We’re now more than halfway through the 2024 Summer Olympics, and while the staple sports such as swimming and gymnastics have been completed, Paris still has a lot left in store. Anticipation is particularly high when it comes to breaking, the Games’ newest sport. Breaking, also known as breakdancing, may ring a bell to anyone who was around in the ’80s: the intricate footwork, the physics-defying stunts, the style. But the art form has developed since its earlier days—people aren’t carrying cardboard boxes around anymore, though parachute pants have certainly made a strong comeback. On Friday, this style of dance will make its debut at the Paris Olympics, with women athletes (also known as b-girls) competing first, followed by the men, or b-boys, on Saturday. The action will take place at the Place de la Concorde, Paris’ largest public square and the Olympics’ cool-kid corner, where the other “urban” events—BMX, skateboarding, etc.—have taken place.
With the introduction of any Olympic sport, a lot of questions arise: How did this event arrive at the Olympics, and why does it feel at least four decades too late? How can you standardize something that’s judged differently at various tournaments around the world? And why isn’t this sport, which has drawn enough hype that even Snoop Dogg is excited for it, returning for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics? Here’s everything you need to know about breaking at the Olympics.
I thought it was called “breakdancing”? Why do they call it “breaking”?
While it might seem like a new term, breakdancing has actually always—and originally—been referred to as breaking. The counterculture hip-hop dance form, which emerged from Black and Latino communities in the Bronx of New York City in the 1970s, was born when people would dance to a “break” in a track played at parties and gatherings. This was the dawn of hip-hop music, identifiable by both the reliance on a loop of a sample and then the satisfying break—an instrumental interlude when everything but the hefty percussion drops out—in a track. Then, hip-hop pioneers found ways to extend the break, which meant extended breaking on the dance floor. As b-boy and hip-hop historian Alien Ness attests in an episode of Vox’s Today, Explained podcast, “once you start extending the break, you have the birth of hip-hop music.” The concept is somewhat evident in this clip in the classic 1984 film Beat Street: You can hear the DJ switch to a sample with no vocals, and then continue to mix the part of the track that is solely percussion—that’s the break. The term “breakdancing” was used commercially to explain the art form to the masses, but the original term is preferred by dancers and is seen as a more direct and respectful nod to the birth of hip-hop culture. As Team USA b-girl Sunny Choi put it to Time: “If you call it breakdancing, you’re not a breaker.”
So, how will breaking work on the Olympic stage?
Breaking will undergo a bracket-style order of operations. There will be two separate competitions for men and women, with 16 b-boys and 16 b-girls (though there will be a pre-qualifying battle between the 17th– and 16th-seed b-girls before the main event begins). The dancers will be placed into four groups of four that will go head-to-head in solo battles in a round-robin, meaning that, in these groups, every athlete will face off against every other athlete at least once (meaning: three battles per athlete in a group of four). Each battle in the round-robin will consist of two rounds, also called “throw downs,” where one breaker will typically get 60 seconds to improvise some moves to previously unheard music chosen by a DJ before the other competitor gets a chance to immediately respond. Whoever wins the best of the three rounds, per the judges’ scoring system, wins the battle. If there is a tie, the winner will be chosen by total number of votes from the judges.
The two best breakers of each group will then move on to the quarterfinals, or the “knockout” stage, where they will be seeded into a bracket, with the lower seed facing off against the higher seed. The knockout stage will have battles of three rounds, as opposed to two. From there, it works like a usual bracket where the winner of the battle moves on to the next round.*
Sounds simple enough, but how will it be judged? Is it kind of like gymnastics?
Not at all: There is no set routine planned out beforehand, so, unlike in gymnastics, there is no agreed degree of difficulty for a given routine. But, before I get into what the judges are looking for, I need to explain what they’ll be looking at. The World DanceSport Federation has designated three main elements of breaking: the top rock (this generally refers to all moves performed while the breaker is standing, which usually means intricate footwork); the freeze (when an athlete holds a pose in an unusual position, like on their head or hands, during their performance); and the down rock (all parts of the performance that occur on the floor). The down rock holds the most identifiable parts of breakdancing—power moves like headspins, airflares, and windmills.
Nine judges will look out for five WDSF-created criteria that each count for 20 percent of the final score: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. Technique involves certain moves having specific criteria, such as flexing or pointing your toes, but will also include the judges’ perception of the breakers’ athleticism, form, spatial awareness, and so forth. Vocabulary means that the dancers should aim to perform a variety of moves in multiple positions—meaning you’d want a good combo of top rock and down rock. Execution will hinge on how cleanly the moves are done and how distinct each move is from the one before and after it—the overall routine should flow, but not blur together. This is crucial, because there’s an art to the build of a breaking composition, which usually moves like a narrative, accelerating up to an explosive action punctuated by a freeze. Good execution also involves not falling, or “crashing,” of course.
Finally, musicality and originality are a given—it still is a competitive dance form, after all. The result will be one vote from each judge per round, in favor of either competitor, derived from their given percentages. The odd number of judges prevents the event of a tie.*
But enough with the cold calculations. The important thing to note is that breaking is about a combination of style and technicality. According to ESPN, “the moves must be adapted to their personal styles and improvised to music in order to secure each judge’s vote.” This is why the improvisational element is key: You’re literally responding to your opponent—if they have an airflare, but you have a more intricate variation, you’re likely going to throw it out.
Sounds intense! Are there deductions? I’m sure battling one-on-one can get heated.
Dance battling is a gritty space that definitely gets heated from time to time. Though braggadocio is encouraged and respected between dancers, each judge will have three “misbehavior buttons” categorizing any as mild, moderate, severe. A mild misbehavior, consisting of accidents and unintentional actions, will result in a 3-percent point deduction; moderate misbehaviors, consisting of intentional nonviolent acts, will result in a 6-percent point deduction; and severe misbehaviors—intentional acts that are aggressive, violent, or sexual in nature—will result in a 10-percent point deduction.
This all sounds really cool! I’m sure everyone in the dance community is happy about this.
The story of how breaking got into the Olympics is fascinating—it involves the governing body known as the International DanceSport Federation rebranding as the WDSF and bringing in a former International Olympic Committee veteran consultant to help them get dance into the Olympics, and following that consultant’s recommendation to shift the organization’s focus from ballroom and Latin dancing to its unsung dynamic gem: breaking. It wasn’t until the WDSF—which is still trying to get ballroom and Latin dancing into the Games, by the way—got breaking into the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Argentina, where it became a social media hit, that the IOC was unable to ignore the sport anymore.
Still, as is to be expected, there are mildly annoying classists who argue that breaking is not a sport (unlike, say, something like squash). But they’re not the only ones with reservations: Even some original breakers have expressed worries over cheapening and turning their art into a codified sport. Naturally, there was always going to be a question of how this form of expression—which is judged or regarded differently from tournament to tournament—can maintain its authenticity when parsed into standardized judgeable components. Take Ken Swift, an original member of the Rock Steady Crew, who told Sports Illustrated that “it’s not a sport,” but “an art form that we created with our own terminology and heritage and tradition,” likening its burgeoning identity as a sport to calling “basketball a dance now after 75 years.” In 2017, more than 2,000 people even signed breaker Serouj Aprahamian’s petition to stop the sport’s inclusion in the games and the WDSF’s attempts to push it there.
There’s also concern that breaking’s wide popularity could leave the people who founded it behind. The New York City Rap Tour brought breaking to other international cities, like Paris, in the early ’80s. But in the late ’80s and early ’90s, breaking fell out of fashion when the era of gangsta rap started to define hip-hop culture. Around that time, international dance festivals and tournaments started to pop up: one of the most well known, Battle of the Year, started in Germany in 1990, while Red Bull started hosting competitions in 2001. Given the dance’s universality, the top dancers to watch at this year’s Games come from all around the world, not just from the places with deep cultural ties to breaking. As Imani Kai Johnson, an associate dance professor at the University of California, Riverside, put it to Time: “My investment is in hip-hop as a culture with Africanist aesthetic foundations, and not as a sport that is increasingly detached from any cultural context.” Similarly, b-girl Sunny Choi warns competitors and watchers to not forget the sport’s origins: “Breaking comes from Black and brown communities in the Bronx. When it goes to the Olympics, we know those aren’t the ones who are going to get all the money. I think it’s our responsibility, as the first breakers who go, to be mindful of this.”
On the flipside, plenty are excited for breaking to get the massive global exposure that the Olympics is known to grant lesser–known athletic heroes. It’s been a long time coming: People have been petitioning for breaking to be considered an Olympic sport since the ’80s, when a group of breakers joined Lionel Richie for the closing ceremony performance at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
So who should we be looking out for?
Among Team USA’s b-girls, there’s Choi, 35, who gave up her six-figure corporate job at Estée Lauder to compete in the games; and Logistx, 21, who you might have seen compete as a part of the youth hip-hop group The Lab, which won NBC’s World of Dance in Season 2. They are seeded eighth and tenth, respectively. Seeded in the top three spots for Paris are China’s b-girl 671, who is only 18 years old. Even younger is the second seed, Lithuania’s Nicka, who was 16 years old when she qualified, and is now 17 years old. The third seed is Japan’s Ami, 25; right on her heels at fourth seed is Japan’s Ayumi, this year’s oldest breaker at 41. Both legs of the Olympic Qualifiers for the b-girls were podium sweeps for Japan, though Japan’s b-girl Riko was the only one who finished in the top 10 in the series but failed to qualify overall.
As for b-boys, all eyes are on Japan’s Shigekix, 22, one of Japan’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony, who is seeded at the top spot and has been name-dropped by plenty of breakers as the one to watch out for. The other breaker seen as a strong contender is Canada’s Phil Wizard, 27, seeded second. Team USA’s b-boy Jeffro, 29, is seeded third, though USA’s Victor Montalvo, 30, only seeded eighth, is also considered to be a top competitor, having won the 2023 world title. The hometown favorite might be France’s Dany Dann, 36, seeded seventh. And, like b-girl Nicka, Australia’s 15th seed, b-boy J Attack, is only 16 years old.
Gosh, well I can’t wait for the sport to be back on its home turf in the USA for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics!
Well, actually …
Oh no.
Indeed. Since 2020, every hosting city has been allowed to bring new sports into their games. The Los Angeles planning committee shortlisted breaking, cricket, baseball and softball, flag football, lacrosse, karate, kickboxing, squash, and motorsport. In the end, the five that were chosen are cricket, lacrosse, flag football, squash, and softball/baseball. This means that breaking’s Olympic run was cut short before it even had a chance to prove itself. However, breaking will still be a part of the 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, and the slate for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics will be decided by 2027, meaning breaking still has a chance to rear its head(spin) again.
Correction, Aug. 9, 2024: This article originally stated, per a review of the Olympics’ official rules, that all battles will consist of three rounds, and that criteria-specific scores will be shown to audiences. In the event as broadcast, the round-robin battles have two rounds, while the knockout battles have three; furthermore, criteria-specific scores were not shown to audiences.
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