Breakdancing post-Paris Games and the pall that hangs over the art

VENICE BEACH, Calif. — “I still look at breaking as the frontier.”

Reggie Noble is talking atop a loft gallery rooftop on Windward Avenue, which faces the centerpiece of the Venice Beach Boardwalk, one of the most famous boardwalks in Southern California. On the wall are murals of Gang Starr’s 1998 album Moment of Truth and the one actually visible from the street is of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson from their iconic film based at this very location, White Men Can’t Jump.

You probably know him as Redman, the rapper who rose to fame as an acolyte of EPMD in the early 90s, grew into his own as a solo artist and teamed up with Method Man to create one the best duos the game has ever seen. The four pillars of hip-hop: breakdancing, graffiti, DJing and MCing are still very close to his heart.

He’s opening the proceedings with a performance at the Red Bull BC One competition, which crowns the best U.S. breakdancing champions, who then head on to the final in Brazil in December. Downstairs, b-boys and girls of various types are roaming around the gallery, excited for the afternoon to come.

“There’s still heavy elements of breaking everywhere, especially on the East Coast, especially overseas, right? And when you have one of the elements of hip-hop that’s been passed down to where kids want to do it, it’s just like rap. It’s no different from rap,” he said. “Like, everyone wants to be a rapper. There’s a lot of people that want to breakdance, that want to dance, that want to just make a living off dancing. They don’t care about the money. They want to do something that makes them feel good.”

At the competition, known as the Cypher, 16 dancers each from both genders compete. It’s a single elimination event, and the judging is simple. The judges raise their hands toward one side or the other to cast their ballots. There’s nobody who will be embarrassed via a low score, or even a nonexistent one, for that matter.

Why does this all matter? Because the pall of whatever that was that Rachael Gunn did at the Paris Olympics still hangs over the world of breakdancing, like it or not. For a lifelong fan of hip-hop and its culture, there was nothing funny about seeing a white woman going by the name “Raygun” flipping, flopping and hopping all over an Olympic stage, to laughs from around the globe.

When rumors emerged that she not exactly “cheated,” her way to the Olympics but took advantage of a dodgy system — that somehow involved her husband — it felt like a kick in the gut. We’re just going to skate past the fact that there were apparently few Black people in the Paris competition, and there was a Lithuanian girl in a durag going by “Nicka” there.

“I looked at it like, honestly, it was a privileged move. She must be somebody of importance. Australia is, is a f—ing country. It’s not just a city, it’s a country,” Redman said with an incredulous laugh. “So you trying to tell me the whole country said, ‘Yes, she’s the one that’s going to represent us out there,’ I don’t think that happened.”

The event was a reminder of just how great this whole idea could have been, if the International Olympic Committee had waited to hold the competition on the very soil of the nation in which breaking was invented, instead of a slapdash effort that felt like it was designed to undermine it. Add to that having Gunn playing in our faces and making a name for herself off of the desecration of the art form.

It was pretty clear: Breakdancing should have debuted in the 2028 Los Angeles Games, and the venue at which everyone was standing would have been the perfect place to hold it. You don’t have to have a whole competition to see people dancing in the streets there on any given weekend, anyway.

How an energy drink like Red Bull became the last frontier of the discipline isn’t really the point, but it sure feels like an important one. Some of us will never forgive the Olympics for botching the culture’s foray onto that global stage. That didn’t make the function any more difficult to enjoy, though. The crowd was full of semi-celebrities but mainly families and other breakers who just wanted to be a part of the proceedings.

The winners were Vicki Chang, aka La Vix, from San Jose, and Jeremy Viray, aka Icey Ives, from Anchorage, Alaska. To boot, Victor Montalvo, who medaled at the Paris Games, was honored by the city of Los Angeles.

The sights and sounds of real hip-hop don’t always overshadow the buffoonery of fake imitations, backed by “scholarship” or not. Which is a shame, because as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean and various other breakout cyphers were going in the crowd — complete with small children imitating what they saw and basically doing something between tumbling and dancing on makeshift linoleum — you could feel the purpose and camaraderie in the air.

“I’ll admit I laughed at the girl from Australia, but very quickly it really bothered me, yeah, because I felt like it was just such a distraction of what it really was, and because my first entry into hip-hop culture was, was trying to be a b-boy trying to pop and lock,” said DJ Babu, a member of the World Famous Beat Junkies and Dilated Peoples. “So this [Red Bull BC One] is, you know, to see this dream realized and become a reality, I get emotional thinking about it, and then for it to be whittled down to memes and jokes … that really bothered me. I didn’t even like talking about it.

“But what a landmark for hip-hop and the culture in general to be legitimized on arguably the largest stage you could ever be on. I was really happy and proud in general. Like, for any of the elements to be recognized on a higher level is amazing, but it’s not perfect. And it was the first year, and it’s just disappointing that I guess it’s not coming back.”

On Dec. 7, the planet’s best breakers will compete in Rio de Janeiro. What happened this summer in Paris was NOT that. When they arrive in Brazil, there will be no drug testing, no doctorates, no governing bodies mucking up the vitality of a genre created by Black and Latino kids in New York City in the 1970s.

“We can avoid that, if we have communication and we have to educate ourselves,” Redman said to the crowd. “So I salute Red Bull for taking this culture serious and putting on events like this so we can all learn from that.”

Back in the day, people were afraid that corporate greed and interests would ruin the soul of the culture. Now, at least one corporation is keeping the art alive.

“It’s a bummer, because, just like anything else, you know, things need time to develop and get worked out and, you know, mistakes need to be remedied and be learned from. So it’s almost like just like a big tease, especially me being here in Los Angeles and the Olympics coming here, I can only imagine what b-boying would have been like at the next Olympics after its initial foray,” DJ Babu said.

“I was sadly disappointed to hear it wasn’t going to be back for LA. I mean, I hope maybe in the future, it will be, but part of me tends to feel like b-boying is going to be OK with or without the Olympics, if you’re from the culture and you realize it.”