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Accepted Paper:
“But who gets the final word?”: A Critical Examination of Australian Breakers’ Responses to the Inclusion of Breaking in the Olympics
Lucas Marie
(University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
In December of 2020 Breaking was officially confirmed to be included in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Drawing on ethnographic research with Breakers across Australia, this paper discusses how Australian Breakers have responded to, and made sense of, Breaking becoming an Olympic sport.
Paper long abstract:
In December of 2020 Breaking was officially confirmed to be included in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. This paper draws on ethnographic field research with Breakers across Australia to discuss how Australian Breakers have responded to, and made sense of, this development. What will be illustrated is how some Breakers see the Olympics as an opportunity and space for wider recognition, but that many have also expressed concerns with the growing influence (and embrace) of transnational commercial organisations and institutional governing bodies in shaping and managing Breaking’s future. Alongside concerns of an increasing sportification of Breaking, this trajectory points towards an increasing loss of self-determination, agency, and spontaneity for local Australian Breakers, and will have profound consequences for the way in which Hip Hop is expressed, understood and practiced. Additionally, this paper points out that Breaking’s institutionalisation via the Olympics will place the dance more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialised and gendered hierarchies.