The Olympic effect leaves breaking and its dancers ruing new version of their sport: 'I don't want to compromise'

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PARIS — Breaking was born on the streets of the Bronx, New York, and somehow, some way, it found its way here, to the Olympics, to a heavily branded, open-air arena surrounded by classical architecture, plopped in front of an overwhelmingly white European audience, into France’s most famous public square.

It came with its community divided over its elevation to this stage. “You're either pro-Olympic or not,” U.S. breaker Jeffrey Louis said months ago.

So it came with assurances from the pro-Olympic crowd that the Games would not corrupt the essence of breaking, that its hip-hop roots would rise to the surface when spotlights illuminated it at La Concorde, and when dozens of cameras brought it to millions of curious viewers around the world.

But to some breakers, including ones competing here, those promises weren’t fully kept.

“The Olympics has changed the way some people are dancing,” U.S. B-girl Sunny Choi said Friday after the round-robin phase of the women’s competition, which was ultimately won by Ami Yuasa, a.k.a. B-girl Ami, from Japan.

Breaking, at its 1970s core, was art; it was open-ended, impromptu personal expression. Even as it evolved into a competitive pursuit, its judges were supposed to reward things like “originality,” “performativity,” “musicality” and “personality.” For Choi, who began breaking as a college freshman in the late 2000s, “it was all about being unique, it was all about showing your personality and being true to who you are,” she said.

Here, instead, “a lot of people are jam-packing their rounds with a lot of stuff — and there's a lot of fluff in there,” Choi said.

In the opening round of her first battle, as China’s B-girl 671 spun and spun through a visually stunning series of power moves, Choi held up her left hand and mimed writing on it, as if to suggest that 671 had scripted her performance.

Anything scripted is frowned upon in breaking — or at least it used to be. These aren’t choreographed gymnastics routines. The breakers don’t even know what music they’ll be dancing to. They’re supposed to improvise on the fly and flow with whatever track a DJ throws at them, just as Black and Latino pioneers did five decades ago.

But as a sport, and especially as an Olympic sport, breaking has moved away from that, toward an acrobatics competition, toward routines defined by explosiveness that make a casual observer ooh and ahh but might make an OG roll their eyes.

In some ways, the Olympics have encouraged and accelerated that shift. In other ways, it’s a natural shift fueled by an up-and-coming generation. B-girl Nicka, from Lithuania, the reigning world champion and Friday’s silver medalist, is 17 years old. B-girl 671, who took bronze, is 18, and “I haven’t been dancing for a very long time,” she said through a translator, when asked if she had changed her style or scripted moves with a view toward the Games. To them, breaking is a sport that rewards eye-popping athleticism. They have never known anything different.

To Choi and many others, “it is not just sport,” she said. “It's a dance, it's an art form, it's a culture, it's a community first. And then, I think, sport second.”

Or, at least, that’s how she interpreted it. As a Eurosport commentator noted during Choi’s second battle, “she’s trying to tell a story.” After B-girl India, from the Netherlands, went almost straight into a series of head spins and fancy footwork, Choi approached her, and acted as if she was lifting a crown off India’s head. Choi then placed the imaginary crown on her shoulder, and pretended to shot-put it into the stands. She did all this with an effervescent smile on her face — a genuine reflection of her bubbly personality.

“I really wanted to be true to me, not compromise anything,” Choi later said. Many of the power moves that her opponents flashed were “basic moves that I can do too,” she argued. “But I choose not to, because I don't want to compromise.”

The judges, though, a nine-person panel representing nine different countries, sided with her opponents. Choi lost to both 671 and India by an aggregate score of 34-2.

She wanted to be clear: She wasn’t “salty.” She “had a lot of fun.” She, like most breakers who spoke to reporters afterward, glowed about the atmosphere and the opportunity. “I felt the energy,” Choi said. She felt respected as an athlete. Logan Edra, a.k.a. B-girl Logistx, also from the U.S., got emotional talking about her journey, and said through sniffles: “I'm just really happy that we're here.”

But Choi rued the Olympi-fication of the art form.

“We knew that that would happen,” she said. “I think a lot of people in our community were a little bit afraid of that happening. And, yes, of course, to a degree, it happened here. But it's been happening with a world circuit of events.”

Others also sounded conflicted about the direction of breaking. Some, including Edra, said they appreciated the “compromise” between sport and art that allowed breaking to rise to the Olympic stage; but they acknowledged that it was, in fact, a compromise.

“Breaking is really so different. It's not really a sport,” Italian B-girl Anti said. “I never thought that one day that I could be here at the Olympics.”

They all sounded happy with the environment that the International Olympic Committee and the World Dance Sport Federation had ultimately created for them. “The qualifiers in the beginning, I did not enjoy, at all,” Edra said. "Like, the gyms I grew up going to, it was a lot more raw. … There was just no vibe when I would go to those qualifiers. And it got way better.” The music selections improved. “I’m really happy about that,” she continued. “I feel like the culture pulled through.”

But the judging?

“Judging's always subjective,” Edra said.

After her round-robin battle with Nicka, the eventual silver medalist, Edra explained, “I was like, ‘Yeah, I smoked her. It's over.’” Then she saw the votes: 13-5 in favor of Nicka. “What the f***?” Edra said.

“But it's no diss to the judges, it's no diss to Nicka. It's just, like, my personal opinion.”

That, of course, is the problem with breaking. The judging, in many ways, is personal opinion. The Olympic criteria are “so vague,” Louis, a.k.a. B-boy Jeffro, who’ll perform Saturday in the men’s competition, said. Nobody knows exactly why the nine-person panel, for example, voted narrowly for Japan’s Ami over Lithuania’s Nicka in each round of the gold-medal battle. The aggregate margin: 16-11.

When asked about the judges, Choi said: “No comment.”

When asked again from a different angle, she reiterated: “No comment.”

She acknowledged, throughout a 10-minute interview, that “breaking changes over time,” and that’s OK, perhaps even organic. “Maybe I'm just old school and I don't want to change,” she said.

But she wanted to honor what it was when she found it, and what it has been for her: an “outlet,” a community, a forum for self-discovery and self-expression.

“Because it's a very creative dance — or sport — it's about finding yourself as a person, about personal development, about growth,” Choi said. “A lot of the dancers up there are really young, and they're really hungry, and out there to represent in a specific way. I just have a different purpose.”