The Ultimate Guide to Breaking at the 2024 Olympics
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It’s time for breaking to enter the Olympic spotlight.
After a successful run at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, breaking—the urban street dance style often referred to by the misnomer breakdancing—will be part of the official program for the first time at the 2024 Paris Games.
Since its inception on the streets of New York City to its evolution as a fully-fledged sport complete with its own specific set of rules and regulations, breaking has developed a cult following around the globe, making it a natural addition to this year’s provisional sports.
Ahead, we break down (forgive the pun!) everything you need to know about the new Olympic sport.
A Brief History of Breaking
Breaking is one of several pillars of hip-hop, which also include other artistic forms of expression like MCing, DJing, and graffiti. All of these elements originated from the Bronx, a borough in New York City, in the early 1970s.
It’s possible that breaking got its name from the term “breakbeat,” which refers to the isolated and elongated percussive portion of a song as innovated by DJ Kool Herc. Hence, dancers would begin moving to the breakbeat.
These moves in and of themselves are impressive athletic feats, often requiring great physical strength or dramatic acrobatic maneuvers. Despite this, breaking didn’t originally appear as the structured athletic competition we often see it as today. Before it exploded into the mainstream in the 1980s, breaking commonly took place as a community activity, spontaneously occurring on the dance floor or on sidewalks.
Breaking has largely lost mainstream traction in North America, but has continued to grow in popularity in other countries like South Korea and France. As it’s frequently practiced today, breaking has become a massive global phenomenon with multiple international tournaments backed by corporate entities like Red Bull.
Breaking Terminology
There are a number of major terms frequently used in the world of breaking. We define a few of them below.
Breaker: A person who is a practitioner of breaking
B-boy or B-girl: Short for “break-boy” or “break-girl,” these are the titles given to a male or female breaker
Cypher: A circle of people in which one person dances in the center
Top rock: Refers to a breaker's starting moves while they are standing upright, often showing off footwork
Down rock: Refers to a break's moves once they get down to the floor, involving a combination of hands and footwork as well as power moves
Power moves: Complex moves that show off a breaker's strength, technique, balance, and flexibility, such as a windmill or head spin
Freezes: When a breaker freezes their body while holding still amid a complex pose
Throw down: A round in which one breaker begins their dance during a breaking battle
The Olympic Rules, Explained
For a dance form so synonymous with individuality and personal expression, it may seem to go against the grain of breaking’s spirit to judge dancers by a specific set of standards and criteria. But, the Olympic format intends to take into account both a breaker’s creativity as well as their technique.
At the Paris Games, 16 B-boys and 16 B-girls will compete for gold in two separate events, one for men and one for women. These dancers will be split into four different groups of four, with each competitor participating in three battles in a round robin. Every battle will include a set number of rounds, in which one breaker dances first and the next breaker then responds.
A panel of nine judges will evaluate each round according to a set of six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity, and musicality. Each of these criteria correspond with a different percentage for the battle score, with technique, performativity, and creativity consisting of 60 percent of a dancer’s score and variety, musicality, and personality consisting of 40 percent of the total.
The panel will submit their votes following the end of each round. The winner is simply determined by whoever accrues the most points in the end.
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