While some celebrate its inclusion in this summer’s Games, others in the community say a corporate competItion isn’t staying true to the art form’s hip-hop roots.
had a breaking episode. Merv Griffin had a crew on his show. Barney Rubble showed off his moves in a commercial for Cocoa Pebbles. It wasNaturally, politicians saw a popular trend and were eager to get in on the action. So it was that at his second inauguration gala, in January 1985, a tuxedoed Ronald Reagan watched as Jimmy Stewart introduced the New York City Breakers, prompting a nation of viewers to ask themselves,The answer only makes the story stranger : It was Frank Sinatra’s idea.
Choi, 35, graduated from college in 2011. She got into marketing, eventually making her way up to global creative operations director for Estée Lauder. She kept breaking, working out whenever she could find the time in her busy schedule. For 10 years she deftly moved between two worlds, one corporate, one hip-hop. After the IOC announced in 2020 that breaking would be added to the program in Paris, Choi used it as motivation to go all in. She quit her job, becoming B-Girl Sunny full-time.
“I was super into anime and so were a lot of my friends,” he says. “So we would make up characters and play at recess. And I did the same at home. My parents remember me running around in my underwear at home, pretending to be Goku or Spider-Man.” Montalvo, 30, who competes as B-Boy Victor, will plan out three signature moves in each throw down. “I try to keep myself 50% structured and then 50% improvised,” he says.
While the goal of a breaker is to exert total control over their body, there’s one thing they have zero control of: the music. Unlike gymnasts or figure skaters, who arrive with predetermined music, B-Boys and B-Girls are at the mercy of the DJ, who picks the tunes. The only thing competitors know ahead of time is a rough range of beats per minute.
Ken Gabbert is a little more blunt. As Ken Swift, he was a pioneering member of the Rock Steady Crew. “It’s not a sport,” he says. “An art form that we created with our own terminology and heritage and tradition, all of a sudden for an opportunity, we start calling ourselves athletes and calling this art a sport? That’s like saying, ‘Let’s call basketball a dance now after 75 years.’ As a part of a culture, I look at it from a different perspective.
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