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breaking is part of the Olympic family, like surfing, climbing, skateboarding. The next meeting? During the summer games in Tokyo 2021 as a show, and as an official sport in 2024. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) was willing to modernize the noble institution which was softly sleeping and forgetting some major contemporary disciplines. Sports practiced outside sports halls and stadiums, for young people, in urban spaces, made up of social diversity. When the sports world welcomes new colors, it is certainly the right time to combine them with the Olympic games.
breaking AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES
A decision that brings many questions.
breaking at the Olympics: This decision will maybe interrogate, intrigue, and create an open discussion about the new faces of sports. Has urban dance its place within the Olympic world? To try and answer let's go and follow “battles” (competitions) organized around the world. As Thomas Bach did (the IOC president) during the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018. His answer was very clear:“I have to admit I have some admiration for all the breaking moves. This dance allows dancers to show their personality. You feel the performance, you discover clearly the personality of each athlete.” Just as in gymnastics or figure skating, you have to practice breaking for many years before mastering the dance steps. It requires real physical strength. In these sports, you must have a slick and energetic creativity to find your own artistic style.
Dancers are sportswomen and sportsmen but also artists. With them, the whole breaking culture will dance, freeze, and footwork at the Olympic Games. It will be an invigorating meeting between a durable and solid institution and the freestyle moves of Hip-Hop, which has strong codes, languages, and styles...In one word: diversity, a unique and specific culture with its catchphrase: “Peace, Love, Unity and Having Fun”. A rich culture spreading around the globe, as quickly as a rap flow, coming from the poor suburbs of New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1970s.
breaking is born in the streets, where everything starts, again and again, like tomorrow's sports. Here it comes, driven by the Olympic flame. A great opportunity to introduce breaking amongst a general audience, to present B-Girls and B-Boys (breaking dancers), to put an end to false ideas like urban life and streets are full of violence or breakdancers are just dancers wearing a hoodie, dancing on the floor, and hanging around dark streets.
breaking is all different. It opens a rare and wonderful door and allows this sport to invade peacefully the everyday urban life. It is a world of positive energy, a colorful and creative world, a wind of change at the Olympics.
As Menno, the dutch breaking star said: “Call us Art-hletes!”. Art and sport are unified, it is the topic of this press file. Happy reading!