Opinion

On Friday, breaking makes its Olympics debut at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. This form of dance, created by Black youths in the Bronx in the early 1970s, has traveled far from its birthplace. It is now studied, practiced and performed enthusiastically in countries all over the world — and has inspired Olympic-bound B-boys and B-girls, as the dancers are called, from a diverse group of countries including Canada, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea and France.

Over a half-century from its origins, breaking has become another American-grown art form that, much like jazz, other nations are now cultivating more imaginatively than we are.

Support for hip-hop education in the States typically comes from nonprofit organizations, after-school programs and for-profit dance schools. Despite breaking’s American roots, it has never been institutionally supported in public schools as part of a coordinated national policy. In France, however, an enlightened arts education effort is helping to identify and train the dancers who could represent the form’s future.

Consider what’s happening in Paris’s chic Third Arrondissement, about three miles northeast of the Olympic dance floor. The Lycée Turgot, a public high school housed in a majestic 19th-century building, has for the past seven years been home to France’s premier national hip-hop dance program.

Each year, about 50 dancers compete for admission to some 15 slots at Lycée Turgot’s “section of hip-hop dances excellence.” One-third of the dancers are breakers, while the rest dance in a style that the French call “debout” or “standing” dance, which includes popping, locking, house and “hip-hop newstyle.” The dancers admitted to the program receive three years of some of the best arts education any aspiring breaker could imagine.

In addition to taking courses in traditional academic study, Turgot’s hip-hop cohort focuses on developing the elements of breaking — mind, body and soul — by following an expansive hip-hop pedagogy. For up to 12 hours a week students train, learn technique and analyze hip-hop history and battle strategy, all while being instructed in respect, openness and self-knowledge.