Since the 1970s, we have admired what was known as “Break Dancing” an energetic form of dance, fashion popularized by African Americans and Latinos that includes fancy footwork and athletic moves such as back spins, flips, or head spins.
Originating in New York City during the late 1960s/early 70s, this art form of dancing has moved its way into the 2024 Olympics, making its debut this past weekend. What might have seemed to be an art form is now a sport, and is known professionally as breaking.
Olympics 2024 Team USA is made up of four dancers – two b-boys, Jeffrey Louis and Victor Montalvo, and two b-girls, Sunny Choi and Logan Edra. “The Games will expose breaking to a wider audience, said Victor Montalvo (nicknamed B-boy Victor) of the US, who’s been called the “Michael Jordan of breaking” and is a favorite in Paris to bring home a medal.
“It’s reaching a different audience, a global audience, an audience that thought breaking was dead or was never there, an audience that has the stereotypes or misconceptions of breaking back in the 1980s,” Montalvo told CNN in a recent interview.
“It’s interesting,” said Louis about his sport taking the global stage. “A lot of breakers feel we’ve got to keep the hip hop, keep it underground.” The problem with doing that, he said, is that you can’t shine a lot on the sport by keeping it in the dark. He added, “By showcasing breaking in Paris, “We’re going to enhance what we’re doing in the underground scene,” he said.
This dance is made of variations of moves or steps, including freezes, power moves, down rock, and top rock.
The term break refers to the particular rhythms and sounds produced by deejays by mixing sounds from records to produce a continuous dancing beat.
The technique was pioneered by DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), a Jamaican deejay in New York who mixed the percussion breaks from two identical records. By playing the breaks repeatedly and switching from one record to the other, Kool Herc created what he called “cutting breaks.” During his live performances at New York dance clubs, Kool Herc would shout, “B-boys go down!”—the signal for dancers to perform the gymnastic moves that are the hallmark of break dancing.
This form of dancing has been part of the dance culture and is seen in performances from Micheal Jackson to Britney Spears. Break dancing cemented its place in popular culture in 2020 when the International Olympic Committee approved breaking as a sport at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Team USA B-girls Sunny Choi and Logan Edra (in a heartbreaking development) were eliminated from the competition early on. Results of the Men’s Competition were not available by the press deadline.
**********
Thank you for reading an excerpt of Philly Beat on scoopusamedia.com. To read more of the article, “Break Dancing makes 2024 Olympic debut,” please subscribe to Scoop USA Media. Print subscriptions are $75.00 and online subscriptions (Print, Digital and Vizion) are $90. (52 weeks/1 year)
