Locking was originally danced to traditional funk music, such as that produced or performed by James Brown. Funk music is still commonly favored by locking dancers, and used by many competitions such as the locking division of Juste Debout. Locking movements create a strong contrast towards the many fast moves that are otherwise performed quite continuously, combined with mime style performance and acting towards the audience and other dancers. Locking includes quite a lot of acrobatics and physically demanding moves, such as landing on one's knees and the split. These moves often require knee protection of the sort.
Clothes style can consist of loud striped socks, pegged pants that stopped at the knees, bright colorful satin shirts with big collars, big colorful bow ties, gigantic Apple Boy hats, and white gloves.
Later locking became part of the growing hip hop dance culture, and has influenced styles such as popping, B-boying and liquidizing. Locking is still quite popular. Dancers are trying to keep it alive.