“Breakers” was commissioned for the Boston Ballet as part of the Kennedy Center’s Ballet Commissioning Project. As Cunningham explained in a program note, “I choreographed the dance on my company, continuing to utilize movement ideas that are interesting to me now, rather than being concerned with a dance intended for classically trained dancers. The result may be two variations of the same dance, one made for my company, the other a translation for the Boston Ballet dancers by Chris Komar and Robert Swinston, the Boston dancers assuming the complexities of the gestures in their way based on their training and commitments.” MCDC premiered the dance on March 9, 1994 at New York City Center; Boston Ballet gave their first performance two weeks later at the Kennedy Center on March 22, 1994.