The dance shone under the world's projectors like never before last weekend when Breaking did its long -awaited beginnings On the Olympic scene. In an arena of amphitheater style crowded in place of the Concorde de Paris, 32 dancers from around the world – 16 B -Boys and 16 B -Girls – came up with the head to see who would descend into history as the first Olympic rupture champions. Here are the highlights of the competition days on Friday and Saturday.
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Even looking at the house, the excitement and energy of the place of the Concorde felt electric. Thousands of spectators, many of them, breakers themselves, have filled the stands, groaning in their seats and setting up the competitors.
Music is the backbone of each good battle, and on this front, the Olympic Games have delivered. Two renowned disk jockeys in the breaking scene – New York City Fleg and DJ Plagne DJ of Poland – were on bridges, scratching and turning emblematic songs from James Brown, Busta Rhymes and a quest tribe. The flashes, another crucial element of hip-hop culture, also took up the challenge: Malik Moujouil (“Maleec”) and Max Oliveira of Portugal kept the crowd and energy of the competitors raised during the two days of competition of 10 hours.
Although one of NBC's advertisers, Blythe Lawrence, from the outside of the world of ruptures (gymnastics, to be exact), most of the comments came from the initiates: Breakers Candy Bloise, Ronnie Abaldonado and David “Kid David” Shreibman. Although those who know the rupture have been able to appreciate a little more nuances in their deliveries, on the whole, they did an excellent job by explaining the basics of sport and paying homage to its hip-hop roots.
The score
A large part of the controversy around the rupture as an Olympic sport concerns the score. The organizers were responsible for developing a system that would work in the Olympic competition while honoring the history of Breaking as a form of freestyle.
Games Finally, nine judges used a Fader DJ to mark each circuit breaker against their opponent on technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality and originality. Despite all the uncertainty, the system seemed to work well; No challenges have been taken up to the results of the rounds. It was refreshing to see that the judges – respected web shiners – evaluated the fundamental elements and the quality of performance as well as flashy tips. While the breaker of French veteran Dany Dann, for example, did not necessarily correspond to the physics of the new Australian comer J. Attack, Dann ended up winning the vote of each judge with his combination of musicality and personality.
Competitors
Although Breaking was born in the Bronx, USA team Did not have the best performance in these games. At the end of 24 battles around, the two American B-Girls, Sunny Choi and Logan “Logistx” Edra, had been eliminated from the race. The B-Boys of the USA team behaved better. Jeffrey “Jeffro” Louis and Victor Montalvo were able to go to the semi-finals, Montalvo going to the Battle of Bronze-Medal, where he won a decisive victory against the Shigeyuki “Shigekix” Nakarai in Japan.
Sunday evening, Philip “Phil Wizard” of Canada Kim and friend Yuasa of Japan had been crowned respectively the Olympic champions B-Boy and B-Girl. (You can find the full list of winners here.) Even if only a few breakers went to the final podium, there have been a lot of beautiful moments of sports among the competitors, demonstrating how a little welded and sudden community is.
