girl watching them do their thing, and [thinking,] I want to be there one day,” says Blake. “I want to travel the world doing what I love and doing what they’re doing.” 

Ponce’s lineage has also helped her develop into the powerhouse she is now. The technical dancer turned b-girl champ hails from a bloodline of breakers, with family in Full Force, Jabbawockeez and Super Cr3w. A member of Battle Born, she was mentored by her “break dads,” the Carreiras, and credits her childhood immersion in breaking culture with getting her into the art form.

“The dance culture in Vegas has provided so much opportunity that it’s actually taken me far past Vegas. I’ve been able to represent Vegas internationally and perform on stages around the world, work at major brands, do commercials, perform on luxury cruise ships, dance for celebrities, dance on TV, teach master classes in the U.S.,” Ponce says.

“Breaking has given me a platform to show that strength doesn’t have a gender,” she continues. “It comes from discipline and passion and the courage to step into places where you belong, and I’m just very proud to show that women can also be powerful forces in this culture. I hope other women know that there’s space for them to be strong and competitive and unapologetically themselves.”

Next Stage

The next chapter of Vegas’ breakdancing scene is already being written. In 2024, the Carreira brothers launched the Elite Breaking League, debuting at the Theater at Virgin with internationally recognized b-boys and b-girls.

From left, Guillaume and Etienne Carreira at Alchemy Breaking Academy Photo by: Christopher DeVargas

Etienne says by packaging the EBL as “sports entertainment,” it becomes more digestible and awe-inspiring to the average viewer. 

“You cannot buy those skills. They are earned through blood, sweat and years. It’s the great equalizer; it allows us to come together. And that’s super valuable,” he says. “I think breaking has never been packaged properly to get to the masses. That was and is our main goal with the Elite Breaking League.” 

The Carreiras haven’t stopped there. BRKN THRU, their youth breakdancing battle series filmed at Area15 and airing on YouTube, is already spotlighting the scene’s next wave of talent. 

The one piece of advice Abaldonado has for the next generation is to not grow comfortable. 

“There was a time for us where we were training every day,” he says. “I think that maybe this new generation, they get complacent, and they probably either already think they’re the best, or they don’t realize how much harder you have to work.”

Abaldonado is focused on leading my example and bringing more international talent to Vegas to give the scene real exposure. Now in his mid 40s, he’s an OG. But you’d never guess it by watching him. 

“I know that I’m an elder in the breaking scene, but I’m showing everyone that you could still do it at this age. I don’t even feel my age at all,” Abaldonado says. “The moral of the story is breaking is the fountain of youth, mentally, physically and spiritually.” 

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