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Power moves: Why Raygun won the weirdest Olympics ever
The Paris 2024 Olympics will be known for its many bizarre scandals. The entire event felt upside down, backward, like a festival in Opposite Land. From the blasphemy of radicals to the unprecedented use of AI-guided mass surveillance to the nasty outcomes of gender ideology, there was a darkness looming over the games.
Then, caught in the maelstrom of it all, there was Snoop Dogg. He wound up being far more than a cultural ambassador. He was everywhere. He was actually having fun, full of energy and curiosity. And it wasn’t just because he was making $500,000 a day.
So it surprised nobody to see Snoop center stage at the Place de la Concorde for the breakdancing competition, which is basically interpretive dance with trash-talking and good music.
Snoop conducted the traditional “three ground strikes” ritual that preceded every single Olympic event this year. He strutted out in his customized Skechers.
Breakdancing, also known as breaking, was among the final events of the 2.5-week games. This year also marked its first appearance in the Olympics.
The commentators gushed about how history was being made by the inclusion of breaking at the Olympics and how it was part of the sport’s “groundbreaking journey.”
And they aren’t wrong. How did a music-driven subculture combining Russian folk dance with rap music wind up in the Olympics?
The whole competition was bizarre and completely uncalled for. I loved it. I couldn’t decide if it was over the top politically correct (it definitely was) or beautifully subversive. Or just, well, lame and inauthentic.
Breaking badly
Qualifying took place in a round-robin competition, in which two opponents faced off in a battle, which is the technical term for the dance-off. Each battle is a fight over 18 points, allocated by judges.
The women’s breakdance event featured girls from all over the world. There was even one from the Olympic Refugee Team (Talash). Ironically, she was disqualified for donning a cape with political messaging.
Among the 16 “Breaking Bad-girls” was Raygun, the Australian "cultural studies" professor who performed worse than any other breakdancer.
She started breaking in her mid-20s, which is apparently a late start; many of these dancers began honing their craft in early adolescence. At that age, Raygun (government name Rachael Gunn) was focusing on tap and jazz.
Her husband, Samuel Free, is her coach. He had been into breakdancing for a while when they met and convinced her to give it a try. She intertwined breakdancing with her academic career, then eventually began to compete in international events. In 2023, she qualified for the Olympics.
Even her students didn’t believe her.
As the announcer put it when the 36-year-old athlete stomped out to the stage, “Dr. Rachel Gunn. University lecturer by day, B-girl by night, and now an Olympian.”
It was a rocky debut. In her first battle, she faced Logistix, the 21-year-old B-girl who began breaking when she was 7 years old.
Raygun's dancing here reminded me of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” dance scenes, like this one. If she had danced like that at a wedding reception, she’d have been a massive hit.
For her second performance, Raygun yawned with performative boredom. (This classifies as a power move.) The commentator, with impressive kindness, complimented her for “starting a conversation.”
Each B-girl had three chances to score. Raygun didn’t score a single point. Zero. Unanimous. To some, this was like failing out of clown school.
But what’s more impressive is that by tanking, Raygun actually legitimized the sport. She separated it from the inclusive and overly interpretive art form.
This was the most postmodern Olympics to date. In her failure, Raygun won adulation.
“It’s all about commitment,” said one of the announcers during Raygun’s disastrous routine. “Dance is all about character, all about showing who you are.”
Her political compass is nuts. She’s practically the Robin DiAngelo of hip-hop culture. Or maybe Rachel Dolezal. As an academic, her politics align with the leftist wing of the academic class. He dissertation examines "the intersection of gender and Sydney's breaking culture."
Her type tend to be pretentious, unbearable, nasty. They relish their control as gatekeepers. But they seem to have lost their authority over coolness.
Still, is Raygun’s political orientation bad enough to justify the trolling she’s faced? Most of the mockery just seemed mean. Raygun never forced politics into any of it — either in her performance or its weird viral spillover.
She posted a quote on Instagram: "don't be afraid to be different, go out there and represent yourself, you never know where that's gonna take you"
Wreck the technique
Meanwhile America walked away from the Olympics with a single bronze medal in the sport/art form it invented
Competitive breakdancing has official guidelines and metrics. Judges assess breakdancers according to five criteria: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality, all of which require coordination, flexibility, rhythm, and style.
“Vocabulary” denotes the breakdancers' variability in moves.
“Style” is a measure of uniqueness. Every breakdancer is expected to have a distinctly personal approach to moving around. Part of this is attitude, the performative confidence a B-boy or B-girl exudes.
For all of these reasons, breaking was a difficult sport for the Olympics, although there are plenty of judge-determined competitions, many of which also involve an artistic and creative style.
“Repeating,” for example, is when one of the breakdancers reuses a move already performed. There are flips, leaps, and spins, including the famous head spin trick. Or the “freeze,” another common maneuver, which requires the breakdancer to stop abruptly in order to seem stunned mid-air.
All of these are officially classified as “power moves.” Which is hilarious.
Fear of a wack planet
Before Raygun vanishes from the public consciousness, we should talk about the future of Olympic breakdancing. It may not have one. It won’t be part of the the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, which will feature flag football and squash, as well as the re-emergence of softball and baseball.
But breakdancing paired well with the unhinged weirdness of the 2024 Olympics. I hope it sticks around.
Dancing is hard, but worthwhile. It takes a lot of courage to dance. To practice dancing is as strange as it is to practice talking.
“This dance really does bring the world together,” says one of the commentators for the women’s qualifying breakdance.
Maybe it sounds hokey. Maybe it’s easy to laugh at. But who cares? Dancing is our oldest human voice. Dancing is an expression of vitality. Throughout history, it has been an act of youthful defiance. Dance is galvanic; it bursts and springs. Maybe it's that dancing feels so perfect.
To dance is to forget, to forget the intoxicating whirl of life, in the place you fell, in the same untucked schedule of each day you thought you knew, guided always by something that can only be called “belief.”
To dance is to fall apart in front of everyone. To dance is to break open. To dance is to cry in public.
To dance is to be a freak show in undiscovered territory, a place where everyone is freakish and on display yet happy to have company. To dance is to pretend a new backstory.
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