CHARACTERICTICS

Popping is centered around the technique of popping (or hitting), which means to quickly contract and relax muscles to create a jerking effect (a pop or hit) in the popper's body. Popping can be concentrated to specific body parts, creating variants such as arm pops, leg pops, chest pops and neck pops,[11] and can vary in explosiveness. Stronger pops normally involve popping both the lower and upper body simultaneously.

Normally, pops are performed at regular intervals timed to the beat of the music, causing the dance to appear very rhythmic in nature, and are often combined with stopping and holding a pose right before the pop. A common technique of transitioning between poses is the so called dime stop, heavily utilized in robot dancing as well, which basically means to end a movement with an abrupt halt (thus "stopping on a dime"), after which a pop normally occurs.

Poses in popping make heavy use of angles, mime style movements and facial expressions, and the lower body has many ways to move around, from basic walking and stepping to the more complex and gravity defying styles of floating and electric boogaloo. Movements and techniques used in popping are generally focused on sharp contrasts, being either robotic and rigid or very loose and flowing.

As opposed to breakdance and its floor-oriented moves, popping is almost always performed standing up, except in rare cases when the dancer goes down on the knees or even lie down for a short while to a perform a special move.