B-boying: From street to Olympic stage

Gaurav Kanthwal

Gold medal in break dancing. Sounds outlandish? Well, the athletic art was part of the recent Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires where the best of the best walked away with medals.

Spectators, particularly teenagers, thronged Urban Park’s Parque Mujeres Argentinas for four days as 24 participants performed some jaw-dropping, gravity-defying moves to the beats of Disc Jockeys (DJs). The Windmills, the Headspins, the Jackhammers, the Head Slides, the Baby Spins, the Hand Hops, and the Air Flares would have left even Michael Jackson numb.

At the opening ceremony, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said: “We will see here many firsts, not only for the Youth Olympic Games, but for the entire Olympic Movement. We said in Olympic Agenda 2020 that the sport of the future has to go where the people are. So we will also see many activities to try and have the young generation not only watch, but participate and engage in sports. It is a very modern programme, which demonstrates that we wanted to take these Youth Olympic Games as a laboratory for testing new sports, new events and to see how they fit into such an event.”

The youth break dancers competed in twos. One would show his moves first and the other would try to outdo him by doing his own thing as soon as the DJ gave a break. The best part, there were no rules.

The five judges had a tough task judging on the basis of creativity, personality, technique, variations, execution and musicality.

Russia’s Sergei Chernyshev aka Bumblebee walked away with a gold medal in the boys’ category and Japan’s Ramu Kawai aka Ram won in the girls’ category.

India did not feature in this year’s event but Arif Chaudhary aka Flying Machine from Mumbai is a known name in b-boying. The 22-year-old was one of the 16 dancers from India who made it to the finals of BC One Cypher, a global b-boy championship recently.

The reasons why break dancing has been introduced at Youth Olympic Games are varied. One, it is hugely popular among youth around the world. Second, breaking — a fusion of sports and arts — is seen as the way forward. While the performer needs strength and stamina to perform complex moves, he/she also has to express himself/herself creatively. The gyrations and acrobatic moves need loads of muscle strength, flexibility and, most importantly, presence of mind, making it a challenging sport. Due to its inherent scope for creativity and innovations, there is a great chance for it to show the way to sports such as figure skating, gymnastics and skateboarding to think beyond set rules.

Break dancing, breaking or b-boying is a dance sport that took shape in New York’s South Bronx region as recently as 1980 where underground gangs, in a bid to dominate others, would challenge each other in dancing, rather than smashing each other’s head. African-Americans and Puerto Ricans are considered pioneers of this art form. However, with popularity growing all over the world, there are different versions of it in America, Russia, Africa, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Canada.