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PARIS — Over the course of these Olympic Games in Paris, I’ve watched basketball and soccer, tennis and swimming. I’ve seen horses dance, and I’ve seen athletes run, shoot and run some more. I’ve seen Olympians pull off moves that would leave me in traction, if not paralyzed. Outside of Snoop Dogg, I’m not sure there are many people who have been to as many venues as me.
So please believe me when I say: Not everything needs to be an Olympic sport. Yes, breaking, I’m talking about you. ‘
Breaking — for the love of heaven, don’t call it breakdancing — debuted Friday at the Olympics. It’s a (mostly) impressive display of improvisational athleticism, a countercultural force of nature born out of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s … and it doesn’t belong in the Olympics. It’s been a pleasant little two-day visit, and like all visitors, breaking shouldn’t overstay its welcome.
The competition — it’s tough to call breaking a sport — has spooled out before large and vocal crowds at the Place de la Concorde. The overall feel from the breaking side is the cheerful “let’s put on a show!” vibe of a high school drama club. In the larger Olympic context, the IOC’s embrace of breaking is like when your parents suddenly start trying to like your music. You appreciate the gesture, but it’s most definitely not necessary.
Before we go any further, let’s lay out a few givens here. First of all, I myself most certainly could not do what the B-boys and -girls do on an Olympic stage, not when I was their age and certainly not now. My ligaments would literally explode. Matter of fact, there’s not a single Olympian at this Games whose feats I could match. (Outside of Jayson Tatum, of course. I damn sure could sit on a bench and clap at an Olympian level.)
It’s undeniable that breaking is a valid, essential art form, a means of expression that can convey freedom and joy in a way that words can’t match. It’s also undeniable that you have to be one hell of an athlete to craft an improvisational 60-second routine where you might twist your entire body 1440 degrees, or support your entire weight with just one palm. It’s a physical expression of raw emotion, a narrative historical tradition at 130 beats per minute.
But here’s where the problems come up. Trying to force a countercultural artistic endeavor into a box created by the International Olympic Committee — the oldest of old-school conservatism — just ends up sawing off all the rough edges that make breaking such a vibrant force. That’s exactly what we saw on Friday and Saturday nights at the circular, neon-ringed breaking stage.
With this Games’ nonstop hype-man chatter from Portugal’s Max Oliveira — seriously, if I had a nickel for every time Max says “Make some noise!” I’d buy my own little château and stay here — and the tastefully coordinated decor, this feels like a 2020s TV movie re-creation of an ‘80s competition, engineered by people who weren’t there or don’t remember it.
Breaking is in the Olympics in the first place because the World DanceSport Federation has fought for years to get some form of competitive dancing into the Olympics. The IOC believed that the WDSF’s initial offering — ballroom dancing, one of the artistic expressions of my ancestral culture — would not connect with a young audience. (They were right.) So the WDSF switched to breaking as a way to appeal to a younger audience.
While the B-boys and -girls dancing at the Games are naturally thrilled to be here, there’s substantial concern among those with a longstanding connection to breaking that this is just another co-opting, and watering down, of an outsider art form. A 2017 petition, for instance, criticized the WDSF’s move to put breaking in the Olympics as “immoral, illogical, and insulting to the hundreds of thousands of b-boys and b-girls worldwide who live and breathe this culture.”
Breaking’s Olympic advocates have had a rough go of it both days. Friday, the B-girls’ competition descended into farce when Australia’s Rachel “Raygun” Gunn unleashed a rolling-around-on-the-floor performance that looked a whole lot like a toddler throwing a tantrum on a grocery store floor.
Saturday, the level of physicality amped up, but questions about judging persisted. Japan’s Hiro10 faced off against Team USA’s Victor, and threw down a routine that included multiple high-speed spins upside down on his head. When the judges ruled 6-3 in favor of Victor, the disgusted boos from the crowd were so loud that the MCs had to plead for the crowd to cut the judges a break. That’s not something you’ll see in gymnastics.
Even the B-boys and -girls themselves are ambivalent about the Olympics and its effect on the sport. “The Olympics has changed the way some people are dancing,” Team USA’s Sunny Choi said Friday night, adding, “A lot of people are jam-packing their rounds with a lot of stuff — and there’s a lot of fluff in there.” The further breaking moves in the direction of sport, the further away it moves from being art.
Sure, being an Olympic sport carries a certain air of prestige. But the Olympics aren’t the only way to athletic immortality. Plenty of elite athletes — NFL players, F1 drivers, overnight Waffle House chefs — have no pathway to the Olympics. And plenty of elite sports — baseball, karate, possibly boxing — have vanished from the Olympic slate, too.
Breaking and the Olympics are a mismatch, plain and simple. Breaking is a powerful, physical art form. It’s not an Olympic sport. There’s no shame in that — there’s not an Olympic guitar solo contest, or an Olympic pastry-cooking contest, or an Olympic painting contest. Art doesn’t need validation from the Olympics.
This was a fun one-off event — weird, but fun — but if breaking wants to reach a new audience, there are better ways to do it than the Olympics. And if the Olympics wants to reach a new audience, it’ll take a lot more than just dressing up in loose pants and dropping a beat to make a connection.
Source Agencies
