This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 Champion Issue of Showstopper Magazine.
For the first time, the Olympic Games will feature dance as a sport. While the modern Olympic games (not to be confused with the classical games of Ancient Greece) have been held for over a century, dance hasn’t been on the list of official Olympic sports in all that time. At the Summer 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, dance, specifically breaking, will make its Olympic debut.
What is Breaking?
Breaking is a type of hip hop dance that emerged in the Bronx, New York City in the 1970s. It was originally a style of street dance that gained popularity at block parties. While dancers may learn breaking and other hip hop styles like popping, locking, and isolation in studios today, b-boys (break boys) and b-girls (break girls) learned their moves on their own or at dance battles.
Why Breaking?
Breaking has always been a form of competitive dance! While formalized competitions didn’t hit the dance world until the 1990s, dance battles are a staple of breaking culture. Dancers gather to show off their abilities to move, improvise to songs, and perform tricks against an opponent with a crowd watching. With more than 50 years behind the style and the massive growth of hip hop both in formal dance studios and on social media, breaking as a competitive style fit the Olympic Committee’s goal to reach a younger audience with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
What Does Olympic Breaking Look Like?
In most breaking competitions, dancers compete in one-on-one duels where they show their ability to perform specific breaking skills in a set amount of time. At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, two events, men’s and women’s will be held where 16 dancers face-off. “Athletes will use a combination of power moves—including windmills, the 6-step, and freezes,” the Olympics’ official breaking pages states, “as they adopt their style and improvise to the beat of the DJ’s tracks in a bid to secure the judges’ vote and take home the Olympic breaking medals.”
How to Qualify
Since breaking was first featured as a sport at the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018, talented dancers around the world have been gearing up for the Paris debut. To qualify for the Games, dancers must qualify at one of three events, the WDSF World Championship in Belgium (September 2023), the Continental Qualifiers—Africa (May 2023), Europe (June/July 2023), Asia (September/October 2023), The Americas (October/November 2023), and Oceania (October 2023)—or the Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai and Budapest (May/June 2024).
What Makes a Champion Breaker?
It’s not enough to have the moves. It’s what you do with them. According to NBC Olympics, the competition will take place in sections, first a round-robin then quarterfinals, semifinals, and final battles for the bronze, silver, and gold medals. “Each battle features a best-of-three one-on-one contest of approximately one minute. When one breaker finishes their round, their opponent instantly begins their routine in a battle format.”
These rapid battles are judged on five criteria: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality.
Technique… Just like any style of dance, there are correct ways to perform clean and controlled moves. Does a dancer have that control?
Vocabulary… Can the breaker perform a variety of “top rock” or standing moves and “down rock” or floor moves and freezes?
Execution… Related to technique, but scored separately, execution evaluates how clean and distinct each move is.
Musicality… In a freestyle competition, matching the beat and energy of a song is essential!
Originality… A breaker doesn’t just need to dance. They need to show who they are and their unique breaking style.
Meet Sunny Choi
One half of the Team USA breaking due is b-girl Sun “Sunny” Choi. Sunny trained in gymnastics from the age of 3 until she started college at the University of Pennsylvania. During her freshman year, she happened to meet the Penn breaking club, Freaks of the Beat, and on an impulse, decided to try breaking.
After she graduated, Sunny didn’t stop, and she wasn’t just breaking for fun. She started competing internationally, but despite being one of the top breakers in the United States, Sunny didn’t think she was bound for the Olympics. However, at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile in November 2023, Sunny won the gold and secured her spot in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
While breaking has already been replaced by flag football in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, Sunny thinks people will see its value as an Olympic sport once this year’s events start. “You feel the excitement, you feel the happiness or the anger or whatever emotion that the dancer is expressing in that moment,” she said of breaking in an interview with Time. “It’s so visceral and raw. I don’t think you get that anywhere else.”
