The 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, which will be held in September this year, will determine breakdancing as an official competitive event. In the last two days, the test event of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, the 2023WDSF (World Dance Sport Federation) Asian Breakdancing Championships were also held in Hangzhou.
As the "new face" of the Asian Games, what kind of dance is breakdancing? Why is it a competitive sport? How to divide the winner and loser? What are the movement difficulties of breakdancing? Can everyone jump?
As a new face of the Asian Games, what kind of dance is breakdancing?
Breakdancing was once a type of street dance, and its dance movements absorbed elements and movements from different sports and art forms such as Brazilian war dance, gymnastics, and Chinese martial arts. The dance involves a lot of hand support on the ground, fast foot movement, various handstand freeze frames, and difficult rotations on the floor or in the air, making breakdancing full of visual impact.
Meng Changqing, Technical Operation Director of Breakdancing Competition of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: Its expression is mainly a dance with our combination of three types of elemental movements like TopRock (rock step), DownRock (floor action), and Freeze (aerial freeze motion).
The breakdancing competition is played in the form of red and blue sides performing in turns, and each side completes one showdown, each performance must not exceed 60 seconds.
Why is breakdancing a competitive sport?
In 2020, the IOC included breakdancing as an add-on to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In the same year, the Olympic Council of Asia also included breakdancing as a new sport at the Hangzhou Asian Games. There are so many forms of dance, so why is breakdancing such a competitive sport?
As a difficult street dance, the development of breakdancing has produced a confrontational form of fighting dance, and compared with other dance forms, breakdancing itself has a strong competitive nature. In addition, there are many difficult movements of rotation and handstand in the dance, which is also a test of the athletes' athletic ability.
Meng Changqing, Technical Operation Director of Breakdancing Competition of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: Breakdancing is very competitive. Other dances, such as Chinese dance or ballet, are more performative, narrative and storytelling, and more suitable for stage-type performances. Then breakdancing after the two players come out, can be very friendly, can also have that kind of gunpowder smell, as soon as the music sounds, you will immediately enter our battle (competition) combat state, the comprehensive ability and instant reaction ability of the contestants is very demanding.
Breakdancing quickly became a globally popular dance due to its cool dance style and sense of rhythm, and was loved by young people. Having a good mass base, especially the group base of young people, is one of the reasons why this Asian Games chose to add breakdancing as a competition.
Yang Meng, Deputy Director of the Publicity Department of Hangzhou Asian Organizing Committee: The setting of breakdancing, we mainly consider that they have a good foundation among the youth, and we want to attract our young people, the younger generation of teenagers, to pay attention to our sports by setting up such a project.
From performance to competition, how does breakdancing divide the winner and loser?
From performance to competition, how does breakdancing divide the winner and loser? What are the judges' scoring criteria?
Liu Shumei, contact person of breakdancing project of the Competition Department of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: In the process of schedule arrangement, we will arrange an odd number of judges to judge the performance of the players, for example, 7 judges, 4 in two rounds determine the red side wins, then three judge the blue side wins, then the red side wins at this time.
Sun Rui: As a confrontational event with red and blue sides, breakdancing, which entered the Asian Games and the Olympic Games for the first time, how to judge the level of athletes? The one I have in my hand is the breakdancing scoring table, and we see that there are 6 dimensions of scoring standards such as performance, musicality, technique, and diversity on the table.
Meng Changqing, Technical Operation Director of Breakdancing Competition of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: The judges judge the victory or defeat of our players, first of all, the first thing is the physical fitness of the athletes, including the difficulty of his physical skills and athletic ability. The second aspect requires the originality and diversity of our athletes, and to express their ideas as quickly as possible in a minute. Third, you must be musical when doing these movements, and if there is no musicality, you will not get a high score just for these difficult movements.
What are the other technical difficulties in breaking dancing to get a high score?
We know that breakdancing has many difficult movements such as flips, back turns, and head turns, in addition to these, what are the technical difficulties in order to get a high score?
The break dancing competition has a very strong randomness. There is no fixed dance choreography for the red and blue players, and the contestants have to improvise the dance the moment they hear the music. The opponents must respond better according to the difficulty of the opponent's dance in order to win in the fight dance.
Meng Changqing, Technical Operation Director of Breakdancing Competition of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: Now there is actually no music library, but we have style, style, most of the words, from the time he hears the music to he starts performing, some just hear the music and go directly on, there may only be a second of reaction time, let their whole body and thoughts into this music, this is definitely one of our style characteristics, technical difficulties, why? Because if it's the same or everyone is dancing the same, you'll be boring, and we also need the contestants to be performative, to add their own ideas and a lot of dance originality, which can give you a visual impact.
Can you break dance without dance fundamentals?
After watching such a cool breakdancing, do you want to dance along too? So for people who don't have a dance foundation, can you also break dance?
Peng Feilong, a sanitation worker in Wuyi, Zhejiang Province, spends his days in his spare time breaking breakdancing. The local parks and wet markets are his stage. Peng Feilong, who has been "dancing" for nearly 40 years, said he relied entirely on self-education.
Sanitation worker Peng Feilong: In the past, there was a "breakdancing" movie, I started liking it in the 80s, and then exercised, and now I learned it from short videos.
Breakdancing Instructor Wei Chengran: Like breakdancing, there are professional and amateur hobbies. For example, like the interest section, then we will have some comprehensive fixed dance movements, can learn this type of dance fragments, then like the professional, we will be more demanding.
Meng Changqing, Technical Operation Director of Breakdancing Competition of the Organizing Committee of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou: First of all, the difficult movements of the first breakdance are indeed relatively demanding, but there are many of our breakdancing that are more suitable for young people or suitable for children to start learning, such as our Top-Rock (rock step) part, which is more suitable for your body to coordinate little by little, and then when you practice well in these two, your body's dance sense will be practiced.
Now, parents are also considering letting their children learn breakdancing. Many cities also have breakdancing troupes and training institutions.
Parent Xu Huiqin: I think breakdancing is a combination of sports art, which requires physical fitness, and then it also requires perseverance, which can make children more confident and active.
The breakdancing event at the Hangzhou Asian Games is expected to produce two gold medals
It is understood that at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, breakdancing is expected to be held on October 6 and 7. The competition consists of two events: men's and women's. According to the number of participants, it is divided into qualifiers, preliminary rounds, round-robin, knockouts, semi-finals, third place rounds, and finals, and it is expected to produce two gold medals, which we all look forward to.
Source: CCTV News Client
Process Editor: TF022