As a black bboy, FINALLY someone mentions the reasoning why there aren’t many black Bboys/bgirls in the scene. I’ve been telling ppl (black mostly) that the art of breakin wasn’t stolen but passed up for other things as time went on. You can’t choose to be up in arms about something you never cared about in over 30 years. You’re quite literally the only person on RUclips to actually assess that and I thank you.
One thing I didn't hear you mention, but that I appreciated about the presentation of breaking in the Olympics was that it also enshrined the role of the DJ, which stands in stark contrast to the pre-planned soundtracks of other dance and dance-like sporting routines such as the gymnastics floor routines.
It made me laugh out loud when ur face lit up at "mind sports" bc I was thinking the same exact thing. these people are having full professor x dodgeball games in the intellectual realm
I don't understand how horse sports are not mind sports. The horse is the athlete doing all the work. Also acting like dressage is a sport but human dancing isn't is nonsense
Great conversation, Mike. Personally, I loved watching breakdancing at the Olympics; the creativity and athleticism were off the charts! I do think they could improve next time by not having qualifiers and semi/finals on the same day and by piping the DJ music direct to the home audio feed instead of hearing it quietly through camera mics.
I wonder if there was an issue with obtaining the right license to present the music like how you suggest. I think I recall music mostly being heard through the cameras in the room for other routine athletics, too.
I enjoyed one of the last thoughts . Feels like Beatboxing , Breakdancing and Graffiti were "tossed aside" or left behind in a way. Hard to "reclaim" that at this point.
Real talk here. I saw some real self-important 'hip-hop heads', who ain't ever said a single word about breakdancing, suddenly were all up-in-arms to police the 'culture'. The American MC-centric core of hip hop needs to do some self-reflection and take a bite of humble pie when it comes to their right to lay claim to the other, less commercial, more diverse and international sides of hip hop.
@@open_mike_eagle I mean, same shit any winter athlete does, except back in they day the just drank too much and worked seasonal jobs. Modern competitive skiers usually juggle summer sports like mountain biking, or if they can, they're on glaciers at high elevation training nearly year round. If Ski Ballet was still around, the folks doing it could elevate the bar crazy fast with all the park stunts kids can do these days. It would quickly become a cross between figure skating and break dancing since freestyle skiers absorbed the punk ethos and later hip hop. Look at Henrick Harlot throwing down top scores while shouting out Wu Tang every time.
@@open_mike_eagleMy boss at ski school used to help train the Canadian ski team down in Chile (And did ski ballet). Not everyone gets to have an endless winter, but some lucky souls get to hop hemispheres. There are other ways skiers train year round. We have some jumping complexes with fake (ball and stick) snow. People will jump onto airbags or water. You can also train on a trampoline. It's not always the exact same as being on snow all the time, but with climate change being as bad as it is, you have to take what you can get. Now back in the day, climate change wasn't as bad and we had glaciers to ski on! Yeah you could, and still can in some areas ski year round. There are requirements for ski slopes that a course can be set on, but you don't necessarily need to train on an Olympic course. Infact many race courses are very different, and can change over the years depending on who the race coordinator is. Snow pack is almost always the same (hard pack), but sometimes a fresh snowfall can happen. Times are really bad when you get fresh snow. Remember "snow is slow, ice is nice" Being able do deal with the constantly shifting requirements of a downhill race is what makes a good racer. Ski ballet is more like figure skating on snow, I don't know as much about it or training for it, but I'm sure there are lots of transferable skills in other sports. Let me know if you have other questions about snowsports
When I was at uni a decade ago, I had a job through Campus Recreation as a "Facilities Supervisor" at various gyms and pools... one of my duties off-the-record was to assist the breakdancers in figuring out when the smaller gyms and other spaces on the outskirts of campus were empty so they could pull down the wrestling mats off the wall and get busy... in the dead of winter these folks loved what they did so much they would risk catching ringworm at midnight on a wednesday just to get together and do their thing... "rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live" and that's all I gota add to this... thanks for your perspective, Mike.
Breaking was the highlight of the games for me outside of hoops and womens’ soccer. The online hatred and bullying was the low point. I hear local breaking jams and events are seeing increased interest, though, so maybe there’s a silver lining. But it’s a trip seeing breaking in the Olympics. Teachers used to mock us at recess for breaking. I hope they bring it back for 2032!
Thank you! You made a lot of good points and very well reasoned arguments. I personally have no clue about breakdancing and therefore had a hard time making sense of the olympic breakdance controversy. Your insights actually gave me a bit of perspective and helped me form something approaching an opinion on the matter.
In my extremely limited knowledge, ski ballet was somewhat popular in the 70s/80s so they had their own events/competitions outside of the olympics. I didn't really follow what you meant with the comment on normalizing skiing. I used to do downhill ski racing, and everyone just kinda trains at their local ski area and competitions end up being all over. So yeah your training environment will be somewhat different from the actual competition most of the time, some people end up going early to competitions train on the actual run though. I don't think there is an insane home hill advantage though. Also worth noting that the courses are set and then the racers either only get to look at them, or at a higher level more often you get a few training runs. With selecting the run it depends on the event, there's slalom, giant slalom, super giant slalom (super g), and downhill, going from slowest & most turns to fastest & least turns (so you will need a longer run for the latter). Generally I think they just go off of what works best on the given mountain for the given event, and the options will be somewhat limited by where the resort is willing to have things set up & which parts of the mountain are remotely viable (not covered in moguls, (mostly) serviced by a lift, wide enough, etc). At this point I'm not really an expert on this stuff anymore, so I'm not entirely certain, but the exact steepness doesn't matter thaaaat much, although generally at a higher level they will be looking to be using steeper runs and harder courses ofc. There are some regulations on stuff like course length, distance between gates (laterally and vertically), etc, but I'm not aware of any nearly as strict guidelines for the mountain/run the course is on.
I saw this man in a tiny town in central Washington state. This guy blew my mind. If i remember corectly, he had a beat mashin and would make a beat then start rapping. Such Talent, Big Fan!!!
I’ve never seen your videos or streams before, but I laughed out loud multiple times during this AND I learned something new :) I have that rope pullers dumptruck burned into my mind.
19:05 I think there is a valid critique to be made that breakdancing as a sport/art was never in Olympic contention while it did reflect the interests of Black and brown people. It was only once it was taken up internationally by PhD white people that it could be seen as a valid olympic sport. While there may not be an explicit barrier keeping Black people out, it is the spirit of gentrification that there is only the opportunity to participate in a prestigious event once it's in the interests of people with privilege
I do appreciate this perspective but we can't necessarily prove that it wouldn't have gotten to this level if it were still dominated by people of color. I also think there's still some beauty in the craft making it this far since it was started by people of color regardless of whether we stuck with it
8:55 lmao whole soul for real When I was ~13 y/o, my school began a month long study of early greek olympics. We even held a mock olympiad between classes and tug of war was definitely one of the competitions. I wound up injuring my elbow in the arm wrestling event… great lesson for sure.
@17:48 🤔🧐 …TO ME, THE PROBLEM IS THAT WHILE EVERYONE IS CERTAINLY FREE TO PARTICIPATE.. ..IF THEY AREN’T GONNA STAY TRUE TO CERTAIN ‘ORGANIC’ FUNDAMENTALS, THEY NEED TO JUST SIMPLY CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE.. ..’CREATIVE STREET DANCE’, ‘INTERPRETIVE FLOOR MOVEMENT’, ETC..🙃 [[[NOTE: IN THE PUREST FORM, BREAKING IS DONE IN A ‘HIERARCHAL’ FASHION.. ..PROFICIENCY IS FIRST ESTABLISHED BY DEMONSTRATING THE ‘BASICS’.. …THEN, ON TOP OF THAT, THE DANCER CAN SKILLFULLY ‘INJECT’ HIS/HER OWN STYLE AND PERSONALITY INTO THE ‘MASTERED’ FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS.. ]]]
I liked what I saw of it. It just reinforced my belief that Freestyle Skating is the form of skateboarding that should be in the Olympics, they're kinetic art forms as well as sports that can be competitively judged.
I was a white breakdancer from norcal OG! Beat Street was my Bible. This was well said. I think it is reverence and respect to an amazing art. Would I like to see real talent surface as the days of the original dancers? Of course!
This comment has nothing to do with this post but loving the deep dive you did with Questlove on the stony island podcast, the ones with El-p and Prince Paul got me through lockdown
Lacrosse and Hockey have their origins in sports played by some Native tribes in North America. That's probably why Lacrosse is popular here, in Canada and in the States, but not so much elsewhere.
You are the only channel I subscribe to that isn’t sample flip oriented. Take that as you will (Edit: I lied, I’m also subscribed to a lot of wrestling related channels. But you’re a wrestling fan, you understand.)
I’ve seen so many opinions on this topic and like 95% of them were clearly based on a clip of JUST the Australian woman or highlights of the event. What is clear is that most people didn’t watch the actual event in it’s entirety. What’s also clear is that the average person is completely unaware of what the “competitive breakdance” scene looks like now. There are organized international competitions, the biggest of which is “BC One”…they have been in place for two decades. What took place at the Olympics was structured almost identically to a BC One tournament. I suspect that there are other reasons why we won’t see breakdancing in 2028, one of them may be the cost…they had to clear licensing for 300+ songs to use for the competition. And if public reaction IS a factor, then it was more about the internet’s response because the live event was packed and clearly well received by those in attendance. While there is no denying that Raygun was not world-class status, I just chalked it up to a country that is not as advanced sending who they could. It’s like when you see an international track & field competition and a woman from a middle eastern country is out there with a hijab and sweatpants on running against people like ShaCarri and Gabby…there is no REAL competition there but that’s what the country has to offer.
My 6 year old daughter joined a local hip hop dance team. The B boys and girls of our day have shifted. Breakdancing is now a suburban mom culture with big ass cups
![Quando Rondo - Life Goes On [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eIf3fhMXAow/mqdefault.jpg)
As a black bboy, FINALLY someone mentions the reasoning why there aren’t many black Bboys/bgirls in the scene.
I’ve been telling ppl (black mostly) that the art of breakin wasn’t stolen but passed up for other things as time went on. You can’t choose to be up in arms about something you never cared about in over 30 years.
You’re quite literally the only person on RUclips to actually assess that and I thank you.
One thing I didn't hear you mention, but that I appreciated about the presentation of breaking in the Olympics was that it also enshrined the role of the DJ, which stands in stark contrast to the pre-planned soundtracks of other dance and dance-like sporting routines such as the gymnastics floor routines.
It made me laugh out loud when ur face lit up at "mind sports" bc I was thinking the same exact thing. these people are having full professor x dodgeball games in the intellectual realm
I don't understand how horse sports are not mind sports. The horse is the athlete doing all the work. Also acting like dressage is a sport but human dancing isn't is nonsense
Great conversation, Mike. Personally, I loved watching breakdancing at the Olympics; the creativity and athleticism were off the charts! I do think they could improve next time by not having qualifiers and semi/finals on the same day and by piping the DJ music direct to the home audio feed instead of hearing it quietly through camera mics.
I wonder if there was an issue with obtaining the right license to present the music like how you suggest.
I think I recall music mostly being heard through the cameras in the room for other routine athletics, too.
That wasn't lacrosse, it was jai alai.
I enjoyed one of the last thoughts .
Feels like Beatboxing , Breakdancing and Graffiti were "tossed aside" or left behind in a way.
Hard to "reclaim" that at this point.
Real talk here. I saw some real self-important 'hip-hop heads', who ain't ever said a single word about breakdancing, suddenly were all up-in-arms to police the 'culture'. The American MC-centric core of hip hop needs to do some self-reflection and take a bite of humble pie when it comes to their right to lay claim to the other, less commercial, more diverse and international sides of hip hop.
Lacrosse was invented by native Americans so I guess it makes sense that it isn't big in Europe
Was gonna make this comment 😂
as a european i was a bit confused, i didn't know what lacrosse was, i thought it was some rich people sport i'm too poor to understand
what is this guy mike mumbling and how i got here????
And cricket isn't really played anywhere in europe except for the UK. If anything it's more of an asian sport.
Ski ballet was legit and never should have left
im still very curious about what those people do all year
@@open_mike_eaglethey chase the snow!
@@open_mike_eagle I mean, same shit any winter athlete does, except back in they day the just drank too much and worked seasonal jobs. Modern competitive skiers usually juggle summer sports like mountain biking, or if they can, they're on glaciers at high elevation training nearly year round. If Ski Ballet was still around, the folks doing it could elevate the bar crazy fast with all the park stunts kids can do these days. It would quickly become a cross between figure skating and break dancing since freestyle skiers absorbed the punk ethos and later hip hop. Look at Henrick Harlot throwing down top scores while shouting out Wu Tang every time.
@@AllenSmithe yeah it would be pretty cool to see a ski ballet comeback
@@open_mike_eagleMy boss at ski school used to help train the Canadian ski team down in Chile (And did ski ballet). Not everyone gets to have an endless winter, but some lucky souls get to hop hemispheres.
There are other ways skiers train year round. We have some jumping complexes with fake (ball and stick) snow. People will jump onto airbags or water. You can also train on a trampoline. It's not always the exact same as being on snow all the time, but with climate change being as bad as it is, you have to take what you can get.
Now back in the day, climate change wasn't as bad and we had glaciers to ski on! Yeah you could, and still can in some areas ski year round.
There are requirements for ski slopes that a course can be set on, but you don't necessarily need to train on an Olympic course. Infact many race courses are very different, and can change over the years depending on who the race coordinator is. Snow pack is almost always the same (hard pack), but sometimes a fresh snowfall can happen. Times are really bad when you get fresh snow. Remember "snow is slow, ice is nice"
Being able do deal with the constantly shifting requirements of a downhill race is what makes a good racer. Ski ballet is more like figure skating on snow, I don't know as much about it or training for it, but I'm sure there are lots of transferable skills in other sports.
Let me know if you have other questions about snowsports
When I was at uni a decade ago, I had a job through Campus Recreation as a "Facilities Supervisor" at various gyms and pools... one of my duties off-the-record was to assist the breakdancers in figuring out when the smaller gyms and other spaces on the outskirts of campus were empty so they could pull down the wrestling mats off the wall and get busy... in the dead of winter these folks loved what they did so much they would risk catching ringworm at midnight on a wednesday just to get together and do their thing... "rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live" and that's all I gota add to this... thanks for your perspective, Mike.
Breaking was the highlight of the games for me outside of hoops and womens’ soccer. The online hatred and bullying was the low point. I hear local breaking jams and events are seeing increased interest, though, so maybe there’s a silver lining.
But it’s a trip seeing breaking in the Olympics. Teachers used to mock us at recess for breaking. I hope they bring it back for 2032!
Raygun should get 10 points for confidence.
Thank you! You made a lot of good points and very well reasoned arguments. I personally have no clue about breakdancing and therefore had a hard time making sense of the olympic breakdance controversy. Your insights actually gave me a bit of perspective and helped me form something approaching an opinion on the matter.
This was the hot take I never knew I wanted.
Appreciate your work. Thank you.
I'm so glad you came across my recommended feed.
In my extremely limited knowledge, ski ballet was somewhat popular in the 70s/80s so they had their own events/competitions outside of the olympics.
I didn't really follow what you meant with the comment on normalizing skiing. I used to do downhill ski racing, and everyone just kinda trains at their local ski area and competitions end up being all over. So yeah your training environment will be somewhat different from the actual competition most of the time, some people end up going early to competitions train on the actual run though. I don't think there is an insane home hill advantage though. Also worth noting that the courses are set and then the racers either only get to look at them, or at a higher level more often you get a few training runs.
With selecting the run it depends on the event, there's slalom, giant slalom, super giant slalom (super g), and downhill, going from slowest & most turns to fastest & least turns (so you will need a longer run for the latter). Generally I think they just go off of what works best on the given mountain for the given event, and the options will be somewhat limited by where the resort is willing to have things set up & which parts of the mountain are remotely viable (not covered in moguls, (mostly) serviced by a lift, wide enough, etc). At this point I'm not really an expert on this stuff anymore, so I'm not entirely certain, but the exact steepness doesn't matter thaaaat much, although generally at a higher level they will be looking to be using steeper runs and harder courses ofc. There are some regulations on stuff like course length, distance between gates (laterally and vertically), etc, but I'm not aware of any nearly as strict guidelines for the mountain/run the course is on.
I saw this man in a tiny town in central Washington state. This guy blew my mind. If i remember corectly, he had a beat mashin and would make a beat then start rapping. Such Talent, Big Fan!!!
I’ve never seen your videos or streams before, but I laughed out loud multiple times during this AND I learned something new :) I have that rope pullers dumptruck burned into my mind.
19:05 I think there is a valid critique to be made that breakdancing as a sport/art was never in Olympic contention while it did reflect the interests of Black and brown people. It was only once it was taken up internationally by PhD white people that it could be seen as a valid olympic sport. While there may not be an explicit barrier keeping Black people out, it is the spirit of gentrification that there is only the opportunity to participate in a prestigious event once it's in the interests of people with privilege
I do appreciate this perspective but we can't necessarily prove that it wouldn't have gotten to this level if it were still dominated by people of color. I also think there's still some beauty in the craft making it this far since it was started by people of color regardless of whether we stuck with it
I get African Americans created breakdancing. Mind explaining who are the “brown” people you are referring to?
@@KN-wb6un mostly Puerto Ricans in New York
The end of this video… That was known as an Open Mike drop
8:55 lmao whole soul for real
When I was ~13 y/o, my school began a month long study of early greek olympics. We even held a mock olympiad between classes and tug of war was definitely one of the competitions. I wound up injuring my elbow in the arm wrestling event… great lesson for sure.
@17:48 🤔🧐 …TO ME, THE PROBLEM IS THAT WHILE EVERYONE IS CERTAINLY FREE TO PARTICIPATE..
..IF THEY AREN’T GONNA STAY TRUE TO CERTAIN ‘ORGANIC’ FUNDAMENTALS, THEY NEED TO JUST SIMPLY CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE..
..’CREATIVE STREET DANCE’, ‘INTERPRETIVE FLOOR MOVEMENT’, ETC..🙃
[[[NOTE: IN THE PUREST FORM, BREAKING IS DONE IN A ‘HIERARCHAL’ FASHION.. ..PROFICIENCY IS FIRST ESTABLISHED BY DEMONSTRATING THE ‘BASICS’.. …THEN, ON TOP OF THAT, THE DANCER CAN SKILLFULLY ‘INJECT’ HIS/HER OWN STYLE AND PERSONALITY INTO THE ‘MASTERED’ FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS.. ]]]
You hit EVERY nail on the head with this 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
I liked what I saw of it. It just reinforced my belief that Freestyle Skating is the form of skateboarding that should be in the Olympics, they're kinetic art forms as well as sports that can be competitively judged.
When talking about Lacrosse the picture on screen was actually of Jai Alai.
Honestly this changed my whole perspective on this!
Yessir @open_mike_eagle I was right there with you in 90s breakin' my man 👊👊
Loved the vid and commentary. Much blessings.
"i can hear Jeff Jarretts music over the mind sports ppv"
I was a white breakdancer from norcal OG! Beat Street was my Bible. This was well said. I think it is reverence and respect to an amazing art. Would I like to see real talent surface as the days of the original dancers? Of course!
I used to break dance, as a white kid in Idaho, in the 1983-1986 era. I was literally a kid, and am deeply interested in your thoughts. 💙
thank you Mike great video
wonderful take and great video
This comment has nothing to do with this post but loving the deep dive you did with Questlove on the stony island podcast, the ones with El-p and Prince Paul got me through lockdown
Not enough people watch your channel, Mike. This video is great
Lacrosse and Hockey have their origins in sports played by some Native tribes in North America. That's probably why Lacrosse is popular here, in Canada and in the States, but not so much elsewhere.
Ngl, I'd watch a tug of wat at the Olympics
"Once the man got to her, he altered her nature."
Hip Hop
Thank you for sharing this!
i'm all for any event that allows a human to get a medal in this life.
You are the only channel I subscribe to that isn’t sample flip oriented. Take that as you will
(Edit: I lied, I’m also subscribed to a lot of wrestling related channels. But you’re a wrestling fan, you understand.)
I certainly do
3:55 - 4:12 tipical murican moment
I’ve seen so many opinions on this topic and like 95% of them were clearly based on a clip of JUST the Australian woman or highlights of the event. What is clear is that most people didn’t watch the actual event in it’s entirety. What’s also clear is that the average person is completely unaware of what the “competitive breakdance” scene looks like now. There are organized international competitions, the biggest of which is “BC One”…they have been in place for two decades. What took place at the Olympics was structured almost identically to a BC One tournament.
I suspect that there are other reasons why we won’t see breakdancing in 2028, one of them may be the cost…they had to clear licensing for 300+ songs to use for the competition. And if public reaction IS a factor, then it was more about the internet’s response because the live event was packed and clearly well received by those in attendance.
While there is no denying that Raygun was not world-class status, I just chalked it up to a country that is not as advanced sending who they could. It’s like when you see an international track & field competition and a woman from a middle eastern country is out there with a hijab and sweatpants on running against people like ShaCarri and Gabby…there is no REAL competition there but that’s what the country has to offer.
So no motorized chessboxing in the olympics? Disappointed.
They couldn't do car racing, but they COULD do Flintstones racing. They could also do chessboxing.
We need turntableism as an Olympic sport one year lol
What had happened was .... Breaking bad ..
Not LaCrosse, Jai Alai
these damn kids man, nobody appreciates tug of war anymore, it's all about iPhone
Wild Style and Beat Street are both actually pretty solid flicks, on their own merits, regardless of the amazing breakdancing sequences.
terje was right
Well put statement and I salute the years of roaming hallway and concrete session spots 🫡
What is „coffee in Berlin“ about?
you gotta peep the morning show
thank you mike for your words 👍
Jailai not lacrosse
All I know is this will end up as a movie in that “I, Tonya” dramedy vein.
I'd watch
Nagano, Italy?
Calgary, New York
never seen you before just wanted to say you look like cory kenshins uncle
Should dressage be an Olympic sport when the horse does most of the work?
I think about that with all the horse sports
Yo love it
Ahhh, the good old days of Breaking in the Arts building
My 6 year old daughter joined a local hip hop dance team. The B boys and girls of our day have shifted. Breakdancing is now a suburban mom culture with big ass cups