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1981
Breaking and the Olympics
  • ISSN: 2632-6825
  • E-ISSN: 2632-6833

Abstract

Before breaking’s official announcement into the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, other practitioners and members of pioneering crew the New York City Breakers had already dreamed about this future. This article presents an interview with breaking’s first impresario Michael Holman, who was the first individual to document this vision of breaking’s Olympic future in his book (1984). Holman’s history in hip hop culture is both well documented and persists as one of the most important accounts of hip hop cultural intermediation and entrepreneurship. Notably, his early work in the New York scene was instrumental in developing hip hop and setting in motion the first wave of commercial viability for breaking. Holman’s discovery and management of breakers pushed boundaries in a time where few opportunities for professionalization existed – presenting breaking in new contexts for performance, showcase and expression, such as on television and in theatre. Our interview looks back to brushes with the Olympics in the past to think critically about what potential outcomes emerge from this pivotal moment in the dance’s global mainstream rediscovery. Holman’s reflections demonstrate how breaking in the Olympics has been articulated in the past while reminding us that breaking’s industrialization has already been underway for decades.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • European Research Council Consolidator (Award 819143)
This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows users to copy, distribute and transmit the article as long as the author is attributed, the article is not used for commercial purposes, and the work is not modified or adapted in any way. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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/content/journals/10.1386/ghhs_00077_1
2024-04-22
2025-02-16
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References

  1. Holman, Michael (1984), Breaking and the New York City Breakers, New York: Freundlich Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Graffiti Rock (1984, USA: CB Communication Inc., MTH Productions Inc. and Skywise Productions Inc.).
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Lathan, Stan (1984), Beat Street, USA: Orion Pictures.
    [Google Scholar]
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