INTERVIEW Lizzy Hammond
PHOTOGRAPHY Kent Baker
Before a breaker takes the stage, they don’t know what the DJ will play. They step into that unknown – and they make it look easy. That’s not an accident. That’s the point.
In Issue 5 VANGUARD, writer Lizzy Hammond sat down with Oliver “Hooch” Whittle – the man who launched the UK B-Boy Championships back in 1996 – to trace the arc of a form that began as a pushback in the Bronx and grew into a global spectacle.
Photographed by Kent Baker, the piece puts you ringside for the World Breaking Championships 2025 in Manchester, where breakers arrived from France, Holland, Japan, the US, and across the UK to push the art form – and the laws of physics – as far as the human body will allow.
What Whittle describes isn’t just competition. It’s communion: with music, with other dancers, with the beat itself. And what Lizzy captures is something rarer – the philosophy underneath the spectacle. The reason a head spin means something. Why effortlessness is the hardest thing to achieve.
Breaking has been underground and mainstream, Olympic and post-Olympic, countercultural and celebrated. But if Whittle has anything to say about it, its spirit remains exactly where it started: unscripted, community-built, and very much alive.
The best breaking looks effortless. That’s the secret – and the hardest thing to achieve! Follow the link below to discover more of the journey they’re on…
Featured in It’s Interval VANGUARD – view full story and more from this issue!