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 everywhere in 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 here are the highlights from Friday’s and Saturday’s jam-packed days of competitors.
The Setting
Even watching from residence, the joy and vitality on the Place de la Concorde felt electrical. Hundreds of spectators, lots of them breakers themselves, crammed 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—have been on the decks, scratching and spinning iconic tracks from the likes of James Brown, Busta Rhymes, and A Tribe Referred to as Quest. The emcees, one other essential aspect of hip-hop tradition, additionally rose to the problem: France’s Malik Moujouil (“Maleek”) and Portugal’s Max Oliveira saved the group and opponents’ vitality excessive all through each 10-hour competitors days.
Although certainly one of NBC’s announcers, Blythe Lawrence, was from outdoors 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 may need appreciated a bit extra nuance of their deliveries, total they did an important 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 have been tasked with creating a system that may work in Olympic competitors whereas nonetheless honoring breaking’s historical past as a freestyle type.
The Video games in the end had 9 judges use a DJ fader to attain every breaker towards their opponent on approach, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. Regardless of all of the uncertainty, the system appeared to work properly; there have been no challenges made to the outcomes of any rounds. It was refreshing to see that the judges—revered breakers from everywhere in the world—valued foundational parts and efficiency high quality as a lot as flashy methods. 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 decide’s vote each rounds together with his mixture of musicality and persona.
The Rivals
Although breaking was born within the Bronx, Crew USA didn’t have one of the best exhibiting in these video games. By the top 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 Crew USA fared higher. Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis and Victor Montalvo have 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 night time, Canada’s Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim and Japan’s Ami Yuasa had been topped the Olympic b-boy and b-girl champions, respectively. (You could find the total checklist of winners right here.) Although 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 neighborhood is worldwide.