Are you ready to Break at the Olympics?

It was nice to see CBS’s Sunday Morning TV show air a segment on breakdancing this morning, likely due to the fact that this sport will soon be featured in the Olympics. The segment highlighted not only one of the U.S. hopefuls, B-Boy Victor, but also early practitioners and stars from the New York City Breakers, including Kid Nice, Chino Lopez, Icey Ice, and B-Boy London. They reminisced about the early days when they danced on concrete—before cardboard, linoleum, and now, the Olympic stage. The discussion touched on the age-old debate of art versus sport. Of particular interest was U.S. star B-Boy Victor Montalvo’s revelation that his inspiration came from his father doing the Windmill and his uncle performing head spins back in the ’70s and ’80s. (Maybe I’m getting old, but it seems fewer kids today are impressed by what their parents did.) Nonetheless, they played a pivotal role in transforming this ‘street activity’ into an art form that, even in the ’80s, was featured at the Kennedy Center, attended and viewed by Ronald Reagan and society’s elite, albeit as entertainment.

The head-to-head competition with multiple teams competing against each other offered a truer form of competition. In some ways, this proved true, but it also changed routines from maintaining a storyline developed through chosen music to creating dance routines that were adaptive and malleable enough to navigate around other couples—much like NASCAR drivers maneuvering around a track. This shift led to routines that were not really routines but rather an amalgamation of showy moves that could be inserted and repeated as needed.

This morphed into a ‘let’s do it again and again’ mentality, making many events repetitive and boring for the audience and likely for the judges as well. This won’t help in getting more dance styles recognized by the Olympics or even attracting a broader audience. No one can imagine two, four, or more identical 100-meter dash races in one event, with the same competitors in all of them.

Age-appropriate or skill-level divisions may make sense to participants, just as handicaps do in local golf outings. But watching the same person or team compete across all possible divisions, doing the same thing over and over, makes one question which level they should truly be competing in.

Just as no one wants to play golf with someone who lies about their handicap, having so many people competing in these repetitive events has made competitions larger and longer. Is that really a good thing?

Another likely attraction to Breaking in the Olympics is the fact that it doesn’t require a large venue since the floor space needed is small. Each competitor dancing separately also makes it more suitable for TV and media coverage. Even if they wanted a ‘Spin Off’ or something to break a tie, they wouldn’t start with too many competitors. Only 16 couples (eight B-Boys and eight B-Girls) were invited. The show won’t be too long, and hopefully, enough people will watch and support it, making its inclusion in future Olympics more appealing to NBC. Just like with the Euros and Copa, it’s time to have watch parties and join the fun.