Breaking (formerly known as break dancing) is being included in the 2024 Paris summer Olympic Games programme for the first time. The inclusion of the event is not without controversy, since it has been suggested that breaking is not a sport but rather a lifestyle activity that requires athleticism and physical skills. Such suggestions have been made before when skateboarding, BMX and snowboarding were first included in the Olympic programme. The inclusion of breaking is no doubt related to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) expressed desire to broaden the Olympic audience by attracting younger spectators and viewers to the games. The staging of the breaking competitions in Paris on the Place de la Concorde will create an impressive backdrop to showcase the talent and skills of the competing B-Boys and B-Girls, as breakers are known, but will it overcome the arguments of the critics that it is not really a sport?

The following video introduces GB breaker Sam Phillips, a.k.a B-Boy Sheku. Sam talks about training as an athlete and dancing like an artist.

Transcript

What defines a sport is often an imprecise and subjective debate: we all have our own opinions. One method of providing a more thorough approach to the argument is to examine the process by which something, like breaking, becomes a sport. This is an approach that the sociologist Norbert Elias adopted in developing the term sportisation. Elias was interested in tracing the process through which sports developed, what they developed from, and why they continue to develop in a particular direction. Alongside Eric Dunning, Elias developed these ideas around football and rugby (Elias and Dunning, 1986), and others have subsequently applied the term to sports such as boxing (Murphy and Sheard, 2006) and cricket (Brookes, 1978). Is breaking therefore another example of the sportisation process?

The sportisation of breaking

The emergence of breaking as a distinctive form of dancing is associated with the emergence of Hip Hop music among the African American and Latino communities of New York in the 1970s. The term breaking is derived from percussion breaks in Hip Hop music which when DJs mix and synchronise these breaks across two records a continuous series of breaks are created that breakers can perform to. From these beginnings breaking grew and was popularised during the early to mid-1980s through movies such as Flashdance (1983), Breakin (1984) and Breakin 2 (1984), and the film and TV series Fame (1980–4).

In 1990 what is now regarded as the most prestigious breaking competition, Battle of the Year, started. The development of a breaking competition is significant because competition requires a set of written rules that all the competitors agree to compete within as well as an organisation to organise it. This is an important aspect of the sportisation process and, as Elias identified, pastimes and activities develop as a sport when:

• an agreed set of written rules is created
• a recognised governing organisation is established that is responsible for managing and developing the rules (e.g. The Football Association)
• the rules spread geographically such that competitions and events can occur across a wider scale  
• in activities that involve a form of physical contact between competitors, the rules establish limits on the acceptable use of physical force (e.g. boxing)
• the rules are orientated towards promoting a competitive balance between participants that encourages a fair and uncertain outcome which generates excitement for participants and spectators alike.

As Van Gestel (2018) has argued, the process of sportisation signifies the extent to which significant changes in the organisation and character of activities transform them into activities that can be described as sports. In breaking there is a global governing body, World DanceSport Federation, that was recognised by the IOC in 1997. In the UK Breaking GB was founded in 2021 and awarded a grant of £135,000 by UK Sport to support UK breakers’ attempts to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The rules of breaking have also developed and are becoming more uniform across competitions. In Paris, a system of nine judges scoring each breaker across the categories of vocabulary, technique, execution, originality and musicality will be used.

Breaking: a sport founded on artistry

Breaking has developed significantly since it emerged on the streets and in the clubs of New York. There is no doubt that the athleticism and physical skills required are comparable to other sports, but what makes it a sport is not the athleticism by itself, but the organisation and the competition rules that have been developed. The theory of sportisation provides a lens through which this development can be better explained. As an initial form of art and artistry breaking has become sportised, it has become a sport, and it will no doubt continue to grow both as a sport and a form of art.