DNA Edit: Breaking into Olympics – At its core, break dancing is fiercely competitive

If break dancing indeed makes it to the 2024 Paris Olympics, it would take the inclusive nature of the world’s greatest sporting event a few notches higher. Believed to have been originated in the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s, this dance form became an expression for the marginalised, especially the Blacks, with hip-hop dance songs making an ideal soundtrack. In the Eighties, when pop sensation Michael Jackson did it on stage, his fans skipped a heartbeat or two. Now, the Olympics organisers say it is “urban, universal, and popular sport with more than a million BBoys and BGirls in France”. Break dance’s appeal surmounted boundaries to travel into different milieus and cultures. While hip hop in India is in the throes of evaluation, break dancing too seems to have got a shot in the arm due to popular TV shows. It has gone from simple headspins and backspins to sophisticated, intricate power moves. 

At one point, South Korea was leading a new wave of break-dance, or b-boy, artistry, but dancers from France to China were also experimenting with the moves by bringing in elements of jazz, capoeira, acrobatics, and martial arts into longer choreographed works. Break dance demands tremendous athletic skill and if Olympics organisers finally incorporate it, the dance’s reputation as an international art form will acquire a new dimension. After all, it is the idea of a challenge, or a battle call, which is at the heart of the breaking style, that had inspired some organisers to consider it for the Olympics. For all the BBoys and Bgirls around the world, their dream of getting into the Olympics will ensure that the dance form epitomises excellence in human endeavour.