Inside and outside, almost an incursion and breakdancing has been moving all my life at the limits of rhythm, of the lawful, of the understandable, of space and now, in this agitated 2024, also of the Games. At stake and for one edition only: hip hop dance wins a medal and partly blesses the intrusion worried about losing its street dimension and partly wonders why its destiny is to whirl around headlong down and then jump away to another place.
Paris wanted breakdancing as an Olympic sport, now the IOC allows host cities to choose disciplines that the next candidate is not obliged to confirm, so everyone can promote pieces of their own culture, pamper the spectators at home, water the most followed activities and court the chosen sponsors. In Paris, breaking is widespread, practiced, it is the favorite scene of the cult film “Hate”, it is the meeting point between different suburbs, not necessarily problematic, but certainly full of an experience that does not end in a different citizenship and needs an outlet.
Urban dance is ideal: it has African roots, but New York origins, it has toured the world, it has not let itself be subjugated by success, it absorbs new accents within moves that are forms of expression. It is at the same time fashion, art, acrobatics and is accompanied by a precise dimension that sport has been courting for some time in search of young generations, fresh spectators, growing consumers. Breakdancing like skateboarding which was presented at the Games in Tokyo and remains and will remain in the future, like three-a-side basketball, another confirmed specialty, like graffiti which is accompanied by the most reckless steps and is also a language often borrowed by those who host the Olympics.
Breakdancing had every chance of remaining on the program given that in four years we are going to the USA and yet Los Angeles didn't want it, it doesn't belong to it. It's not West Coast style, where they preferred to promote college teams, lacrosse and flag football, competitions that grew up under the protective wing of institutions. Breakdancing, on the other hand, comes from the Bronx, it has gone from a tool for affirmation within a gang to an alternative to switchblade attacks. We are far from the thousand lights of New York at the end of the Sixties. The music changes and also the way of challenging each other for territorial supremacy, too many people have died and a truce from the violence is needed.
To have jurisdiction on that corner or in that bar, you block the street, turn on the stereo, turn up the volume and fight. Those who dance in the middle, the spectators around to create that circle of passion that will be missing at the Games because the public sits seated and orderly and not on top of each other, listening to the labored breathing of those who have to respond to the provocations. Certain dynamics remain, face to face, for example. In gymnastics and also in skateboarding you enter the competition in sequence and here, in the battle, which will officially keep the name warrior, you face each other. A series of fundamentals and a personal figure that is the subject of evaluation and averages. Decades spent understanding how to codify judgments into objective calculations and now we are faced with a rebellious practice.
Only in Paris, only in Place de la Concorde which in the century of the guillotine was the square of the revolution and saw blood, which watched high fashion parade and this week inaugurated the Urban park. For now available to citizens, shortly confiscated by the Games which brings us skateboarding, three-a-side basketball, BMX and breaking, in an attempt to create a parallel universe. Thirty-two athletes, equally divided between b-boys and b-girls, between men and women. Half of the places have been assigned and in March the direct clashes for the qualifiers begin in which Italy is also trying to have representation, even if everything is strange, precarious, difficult to decipher. Street dance appears in France and disappears the day the fire goes out: there is no time to build or finance it, it is not known whether it is destined to reappear or will prefer to stay away.
Even the protagonists are skeptical and divided, in Europe they sense its entertainment potential, elsewhere they suffer from its impact and struggle to consider so much energy good for a podium. A place that has a precise ritual component. Breakdancing is intolerant of rules, loves variables and thrives on independence: she dances alone, goes in and out, breaks into the Games and let's see what she leaves behind and how much she takes away.
#journey #breakdancing #streets #Olympics
