The unofficial sport of Breakdancing
Breakdancing, or b-boying as it is also known, is a very popular dancing style linked to the hip-hop community. Young men and women take part in this very physical dancing style that takes a lot of practice, creativity and skill to master. Recently clubs
and programmes have begun to experiment with the fitness aspects of the dance and to see whether it can be labelled as a sport. There are certainly parallels to be made with other sports, namely some gymnastics ones, and it seems that dancing in all forms
is a very physical and energetic activity. Breakdancing is even more so because of the highly athletic dance moves that competitors are able to pull off. With competitions featuring head-to-head dance battles taking place, it is beginning to resemble a sport
more and more every day.
Breakdancing is a very interesting dance form. It has numerous variations and styles and has also been called numerous things over the past few years. The original name for the dance was b-boying, but that was changed in the media to breakdancing to give
it an official name because b-boying sounded too amateurish. The dance is also called breaking but some of the purists in the sport think that the name breakdancing and breaking went out of fashion after the 80s and the newer styles and formats of the dance
are referred to as b-boying.
The dance was invented in the late 70s among hip-hop DJs who played their music on street corners. The name of the dance comes from the part of songs which is referred to as a break. This is a sort of instrumental interlude in the middle of a song which
is a sort of break from the main parts of the song. What street corner DJs did was to record only the breaks of various songs and then loop them over and over again in a sequence and this allowed improvising and mixing, giving dancers the opportunity to perform
to the looping break. Soon battles started to take place between two rival dancers to see who could out dance the other. The dance soon spread all over the world and became very popular in Japan where thousands of fans could be seen taking part in the new
dance craze.
Slowly, as the 80s ended, the dance became less popular and seemed to have been locked into one time period. It also seemed to have a negative image among the older generation who thought it was simply a dance for degenerates and layabouts. It went through
the same stereotyping that the skateboarding culture and snowboarding culture experienced later. Over time though, the dance seemed to survive underground and has slowly started to become much more mainstream among a younger group of dance fans. It is being
refined and updated for a modern generation and its tired 80s look is being shed to give it a new and fresh image.
There are several reasons why breakdancing can be considered a sport. Firstly, dancing itself is an athletic discipline because of the high fitness, strength, and coordination levels needed to perform moves and routines. The other reason is that it usually
takes place in a competitive setting where individual dancers or teams of dancers compete head-to-head and one is judged the winner. Battles are judged by experienced dancers who measure the performance of each dancer on set criteria. If we think about it,
breakdancing is a lot more athletic and energetic than rhythmic gymnastics where individuals twirl a stick or bounce a ball on a mat to music.
Over time, it looks like this interesting unofficial sport will spread. It is unofficial because it does not have a proper governing body that can set the rules and regulations. It may get an official body soon and with that it will take the next step to
becoming a proper sport. In time it may even become an Olympic sport. Now that would be something to see; it might make an older generation of conservative sports lovers very nervous, but one feels the b-boys and b-girls will relish that fact.
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