I had heard about Ed Johnson, known in the world of break dancing as B-Boy Blakk, countless times before meeting him: he’s a member of the world-famous break-dance crew Renegade Rockers, and founded a crew called Cloud 9 Tribe that was recently inducted into the Universal Zulu Nation. Only two days after meeting Blakk in person, we were on a plane to Zanzibar; a mutual friend who coordinates an annual trip to the island to provide a capoeira group with formal training had invited Blakk to teach. I was there to photograph the trip.

At age thirty, Blakk is one of the oldest active B-boys in the world. Most B-boys and B-girls stop breaking in their late teens or early twenties, due partly to the physically taxing nature of the dance. That phenomenon, along with his passion for working with youth in the Bay Area, has driven Blakk to try and understand break dancing from a kinesthetic point of view. We met for this conversation several months after our return home.

—Giovan Alonzi

BLVR: Do you think genetics played a role in your start in breakdancing?

BBB: Honestly, I do. Before I started breakdancing, I was a wrestler. I started on a whim because I didn’t make the basketball team my freshman year. I was like, ‘Man, this is whack.’ [laughs]. Then this crazy guy, he came up to me and goes, ‘Hey! You should come out for the wrestling team!’ I remember him slapping me upside my head. We were at school. I was like, ‘Don’t you guys get sued for this stuff? You just slapped me in front of the school.’ But he was just like, ‘Come out to the wrestling team! I want you there!’ I fell in love with wrestling. The reason why I say genetics have an effect is because I didn’t know till about two years in that my Dad wrestled.

BLVR: Woah.

BBB: He was State Champion. He kind of left that out of the books. But yeah, wrestling has helped me bridge the gap in breakdancing.

BLVR: They’re both so physical.

BBB: It’s something about being on the ground. It translates really nicely. I read an article that had scientists saying they find wrestlers to be some of the strongest people in the world because of how they train and what it does to their body.

BLVR: How do they train?

BBB: It’s similar to gymnastics. You do a lot of movement and you have to move through space a lot. That produces these amazing athletes. I’ve seen amazing gymnasts, amazing wrestlers, amazing break dancers. There aren’t any objects involved. It’s just your body manipulating...