Josh Culbreath, a breaker who goes by the dance name Supa Josh, began dancing at five years old and has turned his lifelong love of dance into a full-time career.
He recognizes that puts him in a unique position. “I have been fortunate to not also have a job outside of dance. I have been able to make dance work for me,” he acknowledged. “We each need to decide if dance is going to be our career or our hobby. The reality is we need sustenance. There are bills to pay in addition to car fare, clothes to be cleaned, and new sneakers for dance. Even if you can dance, you may not be able to bank on it to sustain you. If you want it to be your career, you need to go to events to network, be part of organizations, and always make your time there worth it.”
Turning Love into a Career
Growing up with a mother who was a line dancer and part of a skating rink troupe, Culbreath was introduced to dance early in life. “Every Sunday we were at the rink learning to skate with dance moves and routines. Then I watched (classic 1984) movies Breakin’ and Beat Street. Between those experiences and seeing Michael Jackson and James Brown dance, my hobby quickly turned into a lifestyle,” he recalled. “I always competed in a lot of sports and martial arts, anything that allowed me to test my abilities against others and most of all, myself. Breaking seemed more extreme than anything I had ever seen. It holds you to that competitive standard every day, to be better than you were last time.”
With breaking requiring such a high level of physical ability and stamina, Culbreath is thankful for his athletic background. “I was lucky to play all those sports and consistently training as an athlete. I just changed my focus from sprinting down the basketball court to lasting for two or three hours on stage,” he communicated. “The mental challenge also translated well. There are days you may not feel like doing the work, but you do it anyway to develop that consistency when you want dance to be your lifestyle.”
“If you can’t make that initial decision to dedicate yourself to dance, then everything else is running your life. If you are running to work, you aren’t making a career of dance. Make the job work for dance and dance work for the job until you reach the point where dance provides for you.”
Culbreath has learned to make decisions based on the need at the time. “Sometimes it is about making ends meet or getting something for your child. It is not always about going to the biggest and craziest events,” he remarked. “If you need to pay rent and there are four events, don’t go to the bigger event. We need to work smarter and that may mean going to a smaller event where you have a better chance. If you win a jam that no one knows the name of, it doesn’t matter. You still won and you still must pay rent.”
He points out that financial competency is critical. “Friends ask me all the time if I mind helping them pay to enter a competition or spot them for gas money. That shouldn’t happen every week or every event. Don’t make your presence a burden for someone else,” Culbreath urged. “You need to get yourself out of your mom’s house. It is a mental thing. The world isn’t going to do anything for you; you need to make choices and make decisions to lead to your success. You will spend $150 on new sneakers, but you don’t have food to eat. Make better decisions. Put in the effort, show up on time, and dress appropriately. You are a walking business telling people whether they should invest in you.”
Mental Health Conversations
He gives no illusion that making a living from dance is a smooth and easy road. “There will be an ebb and flow. We express so much internally, and I have learned we need to talk about things more openly. I am still getting used to it as it is still a taboo subject for many people,” he admitted. “I told a friend about something that happened to me and how it affected me mentally. They had no idea what to do or say. We all need someone who can relate to us. Therapy can be very helpful, while other times we just need a friend to talk to.”
Culbreath thinks the best way to take care of one another is in smaller, intimate spaces. “People aren’t coming out and saying they are having a bad day. It can be awkward to say you are not doing well but even saying that you could be doing better extends an olive branch to deeper conversation,” he suggested. “You may not have all the answers, but even a therapist is helping the person figure things out themselves. It is not about solving an issue for others but being a listener and allowing someone to vent to you, to share what they are feeling. Words of encouragement can lead someone to the next step they need to take.”
“People have a bunch on things going on. They may be homeless, going through a divorce, or facing eviction. We may not have all the answers, but we can start out by listening to them and letting them know we are here for them,” he continued. “You may not be able to fund them, but you can offer to help in whatever way you can. I can be a band aid for a small amount of time. If you can help in some way, you can reassure them that although you don’t know what they are going through, from what you see, such and such could be a good next step. Turning a blind eye and ignoring their issues won’t help.”
He understands that humans struggle with not knowing the outcome of their hard work. “People ask me for advice on a good training regimen or how to get into a dance company. I don’t have the answers for them. I am doing it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t struggle as well. No one wants to go down a path without knowing the end goal and that becomes a mental challenge. The only thing you can count on is putting one step in front of another,” he stated.
Creating Spaces for Dance and More
In 2013, Culbrearth and a few other dancers in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area were just coming out of a dance crew when they decided to start their own crew. “We were the quiet ones in the other crew. We really vibed with each other and saw each other’s hidden abilities. We were all good at different things, so we used our skills to start small and recruit up to five people each so we could get into competitions,” he remembered. “We built slowly as two of us were returning from serious injuries. In the second year, we took a short hiatus as I became a father, while others were getting married, so we focused on our new lifestyles. From there, we were a family group and we figured it out as we went along.”
When the crew was formed in August 2013, he and his crewmates worked together not only to lift their own breaking and performance dance spaces, but how to show up for local communities and keep the dance scene alive throughout the Philadelphia area. The crew called itself Retroflow Crew, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2023. “We do everything under the auspice of how much we enjoy each other’s company, not just about dance. We live all over the country now, but continue to create a sense of community, a fun and safe space,” he described.
Josh and his wife Emily “Lady Em” Culbreath are now both graduate fellows at the University of Iowa’s dance program on the MFA choreography track and founded Snack Break Movement Arts, a performance duo specializing in hip hop dance education, event curation, and interdisciplinary performance works inspired by street dance. Snack Break holds ongoing curated events for Philadelphia’s local street dance choreography scene, a live performance series entitled “Somethin’ 2 Snack On.” Snack Break seeks to pay homage to the integrity of African American vernacular dance while also challenging the way audiences consume street dance through the utilization of theatrics, the concert stage, multi-media, and contemporary movement practices. They aim to build community through the power of storytelling and the excavation of intersectional identities.
“We don’t want to lose the dance to the athletic aspects with more power than style or freedom of expression. What I fell in love with was dance. Tricks are cool and I love pushing my body, but I want the dance, not how long I can spin on my head. We are teaching dancers how to accentuate the music and use what you possess to be even better,” he said. “We don’t need to be overstimulated. Express yourself to the music. We must feel it, relate to it, and understand it. I would rather watch somebody complement a song than watch you spin on your head for seven hours!”
Breaking and the Olympics
Culbreath, like many established breakers, is waiting to see whether breaking being an Olympic sport will hurt or harm the dance form. “When it is put on a stage like that, you need to set up an infrastructure to funnel it back into the community to make an impact, so it wasn’t just a flash in the pan event. I don’t want it to become elitist like in the 1980s when media robbed the foundations of breaking and we needed to hit a big reset,” he commented. “We knew there would be societal backlash and there will be people who try to emulate the Olympians without training and get hurt. Breaking, at its core, it an underground culture where no one was better than anyone else. We were just having conversations through movement.”
He stresses that the culture belongs to Black and Latinx people and how important it is for that cultural tie and history to be studied and understood. “I would rather have a four-year course in hip hop at universities. Most of us aren’t going to the Olympics, but I would prefer to be a senior professor. These are the conversations we need to be having.”
“I believe no one who isn’t Black or LatinX is a guest in the hip hop dance culture if they uphold it because they have as much ownership of it because true dance is predicated on inclusiveness. I do think it was more important in the early days that those of us who are part of the culture determined who comes and who goes. It was critical for its survival at the time. Now it is about practicing the art form with respect and showing respect to those who came before you and created this dance culture,” he communicated.
Culbreath wonders what impact breaking being in this past summer’s Olympics will have not only on breaking, but on other dance forms. “The underground scene will always have breaking, popping, locking, etc. It will be interesting to see if other art forms pursue being in the Olympics. In one way, it is almost like a step up from the X Games, but I think I would have felt better if it had made it to the X Games. The most important thing is that we never lose the dance. I don’t want to see you spin a million times and that is what many people were looking for in the Olympics rather than how musical the round was. You can teach a monkey how to do the physical moves, but did the person’s dance make you feel some kind of way? How do you move other people by how you are dancing and how you are relating to the music?” he asked.
