The Olympics, held every four years, highlight each nation’s greatest athletes. The Paris 2024 Olympics was no different. Simone Biles having an unbelievable return since her performance in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, returning medalist Noah Lyles winning the 100m Gold Medal, and most importantly, Snoop Dog serving an unofficial position as Team USA’s mascot were just a few of the many note-worthy American performances at the summer games. Acquiring more publicity than ever, the games were the talk of the summer. However, this year, new sports were added beyond sports such as track and field, gymnastics, and swimming. Breakdancing, also known as “breaking,” was introduced.
Breaking emerged in the 1970s in the streets of New York. It is an art form in which the performer contorts their body to the rhythm and tempo of any hip-hop song. Most of the performances include intricate footwork and the appearance of “breaking bones,” hence the name. The International Olympic Committee believed that introducing breaking as a sport would attract younger generations.
In the summer of 2024, top breakdancers, called B-boys and B-girls in the Olympics, were able to perform on practically “the world’s biggest stage.” The competition was a two-day ordeal with competitors from all over the world. Before the games, there was much debate on whether breakdancing would fit into the Olympic world. Personally, I believe it is better to leave breaking to the streets of hip-hop.
Breakdancing, as mentioned before, is an art form. Each performer has their own way of expressing themselves, through their dance. What some might consider amazing and mind-boggling, others might say is disturbing and unpleasant to look at, which makes judging subjective.
Olympic athletes are scored based on a certain criteria. For example, a gymnast’s floor routine score is based on a sum of two separate components, the execution score (E-score) and the difficulty score (D-score). Both components make the judging process impersonal and only relate to how well the gymnast can execute their routine. On the contrary, breaking is scored based on execution, musicality, originality, technique, and vocabulary. Out of the five categories, only originality and technique can be truly scored, making the rest of the categories biased.
What started out as an exciting and interesting competition turned out to have a plethora of backlash. One such competitor who received a lot of criticism was Rachael Gunn, or as known by her B-girl name Raygun. She performed a “kangaroo dance”, in which she scored zero points.
Reactions to her dance ranged from mortified to laughing hysterically. To say she was trolled would be an understatement. Her technique was far from adequate and it appeared as though she was rolling on the floor for a solid 10 seconds. Even Raygun told ESPN, “ [she] was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so [she] wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get that in a lifetime to do that on an international stage”. Undermining her own skills was confusing because Gunn’s segue into the international stage was not unusual prior to her performance. She had represented Australia at the World Breaking Championships. Some could say this is a misunderstanding of breakdancing’s history and street culture.
Regardless of the technique, the Olympics does not need to include breakdancing in its competitions. It wants to create more interest and viewership of the Games, but breakdancing is not the way to go about their objective. The Games are based on decades of principles and traditions, something breaking doesn’t have. The dance was made with a mixture of creativity, spontaneity, and dynamics. It has a better chance of developing in its own space, rather than trying to mold into the historical aura of the Olympics.
