And there are certainly better breakers in AUS đ
Also I think the bigger issue with breaking as an Olympic sport that is an art form out of the African diasporic tradition - where being the âbestâ favors improvisation and a purposeful disregard of hierarchical standardization. Everything is unwritten and while being the âbestâ in breaking is highly subjective, being bad at it is objective in the visceral sense.
This is why we donât have Olympic Orisha drumming or Olympic Capeoria.
Well- Iâd disagree here too moon. The reason we donât have those olympic sports you mentioned is because they arenât a world wide activity, they are culturally ânarrowâ as a âsport.â
But we do have Olympic gymnastics and skateboarding because those have grown to be cross cultural cross boarder and world wide activities. Iâd suggest the same issues you mentioned existed for judging those competitions, but effort was made to identify experienced and talented judges and a cohesive scoring system was implemented, accounting for things like new moves, individualism, as well as objective âdifficultiesâ of certain actions and moves as judged by experienced participants of the community.
The issue boils down not to breaking being unjudgeable or too subjective, but rather to a poor implementation of competitive standards, judging, and outreach for the community. Break dance âbattlesâ are a core element of the art form. There has always been winners and losers. The issue is the Paris games didnât care about implementing a legitimate competition; with the best performers, they just wanted âwokeâ cultural and social points to elevate their perceived superiority in supporting âequityâ
Theyâve made a mockery of the Olympics all together with this bullshit.
All valid points here too. Though I, personally, generally reject the idea of âscoredâ breakdancing philosophically. I more come from the decentralized anarchist camp of diasporic resistance / expression practices. So yes, I was projecting some of my own philosophical stances onto the wider topic where any number of other practitioners are fully free to established their own consensus rules for judging the sport. And I am similarly free to reject the idea through non-participation.
Additionally I would argue that Capoeiraâs reach, on the ground, is similarly broad globally as breakdancing - thought American popular cultural has been far more successful promoting the former in the public mind than Brazil has been with the latter - and I guess thatâs what matters đ.
The beauty of sports though, is that irrespective of the ideological intentions of the organizers - ie them being wokelords or racists or chauvinists - performance on the ground doesnât lie. And also you know Iâm not wrong in saying that bad breakdancing is easy to spot but trying to call objective âjudgeableâ differences in different styles of very good / great breaking is much harder to do (though yes, you are correct, social consensus can easily allow this to still happen)
Yah, I do agree with that point, itâs certainly easy to identify something is objectively âbadâ to even the lay person. Even just relative to the other performers, while much more difficult to identify the really âgoodâ stuff.
An example being in skateboarding where doing the exact same trick âswitchâ adds significant difficulty, which the layperson might not recognize. Especially since such a move is relative to the skaters natural positioning, and therefore differs between contestants.
But still, good judges would know the details of the competitors and see that nuance and judge appropriately.
I actually think breakdancing is a cool activity to add to the Olympics. Itâs certainly athletic, full of skill, has defined âmovesâ and entertaining to the layperson, as it has a âwow! Holy shit! Woah!â Factor to the moves.
I just think the format, judging, and poor worldwide competitive infrastructure really harmed its âfirst Olympicsâ and overall reputation.
My gut tells me that no one went down to the New York subway and told the showtime boys and girls they could go to the Olympics, and same around the world. It seemed more of a âwho you knowâ competition than an open call for the best.
Yes, but at the same time cultures like Skateboarding, Breaking, Capeoria all have deep roots in being antithetical to and high antagonistic towards hierarchal capture and standardization. I can tell you if the best capoeira was in the Olympics it would be DAZZLING. But just BEING in the Olympics would dissuade many of the best Capoeiristas from pursuing the Olympic competition either on philosophical / ideological grounds or on the grounds of not wanting to submit to the wider scrutiny of any committee that we assess whether they were the kind of person who could be âeligibleâ to compete which touches on all kinds of stuff FAR beyond the pure athletic skill. Iâd would not be surprised if a similar mindset existed amongst real street breakers as well.
The beauty of skateboarding, breaking, Capoeira - too me - is that they DO NOT CARE about oneâs wider relationship with âthe lawâ and they have all had outlaw periods (which they embrace) were the practice and/or the community youâd associate with during the practice was likely to bring one trouble with the law just because.
So here Iâm probably making a similar point as you but directing to the judging and organization, as I can only assume that the judge panel for Olympic breaking is a bunch of European sports academics rather than real breakers or folks who might have actual rap sheets and such. I could be wrong, but a quick personal vibe check on the Olympics tells me that Iâm probably not đ.
Yah weâre getting to the same point here, seems like an issue with these games overall to be fair, even the gymnastics had judges literally forget to score points and just do a piss poor job overall. Track and field had all kinds of bullshit that hampered athletes abilities for peak performance.
So concerned with woke optics that fair and elite competition played second fiddle.
