Haha, look at the big shorts I’m wearing! This is in my friend’s basement. That’s where we would go to practice. It’s actually really fun to watch this now. There are certain movements, there are certain shapes, the way I move is still very similar. But you can see the energy, you can see the hunger he had at that age. That has changed.
What do you mean? What has changed?
It’s always purer when you start. You dance because you love to dance. Now there are sponsors, there are media. At that age, when I went to an event everything was super exciting. I still have the same love, but it’s lost its shine a little, for sure.
Ok, repetitive question: is breaking a sport?
Good question.
You knew this was going to happen.
It’s a conversation we have to have. Every time I am asked this question, I say that I have always seen it as an art and a culture first. I’ve never seen it as a sport. Most of us have never seen it as a sport. It’s self-expression, it’s culture. It is an element of hip-hop culture. Now it moves to the field of sports. To be completely honest, I don’t care how people label it. Hip-hop in general can transcend these labels.
I find it curious that there are two groups of people who agree that breaking is not a sport: those who hate that breaking is in the Olympic Games, because they do not respect it, and the breakers themselves. I don’t understand the hate though. What you do is really athletic, it’s really difficult.
There is also a lot of subjectivity involved. There is no single phrase: “if you do this move, you get so many points.” You have categories like originality, execution and difficulty. But “difficulty” is hard to judge, because you could do something physically difficult, but you could do something equally difficult. creatively difficult. How are these factors measured? It remains extremely subjective; He is very political when it comes to judging.
Good. And even when this was first announced as an event of the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, there was a petition from a B-boy who accused the World DanceSport Federation and the International Olympic Committee of exploiting breaking for their own benefit. He got over 2,000 signatures: other B-boys, B-girls.
Yes, some people in the community don’t want us at the Olympics. But there are many OGs and highly respected people in the game who understand the opportunities that will arise. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. At the end of the day, the positives outweigh the negatives. So let’s focus on that and do our best.
Like you said, all of this is not just a sport, it’s a culture. And that’s where things get really deep.
Of course. You have to respect that side too. For me, I understand that I am a guest of this culture. I’m just someone who came later. He comes from black and Latino culture. He came from the hood. He has grown out of it. This touched people like me, who came from a middle-class family who had just seen the breakout and said, “I want to do this.” The same goes for Europeans and Asians. If you go to Japan, there are a lot of kids whose parents see this as something fun and positive for their kids to do. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
