TThe sport of breaking – competitive breakdancing – will make its Olympic debut in Paris. Yes, breaking has come a long way from an early ’80s pop culture fad that seemed to go the way of Chia Pet. “Breaking is amazing because it’s part of hip-hop culture and [in] Hip-hop culture, no matter what color you are, who you are, where you’re from, is inclusive,” says American Breaker Victor Montalvo. “That’s what I love about breaking and that’s what I want to show the world. It’s all about peace, love, togetherness and fun.”
With a dose of gold, silver and bronze. Here’s what you need to know about the first Olympic event.
Wait, why is this called breaking and not breakdancing?
Breakers – more colloquially called B-boys or B-girls – don’t appreciate the term breakdance. “If you call it breakdancing, you are not a breakdancer,” says Sunny Choi, aka B-girl Sunny, who will compete for the USA in Paris. At parties in the Bronx in the 1970s, dancers would hit the floor during the instrumental interludes, or breaks, of records, giving its name to the break, one of the pillars of hip-hop.
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The mass media began calling it breakdancing to broadly connote that dancing was involved, but the term conjures up an outdated image of the sport. Then Montalvo, B-boy Victor, tries to politely correct people. “They have all these stereotypes about what breaking was back then,” he says. “Dancing on the cardboard, gyrating your butt. But it evolved. The dance is stronger. The movements are bigger. It’s more defined and structured.”
How on earth did breaking become an Olympic sport?
Although breakbreaking faded from pop culture consciousness by the end of the 1980s, competitions soon began to thrive around the world. Battle of the Year, the first major global event, began in Germany in 1990, and Red Bull entered the mix in 2001, helping to organize the competitive circuit. The International Olympic Committee, always looking for new sports to attract younger audiences, added breaking to the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. The event was a success and, in December 2020, the IOC announced that breaking would be added to the Olympic program in Paris, home to a strong breaking scene: in 1982, the New York City Rap Tour stopped in Paris during its tour of Europe, introducing the pillars of hip-hop to France and the world.
When is the competition?
Battle of the B-girls on Friday, August 9th, starting at 10am ET The B-boys go the next day, August 10th, also at 10am ET
Where in Paris is the break taking place?
At Place de la Concorde, the largest public square in Paris, which also hosts freestyle BMX, skateboarding and 3×3 basketball. Call it an urban sports venue. Or where the cool kids hang out.
How is the Olympic break scored?
Unlike many Olympic sports – equestrian, modern pentathlon, gymnastics with its impenetrable points system – breaking is very easy to follow! On the men’s side, 16 breakers from around the world face each other in a one-day tournament; with the addition of Manizah Talash, from Refugee Olympic Team, For the competition, there will be 17 breakers on the women’s side. The event starts with a round-robin. Competitors are divided into groups, and each breaker faces the other dancers in their pool. The two best breakers from each group advance to the quarterfinals.
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In the quarterfinals, the knockout phase begins. The competitors face each other head-to-head, in the best of three rounds format. Each breaker alternates spinning, turning, and shuffling for about 30 to 50 seconds in a round. A panel of nine judges – an odd number to break ties – decides who wins each round, basing their decisions on a combination of five equally weighted factors. The first is technique, which includes athleticism and body control. The second is vocabulary, or the variety of movements of a dancer. Third is execution, in which the competitor with the highest score, according to the World DanceSport Federation rulebook, “demonstrates a greater ability to execute their movements distinctly and with a high degree of cleanliness, minimizing slips, falls or falls.” So there is musicality, for which the judges are looking for rhythms and movements synchronized with the music and, finally, originality, or spontaneity, personality and innovation.
Whoever dances best, in the eyes of the majority of the judges, wins the round. The best-of-three round battles continue until the gold medal match, which will take place a little after 3:20 pm ET on August 9th (B-girls) and August 10th (B-boys).
What are some important terms you should know?
A brief introduction to the language: upper rock is the movement of the feet and arms that a breaker makes while standing. Rock below It’s the action on the ground. Watch freezes—when dancers pause in the middle of a routine, often in a difficult position, such as on their head or hands.
Power moves are important. I asked Montalvo to define a power movement. He got up from the chair, made a small rock at the top, then turned his body on his hands and froze upside down, with his triceps bulging. In other words, it is a maneuver that requires impressive strength.
Breakers use hand gestures to annoy their opponent. If a B-girl starts hitting the ground, she thinks her opponent is beating, or ruining everything. If a B-boy positions both arms parallel to his body, parallel to each other, and moves them up and down – as if they were his upper and lower teeth chewing a steak – he thinks his opponent is biting, or copy movements. If the breakers point to your ears during a battle, they are telling you that the opponent is dancing out of tune (not hearing the music).
O smoke gesture is pretty self-explanatory. “That means,” says Montalvo, “I smoked you.”
Do breakers choose their own music, like ice dancers?
No! The DJ selects the music for a round.
Who are the breakers to watch?
On the B-girl side, Choi earned her place in the Olympics by winning the Pan American Games in Chile in November. A graduate of Penn, Choi, 35, gave up her corporate career at Estée Lauder, where she held a six-figure executive role, to pursue the Olympic break. Logan “Logistx” Edra, 21, is the other American qualifier. Dominika Banevič of Lithuania won the Breaking World Championships in September in Belgium: at 16, B-girl Nicka was the youngest competitor in the field (she is now 17 and has qualified for Paris). Fatima Zahra Elmamouny of Morocco became the first African woman to qualify for the Olympic Games when she won her continental championship a year ago. “I struggled a lot in my early days because people had this idea that breaking was just for boys,” she told Royal Moroccan Federation of Aerobics, Fitness, Hip Hop and Related Sports.“I wanted to prove them wrong, so I stuck with it.”
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For B-boys, Montalvo is a threat: he won the Red Bull BC One 2022 event, an important international competition, in New York City, and took first place in the World Breaking Championship a year ago. (B-boy Jeffro,—Jeffrey Louis of Houston—earned the second American spot at the Games). Montalvo’s father and twin brother learned breakbreaking in Mexico and taught it to Montalvo and his cousin after they immigrated to Kissimmee, Florida, where Montalvo grew up. Montalvo started breaking when he was 6 years old. But his father was also part of a death metal group, so Montalvo had to make a choice. “It was death metal… because I was in that world,” says Montalvo. “Or it was breaking. I chose to break. B-boy Victor was born.
Montalvo lists Japan’s B-boy Shigekix as one of his main contenders for gold. “He’s like a little Terminator,” says B-boy Victor. “He just doesn’t stop, he just keeps going. You’re like, ‘Man, I hope this guy falls.’ But that just doesn’t happen.” Phil Wizard, from Canada, is another rival. “When we fight, it’s like he wins, I win, he wins, I win,” says Montalvo. “So it’s really cool because we keep leveling each other up.”
This all sounds great! So where will the break take place at the Los Angeles Olympics in ’28?
Surprisingly, breaking is not on the Los Angeles Olympic program, although Southern California developed its own robust breaking scene when it took off in the ’70s and ’80s. Some breakers point the finger at the World DanceSport Federation, the sport’s governing body. during the Games, accusing her of not promoting the sport. Others blame a powerful American institution: the NFL, which threw its weight behind flag football, which took a place in L.A.’s program.
But if breaking is a big hit in Paris – and it could be, given the fun stage names, historic venue and dancefloor action – it could return in 2032 in Brisbane. Start rocking now to qualify.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
