Dance shone within the world highlight 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 all around 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 power on the Place de la Concorde felt electrical. 1000’s of spectators, lots of them breakers themselves, stuffed the stands, grooving alongside of their seats and hyping up the rivals.
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—had 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 ingredient of hip-hop tradition, additionally rose to the problem: France’s Malik Moujouil (“Maleek”) and Portugal’s Max Oliveira saved the group and rivals’ power excessive all through each 10-hour competitors days.
Although considered one of NBC’s announcers, Blythe Lawrence, was from outdoors the breaking world (gymnastics, to be precise), most commentary got here from insiders: breakers Sweet Bloise, Ronnie Abaldonado, and David “Child David” Shreibman. Whereas these conversant in breaking might need appreciated a bit extra nuance of their deliveries, general they did an ideal 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 had 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 nicely; there have been no challenges made to the outcomes of any rounds. It was refreshing to see that the judges—revered breakers from all around the world—valued foundational components and efficiency high quality as a lot as flashy tips. Whereas France’s veteran breaker Dany Dann, for instance, didn’t essentially match the physicality of Australian newcomer J. Assault, Dann ended up profitable each single decide’s vote each rounds together with his mixture of musicality and persona.
The Opponents
Although breaking was born within the Bronx, Crew USA didn’t have the most effective displaying in these video games. By the tip 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 working.The b-boys of Crew USA fared higher. Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis and Victor Montalvo had 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. (Yow will discover the total listing of winners right here.) Although only some breakers made it to the ultimate podium, there have been many lovely moments of sportsmanship among the many rivals, demonstrating how close-knit and supportive the breaking group is worldwide.
