Interview: WDSF chief "hopeful" of breakdancing featuring at 2024 Olympics

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, June 25, 2019
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By sportswriters Xiao Yazhuo, Li Li, and Wang Hengzhi

BEIJING, June 25 (Xinhua) -- World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) president Shawn Tay says he is confident that breakdancing will feature as a sporting discipline at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

"I think we have a great chance. I am very confident that our B-boys and B-girls will compete at Paris 2024 as Olympic athletes," the 61-year-old WDSF chief told Xinhua on the sidelines of the inaugural WDSF World Breaking Championships in Nanjing, China.

B-girl Ami of Japan and B-boy Menno of the Netherlands beat a strong international pool of 150 breakdancers to be crowned world breakdancing champions.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will decide at the ongoing 134th IOC session in Lausanne, Switzerland whether to approve the proposal to add breakdancing - also known as breaking - to the 2024 Olympic program, along with skateboarding, climbing and surfing.

"The Olympic Games are also seeking to make changes, to make the Olympic program more gender-balanced, more youth-focused and more urban. Breaking meets all of the requirements," Tay added.

Breakdancing, also known as breaking, is an athletic style of street dance which first emerged in the United States in the early 1970s, and rapidly gained in popularity during the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop music.

"I got to know breaking very early. In the 1980s, my wife and I were invited to perform Latin dance at an event, and another breakdancing group was also invited. I remember the dancers were Indian," Singapore-born Tay said.

Breaking made its Olympic debut last year at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, where Russia's B-boy Sergei "Bumblebee" Chernyshev and Japanese B-girl Ramu "Ram" Kawai claimed men's and women's titles respectively.

Olympic breakdancing features "battles," in which competitors square off either individually or as part of a team. They display an array of moves that are rated by judges, all while a DJ provides a musical accompaniment. The judges decide the winner of each battle according to six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, performativity, and musicality.

"We had a successful trial at the Youth Olympic Games, as breaking was almost the most-welcomed event there," Tay recalled. "Even IOC president Thomas Bach came to watch the battle and spoke highly of the heated atmosphere."

If breaking does become an Olympic sport, it will achieve a status that supporters of ballroom dancing have been pursuing for years. Those efforts have been led by the WDSF, which may find itself instead celebrating the inclusion of a different discipline.

"Many in our federation were complaining when we first had the idea to promote breaking at the Olympic Games, I had to persuade them that they should look ahead. I'm also a Latin dancer myself, but I know we should be more open to the younger generation, and try to accept what they like," Tay said.

"I think this is also why the IOC is considering including breaking into the Olympic program; they know they have to establish a connection with young people, as they are the future of our society," Tay added. Enditem

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