Is dance a sport? Should it be in the Olympics? They’re complicated questions that tend to spark heated debate. But many dance fans will be excited to hear that breaking (please don’t call it breakdancing) has been provisionally added to the program for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
The announcement was made yesterday. While a final decision won’t happen until December 2020, the search for an Olympic breaking venue is now officially on.
Breaking made its Youth Olympic debut last October, when a talented group of teenage dancers competed at the Buenos Aires Youth Summer Games. Judges evaluated competitors using six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity, and musicality. The U.S. didn’t send any dancer-athletes to that event (too bad, because we’ve got fantastic young b-girls and b-boys in spades); gold medals went to Sergei “Bumblebee” Chernyshev of Russia and Ramu Kawai of Japan. Assuming breaking does get all the way to the 2024 Olympics, we’re eager to see which dancers end up representing the States.