Breakdancing is set for a breakout moment at the next Olympics, but a lack of support from the United States is making the would-be Olympians’ heads spin after their headspins.
Breakdancing is the newest summer Olympic sport participating in the 2024 Paris Games — the first dance sport ever to be included. Following the success of the sport in the 2018 Youth Olympics, breakdancing is enjoying new and immense popularity.
Hip-hop artists and breakers, also known as b-boys and b-girls, said they are excited — and a little worried — to see their passion in the spotlight.
“I’m always very happy whenever we get the opportunity to show a bigger audience what we are capable of,” said Danté Rose, a hip-hop and breaking professor at USC. “The thing that makes me anxious is what does this mean for the culture? Because it is still a dance culture.”
B-girl Randi Rascal Freitas, who is competing to go to the Olympics, said she found breaking when she needed it, and it helped her free her emotions in a healthy way.
“I had a lot of energy. I also was a little angry or just had dealt with some stuff when I was young and had some frustration [that I felt] very physically,” Freitas said. “Breaking was a way for me to get that physical frustration out in a healthy way and also find a community.”
Freitas said breaking also gave her the support and family she was looking for at the time.
“I really was looking for a family away from home and people that would support me in my artistic journey. So I think breaking allowed for that,” she said. “My first crew was everything to me at that time, and I really needed them.”
Dancing with friends and neighbors with no real purpose other than having fun and communicating with each other, the crowd cheering everything, the inclusion and diversity among the artists from the community, the creativity and the self-expression. All this and more is part of this culture they want to preserve.
“I think the original culture was more reliant on people just gathering and coming together, dancing with each other, enjoying themselves,” said Tony Ynot, a hip-hop artist and breaker. “Sure, there were competitive moments, but I don’t think it was based on a tournament looking event. It was just people coming together and enjoying music.”
Some breakdancers said breakdancing could certainly go mainstream after the games, but the culture will never get lost.
“Culture can’t be lost unless individuals stop doing it, it’s something that is within the body,” said Moncell Durden, hip-hop associate professor of practice. “You can move to another environment that doesn’t have the same type of access, but you can reproduce based on memory and so it will never be lost.”
Vicky Chang, who goes by the name “La Vix,” is the No.1 b-girl in the country, also participating in Team USA for the Olympics. Chang said there is enough space for breaking to be in big events like this and also preserve its cultural meaning.
“I know there are people in the community who don’t want breaking in the Olympics because it’s hard for us to control our own narrative. But I think both can happen,” Chang said. “We can always have the community-oriented events happening and we can also kind of have it in the eyes of the world … And then in that way, we can bring more people into our community.”
She said the Olympics is a good venue for breakers to showcase their culture and their community, and that as a participant, she is taking the responsibility to represent it in the correct way so it does not get “washed down.”
Breakdancing evolved from hip-hop in the streets and squares of the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s, when mainly African American and Latin American youth created a whole new dance style by incorporating more acrobatic and intricate body movements — many of them inspired by James Brown — for a chance to show their moves to others.
In the beginning, breaking was a way for rival street gangs to settle disputes and have battles. They would show their moves and the one with the most innovative and complex moves was the winner. Today, breakdancers have taken the positives of breakdancing to create avenues for self-expression and communication.
Chang started breaking when she began college 15 years ago. She said some young people around her would learn breaking because they love the music, wanted to learn steps they watched on TV or to show their moves, and for some men, to impress girls.
But Chang said she enjoys breaking because it makes her feel free.
“I really enjoyed that in breaking you could put anything into it,” Chang said. “It’s such a creative dance that as long as there’s still some foundation there, you can just do anything that you really want.”
Even though breakdance originated in the United States, breakdancers said they do not see enough support from the country to make the sport a profitable career and represent the culture outside of their communities.
“It is unfortunate,” Rose said. “This thought that sponsoring breakers or breakdancers is not profitable in the U.S., which isn’t really based on anything.”
Ynot said breaking does not even have a governing body approved by the International Olympic Committee yet and relies on organizations like Breaking For Gold USA that they have created on their own.
“I worry about the support for Americans because I’m not quite sure it will be the same for us here as it is in other countries,” he said. “If you see anything about Breaking for Gold, that’s been the step forward that the community has done on their own … But we’re not officially represented by the IOC as of right now.”
Margo Apostolos, a USC professor of dance who is also a member of the USC LA2028 Olympic Planning Committee, said she hopes this new visibility for the sport will increase standard safety protocols for dancers.
“I hope that this visibility on this huge stage will help the world of dance overall increase standards of safety protocol, and injury prevention,” Apostolos said. ”I hope that that can sort of spill over into the dance culture, which in many ways has been not standardized with very little protocol as far as safety and injury prevention,” she said.
Ynot said he hopes the Olympics will draw the attention of more companies to invest in breaking organizations to support the athletes participating.
“I’m hoping that if other countries start to step up in terms of their support, that America will maybe wake up to that,” he said. “But it may happen after the fact that I think a lot of places and organizations, corporations, need to see what it is first before they get on board.”
Steve Miller, who is currently the CEO of Agassi Graf Holdings and was the director of global sports marketing for 10 years at Nike, explained the lack of support may be because of a lack of visibility and recognition outside of their communities.
Miller said more companies may get involved in sponsoring breakers now that they are going to the Olympics and breakdancing is considered a sport.
He said this process is similar to what other new sports have gone through on their way to massive popularity.
“The same thing is true in almost all other sports,” he said. “I mean, wrestling, weightlifting, track and field. Not every athlete gets sponsored. Only the really good ones, which is probably the same thing in breakdancing.”
One of the reasons private companies like Nike and Red Bull invest money in famous athletes is because of their international visualization and because they can get a return from their investment. Now that breakdancing is going to the Olympics, companies could change their minds and give their support to breakers.
However, some hip-hop artists like Durden, said they want to see this support going to organizations that actually care and know their culture to fundraise for their events instead of through companies that just care about the money.
“It’s a shame that grassroots organizations are trying to secure funding for events through organizations that have no clue what hip-hop is,” he said. “These organizations that focus on dance should be able to write into organizations that are perhaps developed by successful rappers or successful people in hip-hop to apply for grant funding to grow their events through organizations that actually know what hip-hop is.”
Hip-hop and breaker professors like him and Rose also hope to see more support for education to pass their history and to be acknowledged.
“Hip-hop dance started getting into universities around 50 years now,” Durden said. “USC was actually working on having a master’s degree in hip-hop. It’s time that people understand how rich it is in cultural dynamics and that it is on par with any other dance form.”
Rose said more education is key.
“Every time we’re doing something, especially in the arts, it usually gets blown out of proportion and then we lose the vision of why we do it in the first place,” Rose said.
After the Olympics, breakers are expecting to see major improvements and are excited to see what’s going to happen next.
“I would love to see the government and companies put money into it and support it. It’s really hard to make a living off breaking alone,” Freitas said. “I would love to see it grow beyond what we even see it’s capable of.”
“Breaking is such a beautiful sport and then also such a rich history that I would love to see those two things acknowledged collectively and have people see that they’re inseparable,” she said.