Breakdancing Bear

About

The Breakdancing Bear GIF and its variants are mostly found as avatars on forums the world over.

Origin

We Know Something You Don’t Know is a song from the 2003 album Music for the Mature B-Boy, from the Southampton artist, DJ Format. It was released as the first single from the album on 10 March 2003 and reached #73 in the UK Singles Chart.

The music video featured breakdancing animals, the most notable being a dancing bear. The video evolved online mostly in the form of short animated gifs--despite the fact that few knew where they came from or the song they were associated with. In particular, a break-dancing sequence involving the dancer in the bear suit was parodied and redrawn many times with different characters in his place.