Paris 2024 – Breaking ahead!

By Louise Peloquin

Featuring urban-pop pirouettes, aerial arabesques, moondance balancés and athletic ronds de jambe, all punctuated by acrobatic grands jetés, street-corner ballet is making its debut in the Paris Games.

Breakdancing, also known as B-boying, B-girling or breaking, was created in the ’70’s in the Bronx by young African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. It’s important to note that, approximately 500 years earlier, a folk-dance-infuenced form of martial arts dance existed in Brazil.

Breaking spread worldwide, especially in regions such as South Korea, the UK, Germany, France and Japan. Largely improvisational, it incorporates moves from a variety of sources like the martial arts and gymnastics and focuses on energy, movement, creativity, humor and an element of danger. The dancers, called B-boys and B-girls, can crash, or fall quite badly, while attempting a move.

On Saturday July 27th, no crashing occurred during Lowell’s 37th annual Folk Festival.  What the spectators massed on the corner of Central and Merrimack did see, however, was a flow of undulating moves, crisp freezes, gravity-defying handstands and head spins boosted by boombox beats that morphed us all into smiling, hip-swinging bobbleheads. The energy electrified both the young and the less young. A shout-out to StiggityStackz for his demonstration and battle. Here’s hoping to see you B-boys and B-girls again at Lowell’s 2025 Folk Festival!

Paris 2024 breaking competitions will take place on a stage set up in the middle of La Place de la Concorde. The new Olympic sport includes performers who are not necessarily athletes given that the DJ and the MC play a key role in running the show.

The new Olympic sport will include men’s and women’s events. 16 dancers will compete one on one as well as in team battles. The moves, inspired by the beat of the DJ’s tunes, are all improvised and aim at offering the most spectacular performance possible. Three to five judges decide on the winners on the basis of six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, execution and musicality.

The women’s event takes place on August 9th and the men’s on August 10th.

Those of us who enjoy all dance genres are in for a treat. Even La Concorde’s 74.9-foot, 3, 300-year-old Egyptian obelisk could be tempted to sway to the funky, hip-hop, drum-break beat.