How does a movement emerge that, at some point, becomes unmistakably associated with a particular person?

The obvious assumption would be that a dancer consciously tries to invent something new. A movement is developed, refined, and eventually becomes their Signature Move. Yet the conversations I have conducted so far as part of SIGNATURES reveal a far more complex picture.

Signature Moves can emerge in very different ways. Sometimes their story begins with a concrete idea. But they can just as easily originate in a mistake, a fall, an existing movement, a slight shift, or an unexpected moment within improvisation.

Originality therefore appears less as a single moment of invention and more as a process.

When a Mistake Becomes Form

Poe One offers a particularly striking example through the story of his Air Chair.

The movement did not originally emerge as a consciously designed new move. Poe One was attempting a Captain Hook on a carpet. The movement did not work as planned: instead of continuing to glide over his head, his body compressed, his legs went up, and he fell.

The reaction of the people around him caught his attention. They had seen something in that moment that surprised even him. Poe One began to investigate the position again and gradually developed the control necessary to reproduce it intentionally.

A failed attempt gradually became a form of its own.

Over time, the movement developed not only technical precision but also a concrete image. Poe One describes the Air Chair as “Cobra Attacking Eagle.” In his imagination, the movement becomes a fight scene: the cobra rises, fixes its opponent in its gaze, and strikes toward the eagle’s neck.

The position of the hand, the gaze, and the moment after the attack are all part of this image. After the strike, he lowers himself back toward the floor and pauses briefly—as though waiting for the venom to take effect.

What from the outside might be read simply as a freeze therefore contains, for him, an internal action and a specific intention.

The original mistake was only the starting point. Through repetition, control, style, musicality, and the development of his own imagery, an accidental moment became a movement with a recognizable character.

Crash and Create

Bruce Wayne describes a similar process—and in his case, the moment of emergence can even be traced back to a specific battle.

At “Soul on Top,” a crew battle in Basel, one of Bruce Wayne’s Signatures emerged from an actual “mistake.” During his run, he performed a movement he refers to in our conversation as “la baguette.” He lost control, fell backward, and immediately returned into the movement.

Bruce recalls:

“J’ai fait baguette, je suis tombé et je suis remonté.” (“I did the baguette movement, I fell, and I came back up.”)

The reaction of his crew was immediate. During the final round, he heard everyone shout. For Bruce, this moment is one of the clearest examples of his principle of “Crash and Create”: a movement does not emerge despite the mistake, but through it.

After the battle, his crewmate Yung asked whether the fall had been intentional. Bruce said no. Yung replied:

“Mais vas-y, garde-le.” (“Come on, keep it.”)

Bruce tried the movement again. What had initially been an accident became reproducible and eventually developed into a movement through which others recognized him.

“Crash and Create” therefore describes an attitude in which a mistake does not necessarily need to be corrected or concealed. It can become material.

The decisive question is no longer:

How can I avoid this mistake?

But rather:

What happens if I investigate this exact moment?

Can I repeat it? Can I control it? Can I change it? Can I integrate it into my own movement language in such a way that an accident becomes a decision?

This attitude also shifts the understanding of originality. Something new does not necessarily emerge by abandoning all existing movements. Often, it develops through remixing, reorganizing, and making small changes to existing material.

An angle changes. A transition is placed differently. A familiar movement is connected to another rhythm, another quality, or another bodily logic.

The difference can be small—yet its effect can be fundamental.

Not Everything New Is Consciously Sought

In my conversation with JB, also known as John Smith, the idea also emerges that one’s own Signatures do not necessarily result from a conscious plan.

He describes several of his movements as the result of falls, unexpected hand positions, or deviations that occurred while dancing. Only afterward does it become apparent that something distinctive lies within them.

His position becomes even more fundamental when we speak about originality.

For JB, a person does not first have to prove their individuality through the most unusual movements possible. Every person already brings something of their own.

Speaking about simply copying another person, he says:

“T’es une personne originale.” (“You are an original person.”)

And a little later:

“Un être humain […] c’est un être quand même assez créatif.” (“A human being […] is, after all, a fairly creative being.”)

For precisely this reason, exact reproduction seems relatively uninteresting to him. If we are already different as human beings and possess the ability to develop and transform things ourselves, why should we try to move as precisely as possible like someone else?

From this perspective, developing one’s own style may be less about constantly searching for novelty.

Rather, it is about allowing existing knowledge to pass through one’s own body, experiences, and perception—and giving it enough space to change.

Originality is therefore not only produced. It can also be uncovered.

From Signature Move to Signature Mode

At the same time, the question arises as to whether a Signature can always be reduced to a single move.

Feel shifts this idea significantly. For him, it is less about distinguishing between Signature Moves and other movements.

“You are in the signature mode.”

Everything a person does can therefore be shaped by their individual way of organizing movement.

A recognizable handwriting is then expressed not only through a spectacular move, but equally through rhythm, timing, transitions, postures, forms, and the way individual movements are connected to one another.

Feel uses the image of writing to describe this.

He compares his way of developing movement to hieroglyphic writing. A single sign does not necessarily stand for only one word. It can carry a broader context, a situation, or several meanings at once.

He approaches Breaking in a similar way:

“It’s less about single moves. It’s a sequence […] like hieroglyphic writing.”

What matters, then, is not only the individual sign, but the way signs are combined.

Applied to movement, this means that a single move can be characteristic. But the actual Signature can also lie in the relationships between several movements—in a recurring way of arranging, connecting, and structuring them in time.

Feel therefore also speaks of Signature Patterns.

The analogy to handwriting becomes particularly clear here. Two people can use the same letters and still write in completely different ways. It is not the alphabet alone that creates handwriting, but the way lines are drawn, spaces are set, forms are connected, and rhythms are organized. And above all, what is being said.

Systems Instead of Fixed Movements

Link opens up another perspective through his work with what he calls Matrices.

Rather than developing only fixed sequences, he works with movement systems: structures within which different decisions and combinations become possible.

Under these conditions, a Signature does not have to emerge as a single, unchanging form.

It can also arise from a system that continuously produces new variations while still carrying a recognizable personal logic.

This further expands the idea of authorship. A personal handwriting may lie not only in a particular movement, but also in the rules, relationships, and possibilities from which movements emerge.

Originality Does Not Emerge from Nothing

These different stories cannot be reduced to a single method—and that is precisely what makes them meaningful.

A Signature Move can emerge from a mistake. From conscious research. From the transformation of existing movements. From repetition. From improvisational systems. Or from a personal approach to movement that develops over many years.

What becomes increasingly clear, however, is this:

Originality does not mean creating something entirely detached from everything that came before.

Breaking is a culture of transmission. Movements are seen, learned, shared, and passed from body to body. Every dancer works within a history that has already begun.

The decisive question, then, may not be whether a movement has influences.

But rather what happens to those influences.

When does learning become transformation? When does a variation become a form of its own? When does an accidental moment become recognizable? And what role does the community play in observing, naming, remembering, and eventually associating a movement with a particular person?

The conversations show that there is no universal formula for this.

But they also show that a Signature rarely emerges in a single instant.

It develops between accident and decision, between influence and transformation, between repetition and change—and between the person who moves and the people who recognize something distinctive within that movement.