Global Hip Hop Studies - Breaking and the Olympics 2, Dec 2023

As nations across the world incorporate breaking into their national sports systems in anticipation of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the new dancesport classification has resulted in a number of tensions and possibilities among dancers. The increased support from state governments and commercial sponsors in recent years has noticeably impacted dancers and their prospective careers. While this development has been promising in some countries, a range of disparities has become apparent across the globe, particularly in relation to funding, stipends, salaries, and contracts from state agencies or local DanceSport organizations. This disparity between the global north and south is becoming more pronounced in the lead-up to the Olympics. This creates a contradiction our issue explores: on the one hand, the Olympic opportunity is a sign that breaking is thriving around the world, while on the other, the resources required to participate successfully will, as ever, favour the globally powerful. Furthermore, the articles and statements in this issue seek to situate the Olympic project’s impacts on the dance, particularly in terms of colonizing mindsets, misogyny and unequal power relations more generally.

In Morocco, breaking’s formalization through governmental bodies already took off years ago and federations have played a crucial role in the organization, implementation and control of competitions. Formal institutions have shaped the local scenes and provided opportunities but also posed challenges for breakers on the ground. In this article, we explore formalization, gender inequalities and pathways for professionalization in Morocco in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Utilizing ethnographic vignettes, interviews and survey data, we investigate how dancers navigate the top-down institutionalization of breaking and we give voice to their criticisms. We discuss how the formalization of breaking affects the Moroccan breaking scene, what critical opinions about this formalization exist and how formalization can be organized in culturally sustaining ways. In our investigation we paid particular attention to opportunities for professionalization and achieving gender equality for dancers from the Global South as well as the question of access to the western structure of the Olympics. We found that institutional formalization is perceived as disappointing and detrimental to the long-term and bottom-up development and self-organization, while nevertheless also opening up support and new opportunities for professionalization and achieving equality for b-girls.

Capitalism often gives away gold in exchange for something much more lucrative. Breaking was created by people of color whose ancestors originally owned the land from which the gold, now offered to the best dancers at the Olympics, was extracted. In this article, I wish to examine the financial inequity between the creators and the exploiters in the Hip Hop Dance Scene globally. I examine the relationship between dancers, dance schools and intermediary dance organizations globally. I question how most of the money is made and how much trickles down. I also consider how people of colour participate in the global organization efforts of breaking in the Olympics and discuss how the notion of ‘winning’ can also obscure the healing power of dance. Gold is symbolic of scarcity and capitalism will sell this to dancers in the same way that overnight fame is sold to rappers. I reflect on three primary questions: Will this dance join the others already exploited by dance schools who have no historic connection to the culture? Will the World DanceSport Federation and the International Olympic Commission celebrate the creators of the Breaking moves or will it perpetuate racist appropriation of culture without learning about its heritage? and finally, what efforts are being made to create an economically self-sustaining dance community?

Gonza is a highly regarded bboy in Thailand and across the globe. Belonging to one of Thailand’s most prominent crews, 99Flava, he has established a legacy across the Asia-Pacific. He is also a tattoo artist by trade and has recently stepped into a coaching role for breakers who will compete at the upcoming South East Asian (SEA) Games. In this short reflection, Gonza decodes his artwork The Shift (featured on the cover of this special issue of Global Hip Hop Studies: ‘Breaking and the Olympics 2’), by bringing breaking's past, present and future as an art-form and sport into question.