When he jumps to his feet and backs out of the circle, other break dancers step in, showing off the acrobatic moves of the street technicians who paired up with boomboxes and rappers during the '80s. In minute-long bursts, the breakers whiz around on their heads, their legs churning like eggbeaters. One tall dancer springs onto his head and forearms, spinning vertically like an electric screwdriver. Another lands on the floor in a spread-eagle position, swiveling around to propel himself on his shoulder.

Break dancing is back – that is to say, back in the mainstream, though its fans say it never went away. The aggressive inner-city art form has found new expression with the largely white suburban crowd at local raves and at all-night dance parties like "Buzz," held Friday nights in the Ballroom, a former warehouse. Break dancers can also be spotted Wednesday nights at the Edge, host to the rave-styled "Pollen"; Thursdays at Tracks, home to hard-thumping house music; and occasionally on Saturday nights at the Circle's "Deep" party.

For the first time in years, a profusion of break dancers is showing up on music videos. In Run-DMC vs. Jason Nevins' "It's Like That" video, two multiracial dance crews battle one another – competing with gymnastic feats, jittering robotic moves or oozing, slithering ones – to Nevins' remix of the 1983 rap classic. A new Propellerheads video features break dancing, and old-school breakers spinning on cardboard are on view in the clip for Fatboy Slim's "Going Out of My Head."

On a recent segment of "MTV Live," host Carson Daly marked break dancing's resurgence with scorching studio performances by Q-Unique and Sweepy, two dancers with Rock Steady Crew, perhaps the oldest and most popular touring break-dance company.

The advertising world has jumped on the eye-catching dance form and its appeal to young people. A fast-paced new commercial for Coca-Cola features guys spiraling on their heads with their legs blurring like buzz saws. The commercial was developed by the Widen & Kennedy ad agency; having scoped out clubs in several cities, it noticed a break-dancing revival. "In using that in the ads, we're trying to reflect what's important to the youth that we're targeting," says Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan McDermott. "We really wanted to be fresh and make sure the ads reflect the most recent trends."

Twenty years after its popular breakthrough, break dancing is appealing to a new generation. Philadelphia's Rennie Harris, whose group Rennie Harris/PureMovement brings hip-hop dance to the concert stage, reports a steady interest in his classes, of which break dancing is a component. The producers of "Jam on the Groove," an internationally touring break-dance show by GhettOriginal Productions, say their stage is swarmed with amateur breakers – even father-son duos – in the open jam after each performance. (Sponsored by fashion giant Calvin Klein, the show heads next to Japan, home to a keen interest in all things hip-hop.)

The second annual B-Boy Masters/Pro-Am Conference in Miami wrapped up four days of workshops recently on such topics as graffiti and music, as well as dance competitions (or "battles"); participants attended from around the world. And in London last fall, the PlayStation UK break-dance Championship attracted some 2,000 breakers. Break dancing also surfaced recently at Arena Stage's Old Vat Theater in Washington, which showcased the African Continuum Theatre Company's "Hip Hop Nightmares of Jujube Brown."

The return of break dancing may come as a surprise to those who assumed the form tripped on its own fat, untied shoelaces and died years ago. Some suspect the revival is due to a rekindling of interest in the '80s.

"We've already eaten up the '70s," says Stephen Hill, MTV's director of music programming. "What used to take 20 years to change in the culture – in fashion, music, et cetera – now only takes 10 years. That's why we're seeing the '80s come back so quickly. It used to take 20 years to look back and say, `Oh my gosh – how did we ever do that?' " He notes that the attitude toward break dancing, however, is not ironic. "It's looking back with a fondness," he says, "rather than with tongue-in-cheek disdain."

The key to why breakdancing is regaining respect – and ripping out into suburbia – is in its hallowed place as a foundation of hip-hop culture, which crosses racial divides. Break dancing, originally called rocking, got its start in the '70s in the black and Hispanic communities in the Bronx, where people brought their turntables to block parties and park gatherings. To get people to dance, someone would grab a microphone and start ad-lib chanting – or rapping – over the music. The dee-jays who spun the music extended the rhythm section, or "break", of a song by playing two records on adjacent turntables, setting the needle down on the same beat sequence of the second record as the first came to an end. This way, the rapper – then known as the emcee – could rhyme to the beat without competing with too much instrumentation.

This gave the dancers – dubbed break-boys, or B-boys and B-girls – rhythms to experiment with. They abandoned an upright stance, spinning and twisting on flattened cartons or pieces of linoleum. As the other elements of hip-hop culture – graffiti art, rapping and deejaying – developed, the dancing grew more complicated.

Break Dance absorbed moves from jazz and Latin dance, from ballet and capoeira, the high-kicking Afro Brazilian martial art, fusing all into an endlessly creative eruption. Popping and locking – the ability to snap one's joints as if they were strung together by elastic – became highly prized skills. Break dancing is essentially a competitive art: Dancers would engage in "battles", trying to one-up another with ever more daring and flamboyant movements and displays of acrobatics – back flips, handsprings, spinning on heads, hands and shoulders. Given the heavy demands on the upper body, the dancers were primarily male.

For inner-city kids with little exposure to gymnastics or formal dance, break dancing provided a means of self-expression and physical release. Anybody with a boombox and a strip of cardboard to lay on the sidewalk could break – though those lacking experience sometimes paid for experimenting on unforgiving cement.

Break dancing merits a full page of discussion in the forthcoming six-volume International Encyclopedia of Dance from Oxford University Press. In it, writer Sally Banes observes that when breaking moved from the streets and clubs to theatres in the mid-'80s, it became irrevocably diluted.

"While the dance gained theatrical brilliance," Banes writes, "it lost much of its original currency and vitality, as well as the richness of its social meaning. By the 1990s, it had all but disappeared."

Or had it?

"It never really died," says Ken "Swift" Gabbert, 31, a longtime member of Rock Steady Crew; he and other dancers went on to form GhettoOriginal Productions and develop "Jam on the Groove."

"It was so aggressive and raw, it was ridiculed in the mainstream," Gabbert says. "They just milked the aerial and spins. When video producers wanted to shoot the dance they just showed guys spinning on their heads; they never really focused on the dance. That's why it didn't get much respect."

The commercial growth of rap music overshadowed the other elements of hip-hop, Gabbert says. In other words, rap was deemed the moneymaker. "You can't mass-produce dance. Graffiti has a negative image and the deejay isn't needed as much with music sampling. Rap makes the most money."

Break dance's diehards are a stalwart and faithful bunch who see the form not just as recreation but as a component of a clean-living, fun-loving and racially tolerant lifestyle.

"I don't even want to hear that nonsense that hip-hop culture is all about baggy jeans and wearing a bandanna on your head," says Richard "Speedy Legs" Fernandez, one of the organizers of the Miami B-Boy Masters conference. "It's not a black thing – it's an everybody thing."

Events like the conference, he says, are about "creating our own industry, to get the children in the hip-hop culture and prevent them from falling into negativity."

Fernandez and others also prize break for its artistic value. "This is the new American modern dance form. Just as Martha Graham revolutionized modern dance, hip-hop dance is the next thing," says Margaret Selby, one of the "Jam on the Groove" producers. "A hundred years from now this dance will be mainstream – it'll be accepted just like tap dance is being accepted now." Break dancing's newest converts are a rather curious mix of baggy-clothed ravers, whose pants droop at their waists and spill over their shoes, and B-boy look-alikes in Adidas track suits and ski caps. It may strike some as odd that raves – born in Britain – would foster renewed appreciation for an overlooked American art form. Yet though raves evolved from a different impulse, they are in a sense a natural breeding ground for a break-dance revival.

Raves, too, rely on deejay mixes and thumping beats, and have been a siren pull on energetic youths. Raves arrived in the United States during the early '90s as a techno music diversified and grew in Britain. A problematic part of the scene has been the use of the drug Ecstasy, described by some of its users as "Psychedelic amphetamine" that reputedly enhances the rave experience.

But drugs and break dancing don't mix, insist the ravers-turned-breakers.

"It's a straight-edge culture," says "Buzz" regular Stephen Blackwell, 28. He's wearing a knit ski hat and dark sweat suit. "You can't dance when you're all messed up."

Break dancing, says Ives, at 31 a veteran among the throngs of ravers, who are mostly in their twenties, is "a spiritual experience... I go out and I'm working on myself, on my art."

Jay Poleon, 19, is one of the few black dancers at "Buzz." He says the break dancers are more diverse at the raves in his hometown of Philadelphia. He's been break dancing for only about nine months, he says, though he's been going to raves for two years. Why did he start breaking? "It's something new," he says. "You can express your body in different ways... I tried it and I was hooked."

Ives, who goes by the name Jiggidy Jivez on the dance floor, says he first encountered breaking while he was tending bar at Tracks. He'd always been interested in dance – he studied ballet as a teen, and performed modern dance occasionally with the dance department of Mary Washington College, near his home of Fredericksburg. But when he saw break dancing he was smitten.

"I just saw it and said, "that's it – that's what I like." He started copying the moves he saw, practising on the sidelines at the club. One night an "Old-schooler" – Charles Gore, a former break dance performer – approached him to offer some pointers.

"The biggest correction he gave me was 'Relax, relax, relax – you look like you're constipated," Ives says. He began working with Gore to better his technique, though he acknowledges much remains beyond his grasp.

Gore, 33, says he started break dancing in the early '80's, when he was a deejay at the old 9:30 club. The adrenaline-charged feel of it, he says, is close to intoxicating.

"It's extreme. Like being on a roller coaster when it drops," he says. "It's a total draw on your muscles."

Gore danced with a couple of "crews" – the Warpath Braves, the Supreme Team – performing in places like the Washington Convention Center and the Kennedy Center. As popular interest in break dancing died in the late '80s, performing opportunities dried up, and Gore took to brushing off his moves only at local clubs.

"One night some young kid saw me poppin'", he recalls, "and he said, 'Man, that's an old dance.'" But when Gore finished his routine, his critic changed his view. "He was like, 'Can you teach me that?' I said 'No, that's an old dance, shorty,'"