Breaking (Breakdancing) at the Olympics

By Shlomo Maital   

  Breakdancing – at the Olympics!  It is one of the last events and is perhaps the least familiar one.

   Actually, it is known to the pros as ‘breaking’.  The name comes from DJ’s.  As they played hip-hop songs, they inserted ‘breaks’ (pauses)  so that participants could dance, without distraction, and show their skills.  The breaks comprised music, mixed by the DJ’s, that the dancers fitted their moves to. The ‘dances’ evolved into acrobatic athletic routines.  And the DJ’s gradually lengthened the ‘breaks’,  so the break dancers could show their wares.

      Breakdancing arose in the Bronx in the 1970’s.  It emerged from poverty, from African-Americans largely, as an expression of rebellion and self-awareness, or self-respect, at a time when the Bronx was a center of poverty, deterioration and crime.  (I recall running the New York marathon in 1985, the route took us very very briefly through the South Bronx, across one bridge and quickly back on another, to Manhattan).  

      Breaking is a strong example of the inexorable nature of globalization.  There is a strong trend today for countries to try to close their borders, to migrants and even imported goods and services and imported culture.  But it is too late.  The gates will not close.  The World Champion breaker is a young girl, 16, from Lithuania,  who was attracted to breaking by a YouTube video. Breaking is global, reaching Japan, Asia, Africa, all over.

      Three concerts by Taylor Swift were cancelled, after an ISIS threat was uncovered by Austrian counter-terrorist officials.  The teenagers involved were radicalized by sophisticated ISIS Internet sites.

       Globalization – for good and for ill.  Breaking…at the Olympics.   Terror in Austria.  As the Bible counsels: Choose life. I see breaking as a celebration of life and vitality.