The Beginning

Just A B-Boy With A Dream

It was 2001, and Brian 'B.Rock' Ekerman was throwing parties and events with his production company, Grid City Productions. Brian had been breaking since 1992, and around 1998 started to teach his friends little brother how to break. So between '98 and '01, he thought about all the progress he had seen his friends little brother make with his teachings. So on one of the party fliers in '01, he decided to put along the bottom "With Free Breakdance Lessons Being Taught Throughout The Night."

Now at that time, breaking hadn't quite crossed back over into the mainstream as it has today. Many of his friends and DJ's he had booked looked at the flier strangely, not knowing what to make of that announcement. But Brian had a vision. He knew people wanted to learn how to break. But there was no where to learn it. So this was his testing of the waters.

The nights breaking lessons went well, by the corner of the stage, with the DJ blaring dope beats, B.Rock actually showed some random people how to uprock and six-step, having a blast all throughout and watching the newfound bboys and bgirls bust out their moves. That was all he needed to see. The vision was starting to materialize.

Flash forward to 2004, after returning from living in Galveston, TX for 2 years, Brian was ready to pursue his dream of teaching people how to break. He hooked up with John Schmitz of Dance Chicago and with Johns guidance, started to devise a thorough lesson plan and model on how to start a company teaching people how to break. This is when Breakdance Chicago was officially born. Starting with just a few Craigslist ads, B.Rock built up a following of students, and on March 1st, 2005, the very first Breakdance Chicago class took place.

Diving head first into his new venture, Brian was able to garner some media coverage within just a few months, first with a writeup in Timeout Chicago. Throughout this time the classes picked up steam and became more and more packed. Brian honed his lesson plan, and some of the same drills and techniques he developed in those early stages are still a staple of the Adult Intro To Break Class, including the BreakFit™ concept.

Within the next year, the program blew up, and B.Rock needed to bring on more instructors. Turning towards his one time bboy nemisis but now friend Konee Rok, he got hooked up with Stytches from Chicago Tribe. Once Stytches came on, Brian was able to focus on growing the company and classes, and in no time, they were together doing workshops and performances throughout the midwest.

By late 2006, B.Rock hooked up with Tamper and started offering hip-hop classes. By 2007, BDC had already taught over 1000 students and performed for dozens of major corporations and volunteered for the Boys & Girls Club and various other charities.

Today the BDC staff of instructors consists of 6 bboys, with about a dozen performers. BDC has been featured in scores of media outlets from TV to print, radio, magazines, web, you name it, if it's Chicago, they've probably been featured in it at some point. They've expanded to teach House dance classes under HouseDance Chicago as well as graffiti classes under Urban Art Chicago. There is also now a Breakdance Hollywood as well as Breakdance Austin. BDC plans on continuing to do the same thing they've been doing, teaching quality classes, while rocking out amazing performances. It's a very simple motto we have, "Laugh first, learn second."