Dance shone within the world highlight like by no means earlier than this previous weekend as breaking made its long-anticipated debut on the Olympic stage. In a packed amphitheater-style area at Paris’ Place de la Concorde, 32 dancers from all around the world—16 b-boys and 16 b-girls—competed face to face to see who would go down in historical past as the primary ever Olympic breaking champions. Listed below are the highlights from Friday’s and Saturday’s jam-packed days of competitors.
The Setting
Even watching from house, the thrill and vitality on the Place de la Concorde felt electrical. Hundreds of spectators, lots of them breakers themselves, stuffed the stands, grooving alongside of their seats and hyping up the opponents.
Music is the spine of each good battle, and on that entrance, the Olympics delivered. Two famend disc jockeys within the breaking scene—New York Metropolis’s DJ Fleg and Poland’s DJ Plash—had been on the decks, scratching and spinning iconic tracks from the likes of James Brown, Busta Rhymes, and A Tribe Known as Quest. The emcees, one other essential ingredient of hip-hop tradition, additionally rose to the problem: France’s Malik Moujouil (“Maleek”) and Portugal’s Max Oliveira stored the group and opponents’ vitality excessive all through each 10-hour competitors days.
Although one in every of NBC’s announcers, Blythe Lawrence, was from exterior the breaking world (gymnastics, to be actual), most commentary got here from insiders: breakers Sweet Bloise, Ronnie Abaldonado, and David “Child David” Shreibman. Whereas these accustomed to breaking might need appreciated a bit extra nuance of their deliveries, total they did an amazing job explaining the fundamentals of the game and paying homage to its hip-hop roots.
The Scoring
A lot of the controversy round breaking as an Olympic sport has involved scoring. Organizers had been tasked with creating a system that will work in Olympic competitors whereas nonetheless honoring breaking’s historical past as a freestyle kind.
The Video games ultimately had nine judges use a DJ fader to score each breaker against their opponent on technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. Regardless of all of the uncertainty, the system appeared to work nicely; there have been no challenges made to the outcomes of any rounds. It was refreshing to see that the judges—revered breakers from all around the world—valued foundational parts and efficiency high quality as a lot as flashy tips. Whereas France’s veteran breaker Dany Dann, for instance, didn’t essentially match the physicality of Australian newcomer J. Assault, Dann ended up successful each single choose’s vote each rounds together with his mixture of musicality and character.
The Opponents
Although breaking was born within the Bronx, Team USA didn’t have one of the best exhibiting in these video games. By the tip of 24 round-robin battles, each of the U.S.’s b-girls, Sunny Choi and Logan “Logistx” Edra, had been knocked out of the operating.The b-boys of Group USA fared higher. Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis and Victor Montalvo had been in a position to advance to the semifinals, with Montalvo making all of it the best way to the bronze-medal battle, the place he earned a decisive win towards Japan’s Shigeyuki “Shigekix” Nakarai.
By Sunday evening, Canada’s Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim and Japan’s Ami Yuasa had been topped the Olympic b-boy and b-girl champions, respectively. (You can find the full list of winners here.) Regardless that only some breakers made it to the ultimate podium, there have been many stunning moments of sportsmanship among the many opponents, demonstrating how close-knit and supportive the breaking group is worldwide.
