For the first time in Olympic history, breaking, or b-boying or b-girling, will debut as an Olympic sport at the 2024 Paris Games. Breaking is a highly dynamic, competitive, acrobatic, improvisational street dance style that originated in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s. The dance style was created by African-American and Latino youth as part of the popular growing hip-hop culture, which also encompassed graffiti art, emceeing, rap music, and D.J.s scratching and mixing vinyl records on turntables.

Dancing as athletic competition? A few Portland breakers have their views on that, which we’ll see below. But first, some background on breaking and its emergence as an Olympic sport:

Breaking actually debuted at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics and attracted more than a million viewers, surpassing many other Olympic sports. Because of its popularity, the Olympic committee decided to include it in the central Olympics, hoping it would attract and motivate a younger generation.

The term breaking came from DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican D.J. considered one of the founders of hip-hop music in the Bronx: He was nicknamed the father of Hip-Hop. While Herc was DJ’ing, he noticed that young people would dance differently and more energetically whenever the break of the tracks he was playing would come in. The “break” is the part of the song where the vocals and other instruments drop out, leaving just the percussion section.

Seeing this, Herc started playing two copies of the same record, mixing them on two turntables with a technique called the “Merry-Go-Round” to extend the break and give the dancers more time to showcase their moves. This inspired the creation of the dance of breaking, because the b-boys and b-girls would dance to the break of the track.

Four basic categories characterize breaking. There is, of course, much more to the dance form, but these are the basic movement categories: Top rock, Down rock, Freezes, and Power moves.

• Top rock is foot movement performed while standing, serving as the opening display of style and as a warm-up for transitions into maneuvers on the floor.
• Downrock is floorwork, and describes any movement on the floor that uses the hands to support the dancer as much as the feet, like spins and windmills.
• Freezes are stylish poses that a breaker will go into and hold for a few seconds.
• Power moves are acrobatic moves that require momentum, speed, endurance, strength, flexibility, and control to execute, like the windmill, back spin, and head spin.

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In the Olympics, dancers will be judged on their technique, originality, musicality, and vocabulary. The Olympic breaking competition, set for August 9-10, will showcase 32 dancers from around the world competing for the gold. Preliminary battles will start at 10 a.m. E.T., with the finals scheduled for 2 p.m. E.T. on both days. Viewers can catch the Paris Olympics on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, and the NBC Sports app, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

The women’s competition will occur on the first day, and the men’s on the second. Sixteen b-boys and 16 b-girls will compete in minute-long, one-on-one battles. No round will exceed 60 seconds, and dancers will improvise their moves without knowing what song will be played. The D.J.s will create their mix from a limited playlist of about 390 tracks, all of whose copyrights have been pre-cleared for live T.V. The exact content of the playlist is confidential.

The judges, whose names remain unknown, must physically demonstrate their understanding of the dance form in a pre-competition dance performance. Because the dance form is constantly evolving, the judges must have personal, up-to-date knowledge of the dance and the culture to judge it appropriately.

Unlike conventional sports, breakers will be judged on the quality of their dancing, because of its artistic nature. The Olympic judges will use a sliding scale for each dancer, moving the slider one way or another in favor of one breaker or another in each battle. Each dancer only needs to beat the person in front of them.

The judges will be looking at the technical execution of the moves, the originality and creativity of the dancers’ style, their ability to interpret the music, and their overall performance. I’ve only witnessed one battle, and in that battle, the contestant who received a louder audience applause was the winner. The slider seems comparable.

Representing the United States in the breaking competition are Sunny Choi, Logan Edra, Jeffrey Louis, and Victor Montalvo. However, it’s important to remember that the love and support for these dancers should not be limited to the U.S. This is a global culture, and the breaking competition will showcase talent and diversity from around the world.

Because of the competitive nature of breaking and its athleticism, which are inseparable from its artistic properties, transitioning it to become an Olympic sport makes sense. However, I am on the fence about having a dance form in the same arena as sports, because it’s art, and art is subjective and very personal.

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Still, competitions in dance are not new. Ballet has the Prix de Lausanne, Varna International Ballet Competition, and Vaganova-Prix International Ballet Competition, to name a few. And contemporary dance competes on a national circuit. But turning dance into a competition forces everyone to dance to an ideal so they can win instead of developing their unique artistic individuality as dancers. Yet this is also debatable, and is not a black-and-white situation.

I reached out to a few people I know in the Portland breaking community to get their thoughts on breaking being included in the Olympics. Through a Portland dancer, I was also connected with a dancer who lives in Brooklyn.

I asked them how they felt about breaking being included in the Olympics, whether it was a sport, and whether they thought this experience would change the dance form. I spoke with all of them through direct messaging on Instagram, where you can find awesome photos and videos of them dancing.

“I’m excited about it; breaking is the bridge that connects communities and breaks down barriers,” Kilam Fresh of Portland City Rockers said. “I’m hoping that people will see its brilliance, artistic creativity, and athletic genius. I think it will create a lot of opportunities for people to actually thrive and be able to make a career out of the dance. My only real concern is that it doesn’t become so trendy and commodified that it loses its cultural identity. I truly hope it finally gets the respect it deserves as one of the greatest dances in history to ever hit the streets or the stage.”

“I have divided feelings on the matter,” Ivan “Heat Rock One” Cofield, a b-boy residing in Brooklyn, New York, said. “On one hand it will give exposure back to the dance style. But on the other hand, we’re being used to some degree to bring in revenue. The cultural idea of the dance is not necessarily 100% there in the Olympics. When you have rules and scoring systems, it takes away from the freedom and emotion, and this takes away from the cultural idea of breaking.

“But like I said before, it will bring light to the dance style again, and the benefit from it is that we will gain more work and attention. Hats off to those who’ve worked really hard to make it to the Olympics. I’m actually very proud of them. A new generation will want to learn the dance style but will have a skewed view of what it’s really about to b-boy or b-girl.”

Portland dancer and teacher Serg Vela, also known as Sergology, has been dancing for 23 years. He was introduced to breaking in high school when he discovered a dance battle in the gymnasium on his first day. Serg teaches classes at all levels, conducts workshops, exhibitions, judges, performs, and competes year-round.

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He responded to a few questions:

How do you feel about breaking being included in the Olympics?

“I think it’s fantastic; the more people get introduced to breaking the better. It’s important that people get to know and understand more about the craft of breaking and hiphop culture in general. The Olympics puts breaking in front of a whole new audience that might have never seen breaking before. It’s also an indication of its legitimacy: Just because breaking is a street dance doesn’t mean it lacks structure, vocabulary, and deep roots. Some people in our culture disagree with breaking being in the Olympics but I’m here for it, see what comes with it, and how it changes breaking as a whole.”

Is dance a sport? 

“I think breaking can be. There are a lot of people that are literally flying’ the physical ability and talent is there. I think breakers represent an artist/athlete class of dancer.”

Do you think this will change the dance form out in the world?

“The world’s perspective on it, absolutely. For us breakers as well, this creates a new lane for how we express ourselves. There will always be underground jams for the people that value that the most about breaking, as well as bigger sponsored jams on stages, but it will undoubtedly affect the way we approach and experience this art form.

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“For me the most important part of it all is the amount of people getting to see what we do and hear our stories.”

Portland breaker Kevin Le, also known as B-Boy Merk, has been breakdancing for more than 18 years. He is one of the co-founders of New Birth Crew, a breakdancing crew from Portland, Oregon. They have been together for 15 years, traveling, competing, and performing as ambassadors for hip-hop.

“My opinion of breaking being included in the Olympics is I think it’s positive, I think that it adds a mainstream legitimacy to the art form,” he says. “Of course it is already legitimate in our eyes, and to many in the world. I think something as prestigious as the Olympic Games really marks breaking as being legitimate in the mainstream and that will be positive for the next generation of pupils to receive scholarships, support or funding for breaking. Many opportunities in which the pioneers were not able to receive because a lot of the world did not see breaking as something legitimate.

“I think breaking will be back into popular mainstream as it did in the ’80s when it first showed in movies like Flashdance and Beat Street. I think a lot of the world already knows about breaking now, but this will make it more popular.

“I think whenever you have a judge panel of respected pioneers or O.G.’s who have done it before, they have a very valuable opinion and a lot of the scoring will be based on originality, musicality, foundation, and dynamics. It is a very subjective thing but I think to put it into scoring is also a science that we are perfecting right now and more so for the public so they can understand how we decide who wins.”

And long-term?

“Only time will tell how the inclusion of breaking in the Olympics will play out. But the upside is that most people, dancers, and nondancers alike, feel positive about it and are looking forward to the competition.”

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