Breakdancers at Brooklyn Bridge subway stop, City Hall Park, Lower Manhattan (2015) | Jeffrey Zeldman / CC BY 2.0
The inclusion of breakdancing in the Paris Olympics this year turned out to be nothing short of a spectacle. From the beginning, the sport was met with hostility and confusion. Australian squash player Michelle Martin, frustrated after years of lobbying for the inclusion of her sport, called breaking’s debut a mockery of the Olympics. And even the official Olympic website muddled its introduction to the sport:
Breaking is a style of dance that developed in New York in the 1970s. Danced to percussion-heavy beats of funk and hip-hop, it’s known for acrobatic spins, flips, and kicks. Breaking was one of the original four disciplines of hip-hop, along with DJing, graffiti, and MCing—rapping.
Yes, hip-hop—and with it, breaking—originated in New York, in the South Bronx. But this definition effectively credits New York City for the invention of breaking, failing to acknowledge African-American, Caribbean, and Afro-Latinx communities as breaking’s creators.
This erasure proved typical of the Olympic Committee’s approach to breaking in general. If the debut is notable for anything, it’s for the opportunity to refocus our attention on the Black women and gender-nonconforming breakers seldom acknowledged in their own discipline—and overlooked on the international stage.
Jeffrey Louis was the only Black athlete on the US team, and one of just six Black breakers in the Paris Games. The absence of Black breakers overall—and the particular absence of Black women—made Australian Rachel “Raygun” Gunn’s now infamously cringeworthy performance not just disorienting but disturbing.
In break battles, movements like “flares,” “windmills,” “freezes,” and “jackhammers” embody resistance, joy, and innovation. Raygun didn’t seem interested in this tradition. Instead, she performed sprawled ground stretches, barely embellished spins, and “the sprinkler.” Then there was her “unique” kangaroo hop, which was simply embarrassing.
Much of the online discourse following breaking’s Olympic debut focused on one question: How did Raygun qualify to compete?
In the Oceanic Olympic qualifying event, 37 B-Boys and 15 B-Girls competed to represent Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji at Paris 2024.
The World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) selected the judging panel, which included nine independent international judges from China, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Puerto Rico, and the United States. There was just one female breaker on the panel. After Raygun took home gold with a questionable performance, online commentators would argue B-Girl Molly (silver) and B-Girl Hannah (bronze) unquestionably outshone her. Though judges at the Oceanic qualifiers insist she won fair and square, many believe that Gunn’s doctoral status and seniority in Australia’s breaking community could have influenced her win. Her placement exemplifies how the stage of international hip-hop offers a platform for white mediocrity—at the expense of Black artists.
From the outset, the Oceanic qualifiers dismissed the founding elements of breaking. In doing so, they also dismissed the athletes who founded the form. For instance, judge Nobuhiro “Chao” Harada warned breakers against one of the sport’s key movements known as “cocking”—a widely utilized gesture intended to rile up one’s adversary on stage, using jerking motions of the groin. This subtle instruction to appeal to “general” Olympic audiences undermines the Black originators of the artform and ignores the context in which breaking developed.
As Raygun’s Olympic routine became a viral joke, longtime breakers watched the sport they’ve shaped, defined, and molded for decades become a laughing stock. It’s now challenging to find the entire breaking games, as streaming platform Peacock from their online archive amidst the Raygun controversy.
The Olympics did not set up B-Girls for global success. The men’s and women’s showcases had what felt like two completely separate agendas—the men’s breaking was highly anticipated and well attended, whereas the women’s debut felt like an afterthought. It’s worth noting that this reflects a larger pattern: while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reported that gender parity had been reached at the Olympic games, with an increase of women in the Olympics from 11.4 percent in 1960 to 44.2 percent in 2016, women Olympians often cannot afford to be full-time athletes due to lack of support, funding, and resources.
What would breaking’s debut have been like if we saw the rightful ambassadors replace people like Gunn in the Olympics? As Shanna Collins points out, B-Girls and female breaking collectives have existed from hip-hop’s inception. Crews like Dynamic Rockers, the Lady Rockers, and the Female Break Force all emerged onto the scene throughout the 1970s and 1980s. One B-Girl legend, Ana “Rokafella” Garcia (a female-breaker from East Harlem) recalls having to fight through sexism to establish herself:
The guys were looking at me like, “Yo, don’t be giving her the keys to the kingdom, you know? This is a boys’ club!” Cause I really wanted to battle all of the guys and let them know that we’re good and you need to stop treating us like dirt. I’ve got skills now—and the skills just speak volumes.
In Hip Hop Dance: Meanings and Messages, Carla Stalling Huntington identifies the toxic masculinity and misogynoir faced by Black women and gender non-conforming breakers. Patriarchal structures have also dominated hip-hop generally. For instance, many regard Jamaican-born Clive “DJ Cool Herc” Campbell as the one of the forefathers of hip-hop. His “Merry-Go-Round” method—effortlessly switching between tracks without breaking the central feel and vibe for event participants and dancers—arguably laid the foundation for breaking and rapping to be formed. But while Herc is cemented in hip-hop’s legacy, it was his sister, Cindy Campbell, who held hip-hop’s first event. Campbell held a “back-to-school” party and saw an opportunity to showcase her brother’s talents, establishing what we now know today as a multibillion-dollar industry. Charging attendees 25 cents per entry, Campbell made 300 dollars that day, and built a legacy in her own backyard.
Campbell, like so many Black women, assembled the tools and know-how to build the structural framework of countless social movements, cultural developments, and artistic expressions. A breaker and graffiti artist (tagging under the name “PEP-1”), Campbell had the ability and inquiry to see hip-hop to grand visions. This erasure still echoes across the hip-hop community and international competitions when breaking is represented to mainstream audiences.
The nature of breakdancing is intrinsically powerful, resistant, and radical. While figures like Campbell introduced spaces for breaking to exist, the mechanics and interpretations of breaking hold far more significance than Olympic authorities realize. Huntington offers additional helpful insights into dance theory in her book Black Social Dance in Television Advertising: An Analytical History. She explains that dance is a functional, kinesthetic vehicle for cultural anthropological knowledge transmission. Huntington cites educator Margaret H’Doubler, who said “We discover the self through knowledge gained from the effects of our own acts … but that the average person is kinesthetically unaware of movement as a source of self-awareness and well-being.” Breaking is the embodiment and essence of Black life, symbolism, and expression.
It’s disturbing knowing how carelessly breaking was handled in the Olympics, with no acknowledgement of the incredible Black B-Girls practicing today, including Judi “JuLo” Lopez, Makda “Macca” Yohannes, Nicole “Trinity” Whitake, and Carmarry “Pep-C” Hall. All of these B-Girls could dance circles around breakers like Gunn. We should have seen them at the Olympics.
