--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first thing you need to know about breakdancing is don't call it that. Real ones call it breaking. And breaking is making its debut at the Olympics this summer in Paris. But is breaking a sport? No, I don't consider it a sport.
--:-- Alien Ness: Yeah, it's in the Olympics and it's considered an Olympic sport. I don't think karate or judo is a sport. It's a way to keep from getting your ass beat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the Olympics, to me, is not so much about sport, but a test of skills. And when we talk about skills, breaking is the most physically demanding dance on the planet. Probably second only to ballet.
--:-- Alien Ness: Breaking the Olympics on Today Explained. Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- Alien Ness: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com. Support for this show comes from Strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying. But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Alien Ness: Today Explained. Alien-ness does not break anymore, but it used to. I'm probably the world's most ruthless battler. All right. I'd probably be like the Genghis Khan of breaking. Is that right? Ness was breaking back in the dawn of the dance. 82? 1982? It was inevitable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's when the media really started blowing it up everywhere you've seen. Whether it was Norm Ski at the window at Macy's or Fred and Barney Rubble, you know, doing Headspins and Fruity Pebbles commercial.
--:-- Alien Ness: I come from that exploitation era where almost everybody danced at one point. Because breaking's shown up at the Olympics this summer, we asked Alieness, what the hip-hop world, all the b-boys and girls, even consider breaking to be? Is it a sport? Is it a dance? Is it an art form?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Depending who you talk to, you're going to get a different answer from different people. You understand? For me, it was an escape. For somebody else, they might say it's a form of expression.
--:-- Alien Ness: Back in my time, it was just a way to get girls. You know what I mean? Back in the 80s. So you could ask that question to 10, 20 different people and get 10, 20 different answers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But at the end of the day, breaking is a dance. And where does this dance come from? The Bronx. The Boogie Down Bronx. The Boogie Down Bronx, it's a one of a kind. It's a place to be. It's a state of mind.
--:-- Alien Ness: About the guys out here. But theoretically, it's thousands of years old. It's been embedded in man's DNA to get grounded whenever he hears drums. Oh, yeah? People's been shuffling around the floor and doing sweeps to a rhythm of a drum since the days of Mother Africa and before that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I've always said that all dance movement is spiritually rooted. Like, you don't teach a baby how to dance. But as soon as that baby can stand and you play music, that baby automatically starts to bounce. It's instinctive for the body to just react to rhythms in a certain type of way.
--:-- Alien Ness: So how do we get from Mother Africa to the Bronx? And when is Breaking born? Well, you have lots of dance movements that were going on at that time, specifically funk dancing, which the New York B-boys saw that through platforms like A lot of the funk dances came in through there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then around that same era, early 70s, late 60s, you had TV shows. The nationally syndicated columnist of the New York Daily News, Ed Sullivan, and his Toast of the Town named America's number one TV variety show. The late show, the late, late, late show, all these late shows that showed all the classic musicals and brothers who see people like the Nicholas Brothers.
--:-- Alien Ness: So tonight we're going to take you up to Harlem, make believe, where you'll find a typical cotton club chorus line led by the widow of the late Bill Robinson preparing the stage for the dynamic entrance of the Nicholas Brothers. So Ray Block. Even Fred is there, how they move their swagger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And things progress in its own way. You know, nobody really knows who the first person was. A lot of people like to credit Trixie. Well, my name is Trixie. I am the first breakdancer. Well, I'm the creator of breakdancing. I started breakdancing, wow, 69, 70, 71, 72. I stopped in 74, 75.
--:-- Alien Ness: Man, I had so much fun doing it. But I just think one day somebody decided to take a dip and not come back up. All due respect to your favorite rappers and your favorite DJs, but at the end of the day, it was the visual aspect of hip-hop that made everybody take notice of hip-hop. Breaking is the first element that made hip-hop what it is today on a global scale because it was the visual.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They come hand in hand, even down to the name of the dance, breaking. It traditionally is done to the break of a record. And it's the chunkiest part of the record when you look at the grooves. That the best way to identify where the break is and DJs go straight to it But basically what the break beat is that split second where all the instruments just start playing and you just get percussion
--:-- Alien Ness: You know sometimes that break could last half a second. Sometimes it could last the length of a verse on a song. But it's always been about the break B. You break on a B. And it took genius DJs to finally understand. Kuh Herc was the first one to understand that. That's the best part of the record. Whenever that part of the record came out, he noticed that's where he would get the most energetic reaction from people. Drop that bass.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he started a method called Merry-Go-Round where he would just actually use two turntables and just play the break of a song. But DJs that came after him found the genius in that and started extending the break by using two turntables and a mixer. Once you start extending the break, you have the birth of hip-hop music.
--:-- Alien Ness: It's a very competitive dance, and whenever you have anything that's competitive, it's going to evolve in one way, shape, or form or another because somebody's always trying to do the next person. We'll take the next person's moves to the next level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what does that look like in this form of expression, in this dance? It looks so many different ways and takes on so many different shapes and forms because we can find inspiration in anything. I find a lot of inspiration in martial arts. Other people find inspiration.
--:-- Alien Ness: You know, it's to be successful at this dance, you have to have a genuine, authentic outlook, energy, type of energy, so to say. And the only way to be genuine, the only way to be authentic is to make sure that you find inspiration for the dance and things that you can relate to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once you're moving, you know, creating patterns that are birthed and inspired from something that you truly understand or love or enjoy. Now it resonates. It relates to you. And then that movement is a lot more believable. a lot more genuine looking, a lot more authentic.
--:-- Alien Ness: There's always a win and a loser. It's battle culture. Hip-hop is battle culture. When you look at hip-hop's humble beginnings, it was always about the battle, whether it was the DJs battling or the MCs battling or the graffiti writers killing each other over turf and battling who made the biggest and most beautifulest piece and b-boys just getting out of their neighborhood and making those pilgrimages to other neighborhoods just to get their name out for what we call nowadays ghetto celebrity status.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was just about ghetto celebrity status. There was no money involved. There was no thoughts of Olympics. There was no huge competitions as we know them today. You know, it was always you versus somebody else, toe-to-toe, blow-to-blow without no H2O until somebody ran out of moves or gave up.
--:-- Alien Ness: Except now, breaking's making its debut at the Olympics. How did this happen, and what do you think of it? How did it happen? It's not so much of how did it happen. It's more to me like it was bound to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, me, myself, I've been an advocate for breaking in the Olympics since 2005. Wow. You know, and you have action from the New York City Breakers, who was the first one to speak about breaking at the Olympics. Me, my whole crew, we challenged the 1984 gold medal winners in the floor exercise gymnastics team in a competition.
--:-- Alien Ness: So this is a progression that I think was very inedible. Because at the end of the day, the Olympics isn't so much about the sport. It's more about the skill. The Olympics is a contest of skill. and when you have something like breaking, breakdancing as the layman's call it, then yes, you have an art form that's based on skill, originality, you know, finesse, style, character, all that stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's been a competitive dance since day one. So when you have something that was birthed out of competition and has progressed this far because of competition, then that's the last stage left. It's the biggest stage, but it's the last stage left.
--:-- Alien Ness: Hip-hop is all-absorbing. Hip-hop just keeps moving forward and growing and growing, kind of like the movie The Blob. You ever seen The Blob? It's kind of like a mass. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger as it rolls along and absorbs everything in its path. And that's where hip-hop is. and breaking is, it's like the bop. It's all-absorbing to the point where you see it in commercials and you see it in country music videos now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You see breaking, and it's not that they take from us. It's that hip-hop has a way of kicking down the doors and saying, I'm here, I fit in, and you're going to deal with me.
--:-- Alien Ness: Alien Ness, he's a B-boy. He's a historian. He's got a book called Art of the Battle. And he's apparently training our breaking Olympians. I like to say that no matter who wins the gold, the silver or the bronze, chances are they'll be thanking me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we're back on Today Explained, how exactly sports get added to the Olympics and how to keep them there. Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts. So when you set up direct deposit through Chime, they say you get access to fee-free features, such as free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, so much more.
--:-- Alien Ness: chime says with qualifying direct deposits you can be eligible for free overdraft up to 200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals plus they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees you can work on your financial goals through chime today you can open an account in two minutes at chime.com slash explained that's chime.com slash explained chime feels like progress
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall, and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting. Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real. Layering is even more fun.
--:-- Alien Ness: That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you. It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts. Add a statement shoe to your collection, like the calf-hair loafers from Steve Madden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or tap into your romantic side with flowy dresses from Cece and sheer pieces from INC. You can even throw in some textural layers for contrast, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Alien Ness: Whether your old favorite sweater or coat is on its last threads, or you're just craving a new vibe to switch things up, Macy's has got you covered this season. Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's Fall Fashion Style Guide.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shop in-store or online at Macy's.com. Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. If you run a business, you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time.
--:-- Alien Ness: I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there. I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king.com. With Upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in IT, web development, AI, design, admin support, marketing, and more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Experts who they say are ready to help you take your business to the next level. With more than two decades of experience, Upwork has a simple and ambitious goal to pioneer a better way of working. companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives by accessing a global marketplace full of top talent.
--:-- Alien Ness: Plus, Upwork makes posting your job easy with no cost to join. You can register, browse freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation. You can visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talents ready to help your business grow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, Explained is back. Our B-Boy is gone, but we're now joined by Roger Sherman, who's an Olympics obsessive. He writes all about the games on Substack, especially the overlooked.
--:-- Roger Sherman: So we asked him here to talk about... Breaking. It's the sport that's debuting in Paris, and it's the sport that's going away after Paris. What? So it's kind of got a one-shot, one-opportunity situation here. And it changes the idea of what an Olympic sport is a little bit, in that it is so free-flowing and modern when typically the Olympics are trying to hold on to things that were popular in 1924.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were kind of shocked to hear that this was a one-and-done outing for breaking, so we had to ask Roger how the Olympics giveth and how the Olympics taketh away, starting with giveth.
--:-- Roger Sherman: Well, I think the people at the Olympics, the IOC, are well aware of the perception that they're a little bit stuck up and a little bit stodgy and a little bit, you know, older. And I think every sport in the world, not just the Olympics, not just the IOC, but is trying to figure out how to break through and be relevant to the next generation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think they decided it's not by just sticking with fencing. That's something we're trying to bring to the Olympics, like that hip hop flavor, you know. They need to do things that appeal, not just appeal visually to younger fans, but also that are sports we might be able to play. sports that a regular person can pick up a skateboard and go to the skate park and do that just by themselves whereas fencing you need a fancy sword and you need to be hooked up to a thing or water polo is not equestrian is probably the least accessible sport ever invented because i don't see horses very often because you live in brooklyn
--:-- Roger Sherman: And the IOC recognized that these sports are declining in public interest and declining in the amount of people that, you know, actually participate in them and therefore wanted to bring the next level of games to the Olympics. And so it's really not just breaking. You also see skateboarding. Look at that. The frontside 50 fakie on the island at the buzzer. That was nice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And surfing. Ferreira up and riding. Jumping, bouncing, building speed through this flat section of the wave. Cuts back to where the power... And climbing was a big one at the last Olympics. That toe is in. She's struggling, though. Just hits the left hand right to the blocked crimp. Got to be careful through here. Barely breathe as you adjust the feet.
--:-- Roger Sherman: And three-on-three basketball. They kind of took basketball and they made a shorter, quicker, more accessible version of it. And the U.S. historic gold medal, the first ever Olympic champion in 3x3 basketball.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Overall, that's the trend that they're trying to make the Olympics a little bit more accessible, things that people might actually be interested in watching or playing. A little less ancient Greece, let's say. A little less ancient Greece.
--:-- Roger Sherman: I mean, just to push back a little bit here on the IOC, no disrespect, IOC, But if they wanted to, like, get with the times, shouldn't they have added breakdancing in, like, 1988? Yeah, it's very much like a 60-year-old's perception of what 20-year-olds are watching.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 2024, time to add breakdancing. Yeah, and, like, I think they're going for, like, the Bart Simpson 1980s demographic. People who say, Cowabunga, dude! I think you're on to something there. It's definitely true that they're not spot on. They're a little bit more Gen X than Gen Z right now. But it's getting closer.
--:-- Roger Sherman: They're in the right direction. And also, I'm not sure what sports have been invented in the last 15 years besides e-sports, which they're also kind of freaked out by. Pickleball? Pickleball. We keeping that out of the Olympics Sorry to all the pickleballers listening Sorry I also have an axe to grind with pickleball
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How are these sports added Is it just someone at the IOC says oh the kids they wearing baggy jeans and crawling all over the floor. It's time. Is there a committee?
--:-- Roger Sherman: Yeah. So the addition of all these sports I mentioned, skateboarding, surfing, it represents a distinct change in the way that sports get added to the Olympics. It used to be that sports, to be added to the Olympics, kind of had to go through the entire IOC. And the IOC is like a hundred person board of like, I think, princes and princesses on the board.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. Like legit, legit, like old school princes and princesses. Yeah, like Monaco, Lichtenstein. The kinds of people who just found out about breakdancing. Yeah. And like, so this is who it used to have to go through all these people.
--:-- Roger Sherman: And the people who aren't royalty are like typically people who represent an international sports federation. Yeah. And it was always hard to get sports added because they tended to have a vested interest in like protecting their own sport.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, starting in 2020, they kind of announced this idea that to change the Olympics, what they're going to do is every four years, the host committee gets to propose a set of four to five optional events that are just being held at that Olympics and they don't have to carry on.
--:-- Roger Sherman: And this was kind of a good compromise because the people who are representing, you know, cycling and fencing and all the big Olympic sports aren't like giving something away. They're just kind of adding on. And that's allowed a lot more flexibility in what sports are a part of the Olympics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At the 2020 Olympics, the Tokyo committee added baseball and softball, as well as surfing and skateboarding and climbing and also karate. and then baseball and softball and karate, which are sports that are kind of popular in Japan, the Paris committee didn't take them because those sports aren't that big in France.
--:-- Roger Sherman: But one of the sports they brought in was breakdancing. I think when people think about the Summer Olympics, they probably think about, you know, various swimming events and track and field events and gymnastics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there an example of a great success story, a sport that was added in recent memory, I don't know, in the last 50 years since it only happens every four years, that just took off and became sort of quintessential Olympics?
--:-- Roger Sherman: I'd say beach volleyball is probably a good guess. it really when it was added to the olympics kind of took on its own identity and in many ways when people think of volleyball you're probably now more likely to think of people playing it two people in the sand uh wearing swim trunks rather than the indoor game with six people on a basketball court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And since they added beach volleyball to the olympics in i think 96 was the first one that's been a sport that's really gotten to like take off and it was recently added by the NCAA as a college sport. So people are now going to college on beach volleyball scholarships, where in the past they would only play indoor volleyball.
--:-- Roger Sherman: So it sometimes does work out that a sport gets added and then finds a home in the Olympics and also kind of spreads around the world and takes off in America. And one thing I noticed, I was looking at this recently, like it used to be that the first couple of times the beach volleyball was won by like beachy places. and now every once in a while it's won by people by like Norway and Latvia and stuff like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it clearly got spread across the world in a way that it wouldn't have if it hadn't been made a part of the Olympics. Do you think breaking could end up being the next beach volleyball at the Olympics?
--:-- Roger Sherman: Yeah, I mean, like the ones that are unsuccessful are the ones that you can't actually go out and participate in. breaking what's happening is someone is playing music and someone is dancing to it you hopefully have a somewhat padded floor all of the the breakers that i interviewed ahead of these olympics were like we don't do it on cardboard boxes anymore but i imagine if you needed to use cardboard boxes in a pinch it would work so it is something that anyone can do anywhere, which is a real positive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The problem is the LA committee did not take it as a sport and breaking didn't get added. So like they immediately had to shift and now try to get back in the 2032 games. Rough.
--:-- Roger Sherman: And LA, certainly people in LA break. I'm sure they do. I lived in LA and I did not see people actively dancing in the street with the cardboard boxes. Me neither.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But more to the point, it is kind of a bummer that they didn't even get a chance to prove themselves and like, you know, show the world that people are going to get excited about it. And it seems like people are getting excited about it. So that is kind of a bummer.
--:-- Roger Sherman: But it's still a little bit better than the old system where sports were just permanently locked in or permanently excluded. So we can be glad to see breaking at the 2024 games in Paris, France. We could be sad to not see them at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, California, but at least breaking is getting its moment in the spotlight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe 30 years too late, but better late than never. Better late than never. And, you know, I imagine if enough people pay attention to it, there will be other Olympics in the future in 2032 and 2036 and 2040 and however long the world continues to exist, probably.
--:-- Roger Sherman: Roger, have an excellent Olympics, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not competing in any of the events, but I'll be here on this very couch that you're currently looking at. rogersherman.substack.com
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hadi.Mawagdi made our show today. Amina Alsadi edited. Laura.Bullard fact-checked from Horsetown. Patrick.BoydMixed, this is Today, Comma, Explained. Thank you.
