2024-07-25 03:01:00
Of the 32 disciplines that will converge from this Friday at the Paris Olympic Games, there are 3 additional disciplines that were featured in Tokyo 2020: sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing. This shows the modernization of the concept of sport in this century and its relationship with another imaginary habitat. Reinforced in this edition by the only newcomer in the official program of the competition: break dancing or breaking. The Concorde park, located near the Champs Elysees, will host 32 “breakers” (the name generally given to these athletes) from 3 continents. On Friday, August 9, at 11 a.m. in Argentina, the women’s qualifying round will take place. Followed by the final, at 3 p.m. While the men will face each other the following day, at the same times.
The announcement of the new inclusion in the Japanese capital has barely concluded since the Summer Olympics came as a surprise to the sports community. The organizers justified this decision by saying that break dancing is part of a broader mission to attract “young people and reward creativity and athletic performance.” The venue where the competitions will be held is the bastion of urban sports and urban cultures in the “City of Light,” which is why the skateboarding, 3×3 basketball and BMX freestyle cycling events will also be held there. But Olympic breaking (its predecessor is the 2018 Youth Olympic Games) will have a short-lived appearance in the world’s largest sporting event. The Americans, its inventors, did not consider it for Los Angeles 2028.
It just so happens that the Parisian suburbs are the second world capital of hip hop, after New York (as confirmed by the French series Supreme NTM, released in 2022 on Netflix). Although it is a physical activity, initially conceived as a dance, break dancing is one of the fundamental pieces of hip-hop culture. In fact, it integrates the so-called “4 elements” founding this movement, along with MCing (the act of rapping), turntablism (role occupied by DJs) and graffiti. Many of the most famous rappers started out painting walls with spray paint or inventing choreographic movements with a warlike affront, trying to keep up with the beat of the songs played by disc jockeys from their turntables.
Last year, hip hop turned fifty. Its birth took place at a party held on August 11, 1973 in the Bronx, New York, organized and hosted by DJ Kool Herc. The Jamaican-born artist became popular for extending the instrumental sections of his sets by using two copies of the same vinyl. He would then make all the elements of a song disappear, except for the rhythmic part. This interruption became known as a “break,” and it became the moment when dancers showed off their steps and choreography. In the book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (2005), by journalist Jeff Chang, the pioneer recalls: “After that, there was no turning back. They always wanted break after break, after break, after break.” This scene is recreated in another Netflix series: The Get Down (2016).
Once the dance had a name, its practitioners began to be called b-boy and b-girl (a shortened version of break boy and break girl). And yes: the girls were protagonists of the beginnings of a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s, as a result of the continuous fights between gangs that took place in the ghettos of New York (an essential film to understand this polaroid is The Warriors, from 1979). In the end, they resolved their differences in dance battles that took place in competitive circles that they called “cyphers”. Frosty Freeze, Alen Ness and Clark Kent are among the precursors of break dancing. In turn, they were part of collectives, groups or “crews”. This is what the documentary delves into. The Freshest Kidsfrom 2002 (available on YouTube, also subtitled in Spanish).
The founders of breaking always remember that at the beginning the steps they did did not follow any specific structure. Although in their routines they incorporated movements from the funk singer James Brown, as well as from the dancers of the television show Soul Train and the dance group Electric Boogaloos. Of the 4 basic elements of hip hop, break dancing is where the Latin community had the greatest impact. To the point that the Puerto Ricans settled in the Bronx injected cadence and personality into the performances. That is why it is often said that they were the first b-boys. In that sense, one of their heroes is Crazy Legs, who was also part of the group Rock Steady Crew. They acted in mythical films such as Flashdance and Beat Street, with which they universalized this way of beating the street.
The Rock Steady Crew’s battles with other crews, including Starchild La Rock, revealed the influence of kung fu movie stunts on their choreography. This is how classic moves such as the windmill (turning the body on the ground without the feet touching it) or the handhope (placing one hand on the ground and jumping with it) were born. To these were added the top rock, footwork, power moves, bounce, rocking, and freeze. All of them are practiced by around 30 million b-boys and b-girls around the world. Since competitions were regulated, the Trivium System has been used to score breaking performances. It takes into account three factors: physical quality (soul), artistic quality (body) and interpretative quality (mind).
Paris will evaluate 5 categories: musicality, vocabulary, originality, technique and execution. The breakers, qualified via the 2023 World Championships, continental tournaments and Olympic Qualification Series, will be divided into 4 groups of 4 dancers. In the qualifying phase (it will be 1 vs 1), each participant will have 2 passes of 60 seconds against their opponent. The best 8 will advance to the final round, in which the dancers will use 3 passes to compete for the gold medal. Japanese b-girls Ayumi and Ami are the favorites. While the men’s category is tight. However, b-boy Victor is the Latin American hope of the competition. Although he represents the United States, his father, of Mexican origin, taught him the basics of the discipline. Which shows that breaking also runs in the family.