The Daily - Breaking’s Olympic Debut

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

More than 50 years after its inception, “breaking” — not “break dancing,” a term coined by the media and disdained by practitioners — will debut as an Olympic sport.Jonathan Abrams, who writes about the intersection of sports and culture, explains how breaking’s big moment came about.Guest: Jonathan Abrams, a Times reporter covering national culture news.Background reading: The Olympic battles in breaking will be a watershed moment for a dance form conceived and cultivated by Black and Hispanic youth in the Bronx during the 1970s.Breakers are grappling with hip-hop’s Olympic moment. Will their art translate into sport?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. So my name is Gabriel Quickstep Dionisio. Rockefeller, R-O-K-A-F-E-L-L-A. I go by Kid Glide. I represent Dynamic Rockers. I'm from Queens, New York. This year at the Olympic Games, there's one sport that's on stage for the first time, breakdancing. I'm excited that people are going to be exposed to it on that kind of stage. They're going to see breaking. They're going to see hip-hop.

They're going to feel it. They're going to, you know what I'm saying? So it's going to be an experience. Today, my colleague Jonathan Abrams tells the story of how it went from the streets of New York all the way to the Paris Games. But I'm also concerned that it's not being represented at its fullest cultural capacity. People are clueless to what this even is and people are going to be really surprised. And the debate that Journey has inspired about whether treating breakdancing as just another

sport might be a mistake. This comes from a culture that, you know, had to go through so much just to exist. So are you going to do right by us? It's Friday, August 9th. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Sabrina. So Jonathan, we're going to talk today about the Olympics. And I think something that catches people's attention is when the Olympics adds new sports. You know, the Olympics is this ancient thing. So, you know, I find that kind of surprising

when new things pop up. And you've been writing specifically about the new event that is debuting this year in Paris, and that is breakdancing. Yeah, a lot of people in the community refer to it as breaking. Breakdancing is kind of a term that they have said was created by mainstream media and not a term that they use, so it's almost frowned upon. Ah, okay, breaking, got it.

So it's been a little bit of a journey these last few years to get it to the Olympics, and this is such a special watershed moment. It's kind of crazy to think that break dancers are going to be at the Olympic Games. They're going to be mixing along with LeBron James, with Kevin Durant, with Simone Biles, all these athletes you historically think of being involved and intertwined with the games. You're going to have a component of hip hop right there alongside with them. And it's joining a class of new sports recently added to the Olympics,

like skateboarding and rock climbing and surfing. And if you look at these sports, what they all have in common is that there's trying to get a younger audience to watch the games. And what the International Olympic Committee, they've been frank about what they're trying to do is that they're trying to go for that younger audience because viewership has been way, way down. And so these ancient games are trying to modernize themselves by changing the rules and

welcoming these new events to have a newer, younger, more diverse viewership. Okay, so breakdancing, oh sorry, breaking, is here to try to breathe some new life into the Olympic Games. You know, expand the audience, as you say. But I don't really think of breaking as a sport. I mean, never mind a competitive Olympic sport. Lots of people make that argument, Sabrina, but competition has been part of breaking since its inception in the Bronx in the 1970s. At that time, New York City is basically in this state of disrepair. The construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway

cuts through the heart of the South Bronx and it displaces thousands of residents. Crime levels rise, unemployment increases. These large buildings are sitting vacant because of white flight. And property owners, some are facing default, and they start burning their buildings in order to cash in on the insurance value. And people, especially the black and brown people in the Bronx, they're feeling this sense of utter hopelessness. And the culture of hip-hop grows out of that despair. It was a way for these marginalized communities to take something back and to have something for themselves. And breaking is a key component of hip-hop because when hip-hop first formed and came along,

it was presented as this vivacious, multifaceted gym where you had four distinct tenets and components one was lyricism the artist's words going along a track of music one is turntablism or being a dj and that's scratching records the other one is graffiti or writing and then the last one is breaking and that's the physical expression of hip-hop, dancing to the music. And so these latchkey kids in the Bronx would throw these massive parties where breaking was born. And people, they came together and they formed crews and they competed against one another. And they danced to make a name for themselves. They danced to earn respect in their street, then in their neighborhood, then in their city.

And that was how they cultivated self-esteem and made something of themselves when they really had nothing else. Okay, so in these poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, in this very turbulent time, kids were finding themselves, finding inspiration in breaking. Why exactly did they call it breaking? Why that word? Breaking comes from these pioneering DJs being able to figure out how to extend the breaks for songs.

So say there's a drum break, like in a famous song, where it's a snippet and then the song will continue. And they were the most popular parts of the songs, where kids would dance for 10, 15 seconds and then stop. DJs like DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, they were innovators and engineers because they figured out how to extend those breaks. And once they were able to loop them endlessly, then kids were able to extend their dances

and be able to dance and be creative with it and form the circles. And that's where breaking came from. So what did it actually look like? There's no way I can accurately describe breaking just through words. I can try to say that it's graceful or powerful or athletic, and all those words seem to fall flat. Breaking is a call and response. It's a back and forth conversation. It's almost like

trumped up jazz. Picture this. You're going into a crowded party. There's people everywhere. Music is thumping. If you're walking to the cypher, which is the circle where breakers perform and compete in, you finally get to the front. And what you see is people doing these most amazing moves, moves that you don't think are possible with the human body. They're spinning, contorting their bodies into pretzels, stopping on a dime, bending backwards, doing windmills and air flares. And then the next person is going to come in and challenge them. And what breaking is, it's attitude.

It's an expression of yourself. It's energy balled up. And when did breaking go beyond the streets of the Bronx and really kind of emerge as a sport? Well, before it got to that level, it had to become part of the mainstream culture. And breaking started to hit that level around the early to mid-1980s. And at this point, people may know Rapper's Delight. They can maybe say a hip-hop, a hippity hip-hop. You know, everybody knows that song by then. But these movies like Flashdance and Wildstyle are also starting to come out. And they're starting to capture hip-hop's infancy. And one of the

main ones that comes out in 1984 is Beat Street, and that's pivotal. There's a scene of the movie with these crews coming together in a club. coming together in a club. And there's anticipation, there's adrenaline. It looks like they may fight, but no. Instead of fighting, a dance battle breaks out. And if you've never seen this, like I said earlier about words and being able to describe it, if somebody described breakdancing to you and you had never seen it in person, you wouldn't have a good clue as to what it was.

But now for the first time in movie theaters from L.A. to New York, you can actually see what it is. And then you have these pioneering groups like Rock Steady Crew and Dynamic Rockers, Zulu Kings, New York City Breakers, they all start to be in these movies and do these demonstrations globally. And that inspires a whole generation of kids to get into breakdancing. This is the newest craze. It's called breakdance. So as the popularity of breakdancing continues. Experts say it's okay to dance as long as you just watch your step. It's the Big Break Dance Contest from the Roxy. And at this point, we're starting to see judges and prizes be introduced into breaking.

Then in 1990, a German breaker set up a breakdance competition in Germany known as Battle of the Year. And 2001 was a pivotal year because it's the first year that Red Bull has its Lord of the Floors competition. History in the making, y'all! And that, again, convened all the best breakers to be able to compete against one another to measure themselves up.

But there's also the carrot at the end of the stick. breakers to be able to compete against one another to measure themselves up but there's also the carrot at the end of the stick. There's a multi-thousand dollar cash prize that's awarded to the top talent. talent. The winners, Los Angeles Breakers. Can we get your check, Star? So you start to see the trappings of this thing that was created in New York City, in the Bronx in the 1970s, start to leave its beginnings a little bit and become more of a competition and more of a sport through Red Bull and these other entities that are

sponsoring it. What y'all loving at or what? Give a big round of applause to all the contestants. entities that are sponsoring it. Okay, so breaking is going mainstream in a very big way. But in my mind, there's a big difference between a Red Bull event and the Olympics. So how do we get from here to there? It's actually a bit of a wild story. So nearly three decades ago, this global governing body of dance,

International Dance Sport, is recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and they want to bring dance to the Olympics. So they want to have ballroom dancing, and they suggest that, and they get rebuffed. So they eventually rebrand themselves as World Dance Sport Federation and they find out that it's not foxtrot or salsa or ballroom that the Olympic thinks could have a shot. It's breaking. Breaking is highly watchable, easily viewable on social media, and it comes along as the Olympics is reevaluating what they're going to use as a sport to try and gain that younger audience.

There was a testing period in 2018. Winter Olympic Games just got a little more exciting. Break dancing will now be part of the Youth Olympic Games just got a little more exciting. Breakdancing will now be part of the Youth Olympic Games. They debuted breaking at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. Three, two, one. It's battle time! And what happens is that it exceeds almost every expectation by every metric possible. There was more than 50,000 people who attended the two-day event in 2018.

There was over 2.5 million social media impressions, according to the International Olympic Committee. I mean, it seems like it aligns itself perfectly with the Olympics mission of trying to skewer to a younger audience. And once you see those numbers, that pretty much locked up breaking for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The Olympic Games are changing and the future of breaking is coming. We'll be right back. Okay, so now we're at the games. Everybody's watching how this is going to go, which must be pretty exciting for breakers.

You would think so, but there's a lot of skepticism and tension from many of these veterans and pioneers and purists of breaking. And what do they say? Why do they not feel excited about this? Well, I think anytime you take something and strip it away from its roots, and let's be honest, Paris 2024 is very, very, very far away from Bronx 1970s. That is true. It is not going to be the same thing

or presented in the same thing. I think that's what the purists and the pioneers are afraid of. But Jonathan, couldn't you also make the case that, you know, skateboarding is also a specific kind of culture and that it also has all of its own peculiarities and is also potentially hard to judge by a bunch of Olympic judges? To some extent, yeah.

But breaking, it's just different in a lot of ways. The pioneers and the purists, the ones who invented this thing, will argue that it's more than just a hobby or even a sport. It's a lifestyle. It's the product of a culture. or even a sport. It's a lifestyle. It's the product of a culture. It's something that was born from Black and brown people's struggles in a deeply turbulent time in American history, and is a way for people to express themselves, to tell their stories, to build self-confidence. And on top of that, there's a lot of breakers who just aren't happy with how this arrived at the Olympics in the first place. It arrived in the hands of the World Dance Sport Federation. And remember, that's an organization that wasn't even associated with breaking. They were trying to put ballroom dancing into the Olympics way before they ever thought about breaking. thought about breaking. So back in 2017, a bunch of breakers, they got together and they signed a petition essentially protesting this organization. And they were saying, you don't represent us.

You're not from our community, but you're taking our art form and using it to advance your own goals. And all of this has left a lot of breakers really worried and concerned about what exactly this weekend is going to look like for breaking. Okay, let's dig into that. What will breaking look like on stage in Paris? What can we expect? Right. So there's a lot of questions about how it's going to actually look. In Paris, you're going to have some of the crucial components of breaking. You're going to have attitude. You're going to have breakers. They're going to be challenging each other.

There's going to be athleticism. But there's also going to be judges. A breaker is going to go get a score. Then the next breaker is going to go and get a score. So you can kind of see those seeds of the origin of this thing that was born in New York in the 1970s, but it's definitely something different and it's more sterile and sanitized.

There's going to be 16 men and 16 women who will go across two days of competition. There's going to be nine judges and they're going to score the breakers based on five criteria, vocabulary, technique, execution, originality, and lastly, musicality. And break those down for me. What do they actually mean? The vocabulary is not how many words somebody can say. It's the array of moves that a breaker deploys. And technique covers the breaker's body control and their use of space.

Execution consists of the cleanliness of one's moves. Then originality is improvising during their rounds, being able to react to what their opponent is doing. And then musicality is staying on beat with the music. They're not going to know the music beforehand, so they're going to have to really attune their moves to what's going on to the beat. Okay, so this is how the judges are actually going to do it. But what about kind of what we know about breaking,

the like spirit of competition, the kind of outdoing each other, the attitude it brings, like the showboating? Is that taken into account in how it's going to go at the Olympics? Yeah, I can guarantee you this, Sabrina, that this is going to be the only Olympic sport with the misbehavior button. What's that? The judges will be able to hit a misbehavior button if competitiveness crosses into crassness, if they deem that to be the case. What's an example of something that would get a misbehavior button? Say if you finish off a move with a freeze and stick up your middle finger at your opponent.

Okay, fair enough. Got it. Okay, misbehavior button. So this sport, of course, started here in the U.S. I have to ask, who are the Americans competing this year? Tell me about them. Yeah, somebody that I've talked to a lot leading up to the games is Sunny Choi, who was the first American woman to qualify for the games. All right, switching it up.

All the way to USA, first entry, Sunny. She's Korean-American. She's from Tennessee. She's ironically the only New Yorker. She now lives in New York, who is competing in Paris at the Games. All right, Sunny. Yay! Well, you started as a gymnast.

Is that true? Yeah. So I actually, I watched the Olympics growing up. She has a background in gymnastics and she was working at Estee Lauder when she decided to go into breaking full time. Some people have been like, you're a very unlikely Olympian. I'm like, yeah, kind of. I had always envisioned myself going to the Olympics as a gymnast and I never thought I would have the chance again. And so it coming back full circle is amazing on the men's side you have Victor Montalvo who goes by b-boy Victor and he's a two-time

Red Bull world one champion he's from Florida So my dad and his twin brother used to break back in Mexico and they actually taught me, my brother, and my cousin. His father was a pioneer in the Mexican breaking scene. I was introduced into breaking at the age of six years old and I took it serious at the age of 10. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. So breaking is really in Victor's blood, and he's definitely a favorite to metal on the men's side. Still got the action. Victor, what you got? Victor with the eye contact going straight into it.

He's like, I see you, and I got you. Okay, so I'm assuming these Americans are poised to win this fundamentally American sport. Not necessarily, Sabrina. Breaking is such a global entity now that I feel like America has really fallen behind some of these other countries when it's more popular and when people do it more often. So you look at this field and there's breakers from Japan, from the Netherlands, from France, from Kazakhstan, from all over the world. On the women's side, there's B-girl Nika from Lithuania. And last year, she won the 2023 world title at the age of 16.

Wow, amazing. A Lithuanian girl has the world title, actually. Yeah. And, you know, she's an amazing story. And I think she's emblematic of breaking and its evolution because she discovered breaking on YouTube at the age of five. And within just about a decade is one of the world's best breakers in the world and will be heavily favored to win a gold medal at the first Olympic breaking competition. Just to go back to the tension around breaking in the Olympics that we started with, Jonathan, you know, and the question of it leaving its roots, becoming detached from the place and the culture it sprung from, is there an argument that that's already happened?

it sprung from. Is there an argument that that's already happened? That as people are kind of wanting to pull it back toward where it came from, it's already gone. It already went out there. Is there any going back? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think we're at this crossroads where you have breaking's authenticity at stake. And breaking is about that expression from the heart. It's about being able to show your attitude, your charisma, who you are as a person through your dance. And the pioneers and the purists are going to be watching this to see what part of the soul and the struggle exists as this thing that they invented, nurtured, and cultivated reaches its biggest stage ever. But it is out there. And for somebody to be able to be in a foreign country and just study the art form on YouTube and be able to become world-class leaders in it, it says something, one, about the art form and how

wide-ranging and impactful it can be. And it also just says that this isn't just New York's anymore. This is global. And perhaps the people performing on that stage are what breakdancing is now, right? In some ways. Yeah, and we're going to see people, men and women from different countries all over the world represented in Paris.

And in some ways, it's very, very far away from what was invented in New York in the 1970s. But at the same time, seeing people from different countries and men and women be the best at breaking that they can possibly be is also exposing breaking to a whole new generation. And exposing breaking at the Olympics

could be the vessel that keeps it alive for the next generation. Jonathan, thank you. Sabrina, anytime. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Thursday, former President Donald Trump held a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. It was his first public appearance since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee. I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.

In his remarks, Trump proposed three dates in September for debates with the vice president. I haven't recalibrated strategy at all. It's the same policies, open borders, weak on crime. Trump insisted that little had shifted in the contest, despite polling showing a tightening race. Listen, I had 107,000 people in New Jersey. You didn't report it. I'm so glad you asked. What did she have yesterday? 2,000 people? If I ever had 2,000 people, you'd say my campaign is finished. It was an effort by the former president to recapture some political momentum, as the new Democratic ticket has continued to dominate the news coverage. During his remarks, ABC confirmed that it would host the two candidates for a debate on September 10th. A quick reminder to catch a new episode of The Interview right here tomorrow. This week, Lulu Garcia Navarro talks with Republican Senator James Lankford, including about Republicans who turned on him when he tried to pass bipartisan immigration reforms.

I did have several folks saying, I'll destroy you if you do this, because though I like you, I like President Trump better, and he's got to be elected for the future of the country, and you can't take this issue off the table. issue off the table. Today's episode was produced by Sydney Harper and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Shannon Lin and Will Reed. It was edited by Lexi Diao and MJ Davis-Lin, with help from Ben Calhoun. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

that's it for the daily i'm sabrina tavernisi see you on monday