“Hip-hop has always been controversial…[it’s] meant to be provocative…confrontational…dense with multiple meanings…It challenges you.
[The] other reason Hip Hop is controversial: people don’t bother trying to get it…”
– Jay-Z, Decoded
The first 50 years of Hip Hop have been about challenging the status quo, a habit rarely embraced by main-stream pop-culture fans and critics or government officials. Because of this, controversy follows Hip Hop wherever it goes. This summer, it’s headed to Paris, with the debut of breaking in the 2024 Olympic Games. Though the International Olympic Committee (IOC) claims that this is a major positive development for breaking, Hip Hop heads, dancers, and athletes have spoken out against the decision to include the new ‘sport.’ As frustration increases with the eager “What to Know About the Newest Olympic Sport” headlines or the bitter “Breaking Doesn’t Belong in the Olympics — Here’s Why” diatribes, it’s clear that breaking’s inclusion in the 2024 Games deserves a deeper look.
This year’s Games have already been dramatic. Approaching the July 26th opening ceremony- in addition to other rampant spending that comes with putting on an event like the Olympics- Paris had spent $1.5 billion to rid the River Seine of E. Coli and other contaminants, and Parisians threatened to take a community dump into the murky water to protest the wasteful spending. The effort to clean the river, which has been closed for swimming since the 1920’s, was barely successful. After months of speculation and suspense, the river was finally approved for entry on the morning of the triathlon competition.
The IOC has faced widespread criticism for clearing child rapist Steven van de Velde to compete in volleyball; he has been booed by fans at each match. In soccer, the reigning women’s gold medalist Canadians are being torn apart by an unfolding cheating scandal, and in gymnastics, a Japanese athlete was sent home for enjoying a cigarette and a beer. A drunk Russian chef admitted to being a spy the same day a synagogue was vandalized in a suspected destabilization attempt; there was a controversial ad campaign featuring references to the marred 1972 Olympics; and there were arson attacks on the Paris subways system. More recently, Imane Khelif, a female athlete whose hormones tested within normal levels, has reignited the heated debate over trans athletes, after punching her opponent so hard that she quit.
Long before the unfolding of those situations, however, Hip Hop heads, dancers, and athletes have been engaged in a heated debate: is breaking a sport? And if it is, should it be an Olympic sport? Since the introduction of the breaking event at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, many in the Hip Hop community have spoken out against the commodification of the art of breaking, and many outside the Hip Hop community have questioned the IOC’s intentions in including the new event.
Though the Olympics are a chance to push the limits of the human body, it is historically done in an environment overflowing with consumerism and profit; each sport’s influence is weighed and only included if its audience is large enough for the IOC to profit. Recommendation 1 of Olympic Agenda 2020, which was enacted in 2014 to keep the Games relevant, states that potential host countries will propose sports to the committee in their applications.
On August 9th and 10th, Olympics and breaking fans will watch impressive spins, flips, and freezes, with a backdrop crammed with ads for major corporations and banks. Samsung and Xfinity have capitalized on breaking’s hype, building Olympic ad campaigns around the new event.
Outwardly, the IOC’s introduction of the Youth Games in 2010 and events like breaking into the Olympic sphere was motivated by a desire to attract youth interest and cultural diversity to the games. They have approved many new sports with low barriers to entry like surfing, skateboarding, climbing, 3×3 basketball, and karate. The Olympic Agenda 2020+5, which builds on Olympic Agenda 2020, states five key trends to address in keeping the games relevant, all mostly focused on building communities and embracing diversity and equity.
Classism at the Olympic Games
Earlier this year, Professor Maureen A. Weston of the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law published an article in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law titled “Breaking Cultural and Financial Barriers in Olympic Sports,” that goes deeper into the IOC’s motivation to include breaking. She starts by evaluating the Olympic Charter, which explicitly states various goals of Olympism, including “[blending] sport with art, culture, and education, and [using] sport to foster peace and human dignity.” The charter also states that “[t]he practice of sport is a human right,” and discrimination of a country or a person in regards to “[r]ace, [color], sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” is incompatible with the Olympic Movement.
Despite these goals, Olympic athletes are “disproportionately white, privately educated, and wealthy,” according to a sociodemographic study of Olympians done by Dr. David Lawrence at the University of Toronto. Lawrence concludes that many Olympic sports- like archery, equestrian, sailing, cycling, shooting, modern pentathlon, and rowing- pose major financial barriers to participation, creating “[disproportionate domination] by wealthy, privately educated, Caucasian participants.” And if the equipment doesn’t have a high price tag, travel does, which is why for the 2018 Youth Games, applicants for qualification were able to submit videos instead of participating in qualifier events.
Olympic Agenda 2020 placed the role of proposing new sports in the hands of the Organizing Committee for potential host nations, and those proposals play a part in the selection of a host. The new sports are supposed to represent cultural influences in the host country. and France has a large contingent of b-boys and b-girls.
French IOC President Tony Estanguet indicated that his goal was to create an iteration of the Games that is “dynamic,” “inclusive,” “urban,” and “artistic.” IOC President Thomas Bach said that the new 2024 sports make the Games “more gender balanced and more urban, and offer the opportunity to connect with the younger generation.” Interestingly, both men are wealthy and white and use the term “urban” to describe their vision for the 2024 games. The “urban” music genre was coined by black radio DJ Frankie Crocker to bring attention to black American music in the 70’s, however; some modern artists claim that it has become a way to categorize, simplify, and delegitimize black art.
The motivations of the IOC seem both greedy and generous, but it is clear that the committee is onto something. When breaking was introduced during the Youth Games, it saw “unmitigated success,” according to the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), the ‘sport’ of breaking’s International Federation (IF) (i.e. governing body), which also governs acrobatic rock’n’roll, boogie woogie, disco, hip hop, Latin dances, para dance-sport, rhythm, salsa, smooth dances, stage dance, and standard dance. The WDSF cited over a million viewers for the debut.
Yet, on the back of this seemingly positive development, skeptical voices question the IOC’s sincerity. Watching the Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS) that took place in Shanghai in May, the skepticism is clearly valid. Though the live DJ was spinning solid beats, and the breaking was breathtaking, a viewer can’t help but question the lack of clarity in the judges’ decisions and be distracted by the big, bold ads emblazoned on the DJ booth.
How does the Hip Hop era of DJ Kool Herc feel about their influences being used to peddle Fortune 500 consulting services and massive credit card companies? How many hungry mouths could be fed with the money spent on one of those ads? How does a founder balance the overflowing pride in the growth of Hip Hop with skepticism of the most corporate aspects of its growth?
The b-boys and b-girls breaking in this year’s Games won’t see any advertising profits. Few athletes get paid for competing, unless they have a sponsor, or an organization like World Athletics steps in to pay medalists.
Competition at the Core of Breaking
Breaking has come a long way since the 70’s, when it was confined to the basements and streets of New York. In the 80’s, breaking went global. The Rock Steady Crew and the Double Dutch Dancers performed on stages across Europe, and b-boys and b-girls spun and grooved through music videos and movies, like Flashdance (1983), Style Wars (1983), Wild Style (1983), Beat Street (1984), and Breakin’ (1984). In 1982, the New York City Rap Tour brought artists from each element of Hip Hop to Europe for a showcase. Artists like Charles Washington and Michael Jackson popularized some of the pivotal moves on the biggest stages in the world.
While those events sought to grow Hip Hop’s influence around the globe and entertain the masses, there was another aspect of breaking that was developing: competition. Competition has always been at the core of Hip Hop. Who can drop the coldest rhyme? Who has the most throw-ups in the city? And which b-boy or b-girl has the best rhythm, style, and athleticism? In the early 80’s, at his club, Negril, in the East Village of New York City, Hip Hop impresario Michael Holman embraced the competitive nature of Hip Hop. He was one of the first to organize b-boy battles by encouraging the Rock Steady Crew to battle other crews, like the Floor Masters and Zulu Kings.
Holman played a major part in forming the New York City Breakers, an all-star group of b-boys that was a key factor in the popularization of breaking, appearing on late night shows, news segments, and movies. In a news clip starring the New York City Breakers, the b-boys discuss how breaking played a part in New York youth moving away from gang violence. The teenagers discuss why they dedicate so much time to honing their skills: pride, territory, exercise, and money; earning good wages as performers-for-hire in clubs around New York.
The end of the video from exactly 40 years ago is striking. B-Boy Action (A.K.A. Chino Lopez) challenges Olympic athletes to compete in a floor competition. The reporter says that it’s clear that breaking has become an art and a sport and concludes, “Who knows? Maybe someday, [breaking] will be an Olympic event.”
B-Boy Crazy Legs, (A.K.A. Richard Colón), who appeared in Beat Street, Flashdance, Wild Style, Style Wars, and on the New York City Rap Tour never expected breaking to make such a worldwide impression. “It was our little ghetto game,” he told the New York Post in 2015. As a cast member on screens and stages across the world, however, Colón was directly involved in the international spread of breaking.
After Hip Hop’s efforts in Europe, breaking had a global burst of popularity in the 80’s, but as the 90’s approached, the growth stagnated. Then in 1990, Six Step, a German event management agency, put on the first Battle of the Year (BOTY), which today is considered by some to be the unofficial World Cup of breaking. The first BOTY was held at a youth center in Döhren. Today, the annual event brings tens of thousands of fans to Montpelier, France to watch b-boys and b-girls, who compete in international qualifiers to make the event.
Six Step worked with the IOC and the WDSF to organize the Youth Games in Buenos Aires. The event management firm was responsible for planning and scheduling, overseeing qualifying, creating the rule book, developing the jury system, and selecting the jurors. The jurors for the Olympic battles are established b-boys and b-girls, like B-Girl Candy A.K.A. Candy Foelix, who also commentates on events, including the OQS. Sometimes, the judges will even put on an exhibition before the battles to offer more lighthearted entertainment and prove their credentials.
Breaking, a Northeast American creation, has become a worldwide movement, with Olympic competitors from 16 countries across five continents (though none hail from South America). Most major tournaments that take place outside the United States, like the Chelles Battle Pro, Red Bull BC One, R16 Korea, and WDSF events are head-to-head, elimination tournaments, based on a variety of judging categories. The Olympics’ judging criteria is based on the Trivium system, which is composed of three categories with two subcategories each: Body- technicality and variety; Mind- creativity and personality; and Soul- musicality and performativity. Judges will be comparing the head-to-head matchups based on execution and form, confidence and spontaneity, ‘bite,’ and repeated moves. For the Olympic Games, the categories have been simplified to Technique, Originality, Execution, Vocabulary, and Musicality.
Constructive Cultural Impact of International Breaking
These days, many people outside of the Hip Hop sphere are exposed to breaking on social media for views, and in tourist-centric city centers, watching groups go through similar routines: gather crowd, run in circles, do flips and spins, line up a group of foreign onlookers and jump over them. These performances have had the same recipe for decades, but today this is one of the only ways to make money by breaking, and it doesn’t build a community like performing in clubs with your neighbors cheering your name.
At the same time, those performers are using their love and lifetime of dance and Hip Hop to entertain strangers and earn a living. Respect.
International competitions are about the ‘sport’ of breaking- pushing the bounds of what’s possible. But they also serve similar purposes as the tourist performances: entertain fans and financially support the dancers. In theory, the latter seems negative when presuming that Hip Hop and dancing are about art and expression, not financial gain. But like many other art forms, breaking was born from a need for cost-effective self-expression, alongside homemade felt markers and needle dropping. Learning how to break was (and is) free, and offered the originators (and modern breakers) a pathway to economic development through those nightclub performances and world tours, the predecessors of today’s street performances and international tournaments.
Breaking is a product of mid-20th Century New York oppression- inner-city Puerto Rican immigrants and black folks’ underground expression, and its spread has introduced the style of dance to communities around the world with young people in need of a healthy creative outlet. In Germany, Six Step runs a school outreach program, in which they encourage youth participants to choose dance over drugs and alcohol. The group Camps Breakers in Palestine uses breaking to empower youth in a war zone.
Without the exposure of breaking through tourism, media, and competitions, the art form would not have found so many people in need. Breaking, itself, has been influenced by cultures from across the world– ballet, gymnastics, martial arts, Brazilian Capoeira, South African Pantsula, Russian Cossack dancing, and American Jazz dance. At the outset, as breaking spread, worldwide communities began developing unique styles. Thomas Hergenröther from BOTY, however, claims that, today, due to the spread of breaking, the differentiation of styles is almost imperceivable. International b-boys and b-girls have spent the past half-century introducing to each other new swagger, new techniques, and new moves, making breaking a worldwide movement, a worldwide community.
The b-boy and b-girl Olympians will continue to build on breaking’s history of competition and unity. They will continue to push the art and sport of breaking and push each other to the limits of human potential, as is the spirit of the Games. They’ll do it in front of hundreds-of-millions of viewers- potential fans or disciples, managers or sponsors.
In addition to pushing themselves beyond their limits, the b-boys and b-girls in Paris will connect with each other, peers that may never have had the chance to compete and represent their countries. After each round, the competitors’ grimaces and sneers will turn to grins and daps, as they develop lifelong friendships.
The Olympic debut will not only boost the athlete’s profiles, but also the profile of breaking as a creative and competitive outlet. Who knows how many new crews of b-boys and b-girls will form? How many new opportunities will arise for those who have been breaking for decades?
Destructive Cultural Impact of International Breaking
The pages of search results with articles titled, “Breaking Should not be an Olympic Sport,” “Breaking Doesn’t Belong in the Olympics – Here’s Why,” and “Should Breaking Really be an Olympic Sport?” come from far beyond the breaking community. However, a major contingent within the Hip Hop dance and athletic communities also view the IOC adoption of breaking as hollow or parasitic. Some see the commoditization of breaking as another step in delegitimizing the ‘art’ of breaking in favor of the ‘sport.’ Many critique the judging system, which rewards the b-boy or b-girl the judges preferred, but doesn’t give any insight into how the judges arrived at their decision.
In order to win over the judges and win gold, the athletes will need to conquer the quantitative judging components- Technicality, Variety, and Performativity- by freezing faster, flipping higher, and spinning more than their competitors. To embrace the qualitative aspects of the judging criteria- Personality, Musicality, and Creativity- they will need to keep their moves fresh, on beat, and unique. The qualitative components are harder to score objectively, and critics will be watching closely to ensure that competitors are graded fairly, on both quantitative and qualitative aspects.
Many breakers, like American, Carmarry Hall, believe that, “The Olympic platform is not going to appreciate…[that breaking is] about Black dance.” In a 2023 AP interview, Hall indicates that in the structure of Olympic competition, “you lose a little bit of the heart,” of breaking. Hall even states that she took some of her personality, her “loudness,” out of her competition routine, noting that being the “funkiest” was not raising her scores as much as focusing on what the judges favor: cramming in as many ‘toprock,’ ‘downrock,’ and ‘power’ moves, ‘headspins,’ ‘windmills,’ and ‘freeze’ poses as possible, without repetition, into her short battles.
To put the quantitative vs. qualitative into context: a 540º headspin is better than a 360º headspin on paper, but what if the 360º was done with style and rhythm, while the 540º was emotionless and stiff?
Dancers from outside breaking have also criticized the IOC. Morgan Pravato of the Diamondback argues that dance can never cross the art/sport divide. “There is no concrete way to measure one dancer against another,” she says. “There is no set technique or definition of a ‘good’ dancer… in sports, stronger physical ability almost always means more success. Games have a clear winner.”
Pravato goes on to say that shows like America’s Best Dance Crew and So You Think You Can Dance water down dance, introducing “stage styles” that can barely be considered the same as their original forms.
The quantitative judging- the components based strictly on number and intensity of moves- are the more soulless judging components. They do serve a purpose though, countering another common argument against breaking’s inclusion in the games: bias.
That bias stems from the qualitative aspects of dance. In a dance competition, how do you prevent the judges from being biased? In a breaking competition centered around improvisation and style (including a live DJ, who plays different music for each competitor), how do you fairly judge the qualitative components? How do you fairly judge a competitor’s personality?
Because of the subjective judging criteria, many sports fans and athletes find fault with the decision to include events like breaking, BMX freestyle biking, and skateboarding before sports with concrete rules and scoring, like squash.
Australian squash legend Michelle Martin has been lobbying for her sport to be in the Olympics for decades, to no avail, making her particularly disgusted with the IOC’s decision to include the Games’ first ‘dance sport.’ Martin criticizes the decision in a 2020 interview with the Guardian, in which she calls the modern iterations of the Games a “mockery.”
“The Olympics was all about a score, or it was a running race,” she said. “There was a definitive answer and results to sports. You bring in all these judging things, and it just gets so corrupt and so out of control.”
Martin is sure to be happy about the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic committee choosing to omit breaking and, for the first time, include squash.
Breaking: the Art vs. the Sport
According to Professor Weston of Pepperdine, an activity becomes a sport through a nebulous yet rigid process:
“How an activity evolves from a game to a sport first happens on the local level. A new activity is invented, or existing activities are combined into a formalized competition. For example, in the 1970s, the San Diego Track Club invented Triathlon by creating a “swim-bike-run” competition. If a sport begins to gain local popularity, the creator can register the name of the sport as an official trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office and publish the official rules, which are eligible for copyright protection. If the sport involves a newly invented piece of equipment, the inventor can apply for a patent with the USPTO as well. Rarely do new sports develop international popularity, although globalization and social media have made this possible at a faster rate than ever before, as the recent pickleball phenomenon evinces.”
Weston describes various games that are considered sports by some, games by others, such as cheer, chess, darts, bridge, and poker, and how they form governing bodies, like the WDSF, the IF of breaking. Weston goes on to include common elements of sports: “a formal organization structure for competition, a governing body, established rules, requirements for physical skill and athleticism, and standard for participation and evaluation.” To be eligible for the Olympics, a sport must follow the rules above, and be practiced by men in at least 75 countries across four continents and women in at least 40 countries across three continents.
Other Olympic sports, including recent additions skateboarding and snowboarding, are also judged based on quantitative and qualitative categories and have contributed to the growth of those sports. The Japanese snowboard team has pushed the boundaries of the sport farther than it’s ever been, which would have been impossible without the sport’s introduction to Asia through international competition and popular street and backcountry films.
Just as in snowboarding, breaking has two sides: the art- who can make a viewer feel their moves? And the competition- who can do the most, the cleanest, the hardest moves?
In 2022, Red Bull brought together 10 international b-boys and b-girls for a lighthearted debate: is breaking an art or a sport? The breakers were almost unanimous- both. B-boys and b-girls know how to switch the competitive spirit on and off. South Korean Olympic B-Boy Hongten (A.K.A. Kim Hong-yul), who turned 40 this year, says that though breaking is moving more and more towards the competition aspect, the “essence of the art” will always remain.
Ecuadorian B-Girl Isis claims that the world is forcing her to be an athlete. She has to dig to find the competitive spirit to reach her goals. Deep down, though, Isis feels that her peers and she are artists.
And though the general consensus of the impressive international delegation of breakers was that breaking is a “coin on its edge,” an art and a sport, some were more negative. Ukrainian B-Girl Kate argues that, “Some people have a certain energy, and you just feel it…how can you judge that?”
It did make sense for France to pitch breaking as an event for their iteration of the Olympics. The nation has a large community of breakers, many of whom are immigrants from Arab-Africa. In the early 2000’s, competitions sprung up across the country, and Democratic Republic of Congo immigrant, B-Boy Junior (A.K.A. Junior Bosila Banya), even won a national talent TV show, La France a un Incroyable Talent (France has got Incredible Talent). Junior has one short leg due to complications from a childhood bout with Polio, and while his disability prevented him from succeeding in other sports, he found an outlet in breaking. Many other breakers have performed on Incroyable Talent, including B-Boy Haiper (A.K.A. Youcef Mecheri), a French Algerian immigrant, who has scoliosis in his back and a disability in his legs. Haiper performs with crutches and says that breaking helps him forget about his handicap.
Despite the popularity of breaking in France, French B-Boy Fenix (A.K.A. Arnaud Duprez), in an interview with the Washington Post, brings up another powerful view of the Olympics’ inclusion of breaking in Paris: France has historically been a place where people of Arab and African descent have felt oppressed- not encouraged to pursue their dreams or creative passions.
“[Breaking] is a fully Black culture from the ghetto,” Fenix says. “[The French masses] don’t like the culture of breaking and Hip Hop because it’s very connected to rap culture… Black culture… immigration.” Fenix’s performances at Montmartre are constantly broken up by French police. Yet, when they could profit off of it, the French Olympic representatives pushed for breaking to be a new Olympic sport, embracing it as a major part of their national culture.
The Road to Paris
The process to qualify for a national breaking team was quite complicated. Athletes had a shot at a spot by winning one of six championships: the 2023 WDSF World Championship, and the Africa, Europe, Asia, Americas, and Oceania qualifiers, which took place between May and October of 2023. These qualifiers yielded twelve Olympians- six b-boys and six b-girls.
A total of 80 breakers, in addition to 160 sport climbers, 48 freestyle BMX riders, and 176 freestyle skateboarders from around the world, gathered in Budapest, Hungary for the second of two events in the Olympic Qualifier Series to compete for the last 20 spots.
Of the 80 breakers, 10 b-boys and 11 b-girls qualified for the Olympic Games via a combined points system from both events. Olympics.com describes the series as, “a key project under ‘Olympic Agenda 2020+5,’ [offering] fans an immersive Olympic experience that merges sport, art, music and culture.”
Like breaking, sports are often included and extracted from the Olympic itinerary, and it was announced in the Fall of 2023 that breaking will not be included in the 2028 Olympics. The WDSF were “profoundly disappointed” with this decision, indicating that the Los Angeles Olympic organizers and the IOC were behind the exclusion of the event. Instead of breaking, the LA committee is including flag football, baseball and softball, lacrosse, cricket, and finally, squash.
Few sports have been held at every Summer Olympic Games, including gymnastics, swimming, cycling, fencing, and track and field. Karate debuted in the Tokyo Games, but was not included in the Paris 2024 games.
Breakers to Watch in August
Regardless of whether or not breaking belongs in the Olympics, the competition is going to be entertaining and exciting to watch. The best b-boys and b-girls from around Planet Earth have been called together to battle it out at the most prestigious (and commercial) sporting event in the world. The b-boys and b-girls are inspired, prepared, and anxious, especially the Americans, who have a lot of pressure to represent their culture.
The b-boys with the best Vegas odds to win are American B-Boy Victor, Canadian B-Boy Phil Wizard, and Japanese B-Boy Shigekix. The other b-boy from the U.S., B-Boy Jeffro, is ranked 4th, according to OddsChecker.
The b-girls with the best Vegas odds to win are Chinese B-Girl 671, Japanese B-Girl Ami, and Lithuanian B-Girl Nicka. American B-Girls Logistix and Sunny are ranked 7th and 11th, respectively, according to Scores and Stats.
With its inclusion in the Olympics, breaking has gone fully corporate, but there might be a positive spin. The WDSF and the Olympics offer platforms for athletes to build their careers and for Hip Hop to spread peace, love, and art farther across the planet.
There is an argument to be made, however, that, though competition is at the core of breaking, the Olympic format will not exhibit the true spirit of breaking. The b-boys, b-girls, and judges will be scrutinized by lifelong supporters of breaking, needing to embrace the quantitative and qualitative criteria without losing touch with Hip Hop and the competitors’ personalities and styles.
On August 9th and 10th, the world will tune in to see what a breaking competition is all about. For some, it will be their first exposure to breaking, and the simple, watered-down competition will be approachable, intriguing, and in some cases inspiring. Experienced fans will find the tight battles thrilling, as some of the world’s best b-boys and b-girls push themselves to the brink of their skill sets and progress through the most prestigious sporting competition on Earth.
*Breaking events at the Olympic Games are airing on NBC or Peacock Friday, August 9th and Saturday, August 10th.
