Just caught some Olympic qualifying finals for breakdancing?! Kazakhstan versus Netherlands. They both crushed it and Netherlands won. I thought the Kazaki won the whole thing with his opening move in the final bout.
I haven’t read these links yet but apparently this is the first games that will feature break dancing.
https://www.nbcsports.com/olympics/news/breaking-olympics-2024-paris-dancing
https://olympics.com/en/news/how-to-qualify-paris-2024-breaking-qualification-system-explained
I can’t seem to find a video of the bout. Very cool to see breaking at the world level.
I’ve enjoying seeing how the games have evolved over my short life. I remember when Johnny Mosely pulled that perfect helicopter (360°) at mens moguls in Nagano in 1998 and it completely changed the sport of skiing. It launched entire categories of competitive skiing: freestyle, big air, and half pipe, eventually became Olympic events. I’m not really a big Olympics fan or anything, just wanted to share the news about breakdancing for Paris 2024. Can you believe it?
does breakdancing have/need a gender break-down?
I think that’s fairly common in individual competitive dance. I assume it’s based on the range of moves that breakers can do or not do based on anatomical limits, but I don’t really know why. I can’t think of one breaking move that one gender can always do and the other always cannot, not an expert on any of this.
I was uncomfortable with the way they call the breakdown, b boys. And b girls. Just call it women’s and men’s, if you’re gonna do it, IMO.
Men can generally do more power moves than women because of a difference in upper body strength. This makes it tough to have mixed gender head-to-head competitions. B-girls using power moves at all is a rather recent development to the scene.
B-boy and B-girl is the term breakers like, so I would expect them to fight hard against changing that.
So if we are adding dancing when will I be able to compete with my sprinkler moves?
But seriously what makes break dancing more of a sport vs ballet or the tango? Full contact competitive ballroom dancing, now that’s something I would watch.