What Red Bull BC One Can Teach the Olympics About Breakdancing

Growth at the expense of respect is typical when hip-hop partners with corporate entities like Red Bull. But, by most accounts, the brand did its part to honor the essence of breakdancing while still appealing to its diverse consumer base. The Olympics fell woefully short.

While the Olympic organizers gave adequate reverence to breakdancing, the actual product felt like imitation meat with artificial flavoring. Method Man’s frenetic “Judgement Day” track guided the dazzling headspins and body contortions of the B-Boy Gold medal round after a Kangol-wearing Snoop Dogg stood centerstage to formally introduce the event. While there were moments of inspired work, there were plenty of awkward moments, too. It’s some proverbial “glass half-full” stuff.

Some might have found Nicka’s durag flips jarring, but the white Lithuanian B-Girl’s aesthetic choice also represents hip-hop's multicultural influence. The judge’s scoring system rather than simply choosing who was better felt rigid and inauthentic, but it was a nice way to add a bit of objectivity to the art form. All of those compromises were worsened by a kangaroo-hopping breakdancer who not only competed but stole the show in the worst way possible.

By now, anyone with two eyes and a steady internet connection has been inundated with the jerky dance moves Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, also known as Raygun, plopped on the Olympic stage. It had all the signs of the cultural tourism hip-hop fans have come to expect from outsiders. Her PhD in Cultural Studies with a focus in “cultural politics of breaking” explains why she danced like she read about those moves in a book. Instead of executing a conventional headspin, she put her head on the ground and spun her entire body around by shuffling her feet in a circle. She didn’t score a single point, which made her inclusion feel like a slap in the face of hip-hop, and a stain on the credibility of the Olympic selection process.

“If you’re a professor of culture, in theory, you should know that in hip-hop culture, there’s a certain level of respect you should have for the culture,” David “Kid David” Shreibman says. Kid David is one of the forefathers of modern breakdancing, ushering the art form into a YouTube era that catapulted breakdancing into global stardom. He’s been part of BC One events since 2007, and watched Raygun’s embarrassing Olympics performance thinking “someone at her level would not usually make it past an early qualifying round [of Red Bull BC One].”

“There should be an awareness of how you maybe shouldn’t even do the Olympics if you had the opportunity to, out of respect for the culture,” he adds.

Watching the Red Bull BC One Nation Finals in Venice Beach not only proved what he said was true, but demonstrated everything that was missing from the Olympics. Every B-Girl and B-Boy who won an Olympic medal previously competed at a Red Bull BC One event, so the talent level was comparable between the two events. Where they differed was in how they presented the culture. BC One retained some of the communal spontaneity that harkens back to breakdancing’s beginnings in parks across NYC; all you needed was a circle of people, a DJ playing some jams, and breakers doing their thing.

That sense of improvisation permeated the whole event. Midway through performing classic records like “Da Rockwilder” and “I’ll Be Dat,” Redman stopped the show for a hip-hop public service announcement: The only way to prevent another Raygun situation is to properly educate people participating in hip-hop culture. From there, he requested breakdancers to show off their skills behind him while he performed “Da Goodness.”

Even with Red Bull drinks being sold around us and their corporate branding emblazoned on the stage, that moment felt uniquely hip-hop in the way it showed the harmony of multiple elements of the culture — emceeing, breakdancing, deejaying. It was corporate, sure, but the vibes were real. In between rounds, Kid David, who co-hosted the festivities with rapper Murs, would explain nuances the crowd was seeing, like translating the hand gestures breakdancers would shoot at one another during performances, making sure nothing gets lost in translation.

The Olympics felt like they preserved the sport at the expense of the soul. Outside of Snoop Dogg silently christening the stage, there weren’t any rap performers. That absence made it seem as if hip-hop was an afterthought. Meanwhile, Redman’s inclusion, as well as his breakdancing-inspired rapper origin story, added a layer of profundity to the moment:

The announcers at the Olympics gave little to no cultural context to the moves that were exhibited or breakdancing itself, opting for a dry, analytical approach similar to other Olympic sports that lack breakdancing’s inherent flair. If the announcers had helped break down the names of certain moves, the reasoning for certain gestures, and the history of it all — like, say the way Kid David at BC One — it would’ve come closer to maximizing truly spread hip-hop traditions to the biggest audience breakdancing has ever had.

There wasn’t a single Raygun at Red Bull BC One, even if the talent wasn’t as good as past events. Victor “B-Boy Victor” Montalvo was the rockstar of the night with his superhero physique adorned with a white tank top under a denim jacket with dark-tinted shades as he stood centerstage drenched in applause from the crowd for becoming the first American-born breakdancer to win an Olympic medal in breaking. While the Olympics rewarded him, the BC One crowd crowned the breakdancing legend, who has won two BC One World Championships and been the face of Red Bull breaking, in a moment that felt like a homecoming.

Still, hip-hop is all about keeping it real in the interest of bettering the culture, which Montalvo has no problem doing. After admitting that the talent at BC One needed “to work on some stuff,” he pointed at the reception to BC One as an indicator that the fiascos at the Olympics have done nothing to derail the momentum of a hip-hop staple. “This whole Raygun thing, we don’t really care about it. It did bring awareness. For me, I'm not really worried about it,” Montalvo says. “We just did the Red Bull BC One finals, and everyone loved it.”

Oftentimes hip-hop fans feel this need to validate the culture’s growth through inclusion in outside institutions like the Grammys or the Olympics. Then, we get frustrated when no rap album is crowned the Album of the Year for over two decades, or the most talked about breakdancer from the Olympics is a white woman cosplaying as a representation of our culture. But, the only validation we need comes from those who revere our foundation and invest in our growth. While breakdancing’s inclusion in the Olympics was an important stepping stone, its shortcomings spotlighted the dangers of half-hearted interactions with the culture. Through a series of dynamic performances and appearances from hip-hop icons, Red Bull BC One gave the Olympics committee rough guidelines on how to properly pay homage to a culture that’s inspired so many.