Breakdancing Is Now an Olympic Sport, But the Hip-Hop Community of Paris Is Skeptical

Joann Pai

This story about breakdancing in Paris is part of How Paris Moves, a series of dispatches about communities and social change in France through the lens of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

On a cloudy Saturday in June, in the Riquet neighborhood of Paris, a battle is beginning. As over six hundred spectators watch, two people step forward in a cavernous space as music soars all around us, orchestrated by a live band and a DJ mixing together Afro-Latin beats. Before the crowd, a young b-boy breakdances with moves at once sharp and smooth. Across from him, a woman wields her skirt as she dances the salsa, her movements growing faster with the music. They excite the audience composed of eager teenagers, families with children, and fellow dancers awaiting their turns to perform, who applaud as the dancers interpret the music with their own individual styles. The scene is vibrant and welcoming, positively electric. It’s a competition, yes—but it’s first and foremost a community.

This is the Centquatre-Paris, an expansive multipurpose cultural center in the heart of the 19th arrondissement. As host to practitioners and audiences of wide-ranging art forms (dance being just one of many), it offers public performances, concerts, workshops, talks, exhibitions, and festivals throughout the year. The building dates back to the 19th century—for over 120 years, it was home to Paris’s municipal undertakers until the industry’s privatization in the mid-1990s—and has been a designated historic monument since 1997. In 2003, the office of the Mayor of Paris tasked an architecture firm, Atelier Novembre, with the space’s renovation into an artistic space, as proposed by Centquatre’s current director, José-Manuel Gonçalvès.

When it opened in 2008, some critics saw the center as a symbol of gentrification, a temple dedicated to sifting “legitimate art” from more community-led forms of artistic performance. But soon enough, dancers from various backgrounds began to use the space for practicing and rehearsals. Access to Centquatre’s public spaces is free, there’s about 269,000 square feet of usable space, and the many large windows let in copious amounts of natural light. Most importantly, the center welcomes art in all its forms. During my visit to Centquatre, I see people of all types practicing: tap dancers, voguers, roller derby players, jugglers—and of course, b-boys and b-girls, whom I have come to meet.

I approach a group of dancers focused on their steps. They’re a diverse bunch, in age, race, and gender, all friendly with each other despite their differences. Among them, 16-year-old Mathis is breakdancing on the floor. Tan with tight curls, his pronounced height is betrayed by his voice, crackling with puberty.

“We practice to music with strong beats and vibes—without lyrics. It’s better to feel everything,” Mathis says. His journey with dance began three years ago, and now he comes to Centquatre at least once a week. “I meet different people every day here—from all over Paris but also the world, coming for the same purpose. Some of them are my good friends now because we’re here so often.”

When our conversation turns to the 2024 Summer Olympics and its inclusion of breakdancing (officially “breaking” in the Games program), Mathis says it is “good and not good at the same time.” He acknowledges that it is a form of recognition on the world stage, but worries about what it means to apply an ostensibly objective scoring system to a subjective art form. He speaks in the collective, mindful that athletes competing in breaking events at the Olympics will—to some audiences, especially those unfamiliar with the art—represent the breaking community as a whole: “If we can’t perform the ‘right’ way, we’ll be seen as no-good.”

Breaking is the newest Olympic event at this year’s Games, following the introduction of surfing and skateboarding in Tokyo 2020. The breaking competition, to be held at the Place de la Concorde on August 9 and 10, will have two medal events divided between women and men in which 16 b-girls and 16 b-boys will compete in solo battles. With gold, silver, and bronze medals to be awarded in each gender category, six breakers will become breaking’s inaugural Olympic medalists, bringing attention to their talents and their respective nations’ breaking scenes.

However, members of the breaking and hip-hop communities in Paris worry that this addition is yet another attempt at gentrifying their art form and ways of life. Anne Nguyen, a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Paris-based dance company Par Terre (literally “on the ground”), argues that the “sportification” of breaking will push dancers to forego the improvisation and individual spirit intrinsic to the practice. “Instead, they will be strategic, planning everything from A to Z, to get the high scores,” Nguyen says. “Less improvisation, fewer complex figures, a lot less risk-taking. It means less freedom.”

“Hip-hop, regardless of style, cannot be considered a sport because then it means every physical art form should be called a sport,” says Bruce Ykanji, the founder of Juste Debout, one of the largest annual street dance events in the world, and the Juste Debout School, which offers open classes and professional training programs in the 20th arrondissement. Ykanji asserts that breaking’s physicality is being used as an excuse to diminish it. In truth, he says, it is an art practice: “The elite do this because they do not appreciate our culture as it is.”

Breaking’s Olympic inclusion coincides with a parliamentary attempt to regulate the teaching of “alternative dances” in France. In April 2023, politicians Fabienne Colboc and Valérie Bazin-Malgras of the French National Assembly proposed a plan that would institutionalize the academic instruction of dances like hip-hop, breaking, vogueing, krumping, and Caribbean and African traditional dances into diploma-granting programs. The formalization of and improved pay for teachers would be part of the law, but long-time leaders within the French hip-hop community believe that this proposition will only limit access to the art form by putting up economic barriers and administrative obstacles in a country where there’s already too much bureaucratic red tape. They argue: We have organized and taught ourselves well enough since the beginnings of hip-hop in France. Why are institutions getting involved now?

Hip-hop culture found its footing in France in the 1980s with the debut of H.I.P. H.O.P., a weekly television program hosted by the French musician and rapper Sidney. It premiered in January 1984 and ran every Sunday on TFI, the nation’s most popular domestic network, for just 43 weeks. In that short time, however, the program welcomed significant guests to French shores, such as Rock Steady Crew, the American breaking group; Afrika Bambaataa, a DJ, rapper, and producer from the Bronx, New York; and jazz musician and composer Herbie Hancock.

H.I.P. H.O.P. helped shape France’s homegrown yet nascent hip-hop scene, which is now the world’s second-largest market for hip-hop after the United States. More crucially, it spoke to many young people in France, especially those in the margins: kids of African descent, and those living in the banlieues. “Hip-hop helped us find a place in a community, made us stronger,” says Rickysoul, a Paris-based French Caribbean artist and co-founder of Le Moovement, a grassroots coalition dedicated to the cultivation of the hip-hop and clubbing dance worlds. Their motto is pour nous, par nous—“for us, by us.”

While Rickysoul recognizes the world’s contemporary appreciation of hip-hop, he is also hyper-aware of its “appropriation by dominant forces,” particularly by cultural institutions, which are typically stringent entities in France. (For example, the Académie Française is a national authority that decides what is and isn’t officially part of the French language.) Rickysoul is one of many activists against the law proposed by Colbec and Mazin-Balgras; their petition “No to Law 1149” received nearly 30,000 signatures, bringing national attention to the issue.

Though Law 1149 and the Olympic Games are separate matters, Rickysoul sees the parallels in how both are raising questions about hip-hop culture in France. Since the announcement of breaking’s inclusion in Paris 2024, there have been multiple events bringing hip-hop to famous museums, such as the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre. The intention, it seems, is to demonstrate how two different worlds—classical art as upheld by predominantly white institutions and an art form with roots in street culture and global Black communities—can be brought together to harmonious effect.

But in French culture, hip-hop has long been used as a political tool to symbolize France’s “vivre-ensemble” (melting pot, or literally “living together”) to paper over issues of systemic racism in the country. Hip-hop’s integration into mainstream culture and bastions of “high art” is a form of recognition, yes, but Rickysoul believes these gestures should be critiqued: “When we’ve been in business for a long time and have a proven track record of success, how should we define ‘recognition’?”

At Centquatre, my chat with Mathis about the Olympics draws other b-girls and b-boys, all of whom agree that they are first and foremost community-based dancers and artists. As a b-girl named Elisa puts it, “The main difference between art and sport is that we want to express our feelings and values. Technique is key, but we think with our brains and our hearts. Dance is the reflection of that.”

“Break will always be from the street,” says another b-girl who goes by the name Frozen. “Everyone has their own style, and creativity is important. We can’t lose this feeling of free dance.” Frozen appreciates the benefits of institutional projects and sponsors, how it offers financial opportunities, but insists that breaking and hip-hop should remain community-led, with or without investment from corporations, the government, or the Olympics.

The future of breaking in the Olympics, past Paris 2024, is currently uncertain: It will not return to the events program in 2028 when Los Angeles will act as host city. The International Olympic Committee has not disclosed the reason for the decision, but it has prompted Ykanji of Juste Debout to question why France is whole-heartedly embracing breaking’s inclusion in the Games when even the birth country of hip-hop is “reluctant.”

Ykanji says he is proud of hip-hop and always happy to see it evolve and adapt with the times, but in his view, there is a consistent underlying issue at play, whether it’s the Olympics or Law 1149. “It’s never a conversation with people from within. It’s always led by those who have political ambitions and know nothing about hip-hop,” he says. “They come and want to change the rules for their own gain. It’s a form of neocolonialism.”

“The street will always be the best place for hip-hop,” says Nguyen of Par Terre. She welcomes the winds of change, but is similarly wary of institutions meddling in the hip-hop community without consulting those within it. “I believe in the role of culture and education in fostering interculturality, but I insist that is very different from the sportification and academization of dance.” Hip-hop is already a strong and vibrant culture as it is, Rickysoul says, and its community should be treated with respect: “If there is a desire to engage with us, it is simply a matter of asking us how.”

Where to find breaking and more dance in Paris

Dance companies and communities in Paris regularly publish events calendars inviting the public to watch or participate in dance performances and/or classes. This month’s programming at Centquatre-Paris (5 Rue Curial, 75019, Paris) includes a ballroom event with a live band and salsa/hip-hop workshops with the choreographer Rodrigue Lino. Throughout the week, the Juste Debout School (3 Rue de l’Est, 75020, Paris) offers open classes on b-boying, vogueing, locking, jazz rock, and more. (Keep an eye out for the dates and location of Juste Debout’s next annual global dance event, its 23rd iteration.) And after performances at Bodø2024 in Norway, Par Terre will return to Paris in September with a ballet of urban African dances, featuring coupé-décalé from Côte d’Ivoire and mbolé from Cameroon, at the Espace 1789 (2 Rue Alexandre Bachelet, 93400 Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine).

Read more of Condé Nast Traveler’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics here.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

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