With the raging inferno known as Canadian politics — not to mention wildfires themselves — I’ve been too preoccupied to care about the Summer Olympics.
But, it was impossible to ignore the seething rage induced by breakdancing.
For anyone who missed it, breakdancing — the dance originated by Black and Latino youth in 1970s New York — made its Olympics debut this year.
Australia’s Rachael Gunn, known as B-Girl Raygun, lit up the world by performing an unorthodox set of moves during the competition.
Known as “breaking,” the form is an essential part of hip-hop culture, where the performer dances to the beat during instrumentals and in-between funk songs. This is where the “break” in the name comes from – describing the percussion a DJ usually plays while bridging tunes on turntables.
Breaking is a creative, dynamic and skilled athletic endeavour. It’s also a little outside the box of most sports, employing conventional moves like the “toprock” and “jackhammer” but also including improvisation.
Dancers even use “break” names instead of their legal ones.
Considering rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming and figure skating, breaking is clearly a sport.
It just isn’t a sport invented in Greece, centuries ago, with a long history of fair-skinned champions from Europe.
It’s quite the opposite, in fact.
This year’s gold medalists were Canadian Phil Wizard (Philip Kim) — born to Korean parents in Toronto — in the B-Boy competition and Japan’s Ami (Ami Yuasa) in the B-Girls competition.
The other four medalists, for the record, are of Mexican, Creole, Polish, and Chinese descent (but some represented countries they immigrated to).
My point: breaking is not a sport where white people are at the centre.
That brings me back to this year’s competition, where two incidents flooded my social-media account.
The first was the seemingly global rage induced by Australian dancer Raygun (Rachael Gunn). The 36-year old Olympian, who has a PhD in cultural studies (specializing in breaking), lit up the world by performing an unorthodox set of moves during the competition. She scored zeroes from the judges.
Zeroes didn’t mean she didn’t score points. Breakdancing is scored competitively; so the zeroes mean Raygun didn’t outperform her competitors.
Raygun performed actions my 1990s downtown Winnipeg dance club vernacular might call the “sprinkler” and the “windshield wiper.”
She added in a move I’ll call the “kangaroo hop.”
Raygun explained to media afterwards: “I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves … so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative.”
Never has more anger exploded on social media from people who probably care as much I do about the Olympics. People called Raygun an “abomination,” an “embarrassment for Australia” and “playing a joke on the world.”
African-American journalist Stacey Patton posted: “Gunn’s performance was a modern-day minstrel show, where cultural appropriation masqueraded as athleticism, and the world was invited to laugh at the crude distortion of a cultural expression once demonized because it originated with Black urban youth.”
ABBIE PARR / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
Refugee Team’s Manizha Talash, known as Talash, was disqualified immediately after performing for wearing a cape that reads ‘free Afghan women’ at the Paris Olympics.
I’m guessing not many of these commentators have seen a German guy perform a traditional dance in full regalia at a powwow.
If you haven’t, I’ll say this: at least a kangaroo move isn’t stolen from kids in Harlem.
If Australia wants to send an athlete half way across the world to perform unconventional moves in an unconventional event, it can go right ahead. The world is also permitted to judge her accordingly.
Raygun’s lack of achievement proves two unalienable facts: one, breaking is clearly hard for someone lacking a certain (perhaps racial) experience; and two, the sport is more conventional, stringent, and seemingly conservative than advertised.
This brings me to the second moment of seething rage breakdancing provoked.
During the competition, breaker Talash (Manizha Talash) of the Refugee Olympic Team wore a “free Afghan women” cape.
Rule 50 of the Olympic charter “prohibits any demonstration or political, racial and religious propaganda in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” As soon as Talash finished breaking, she was disqualified.
Talash is from Kabul, Afghanistan, and escaped the country when breakdancing was outlawed by the Taliban for being “un-Islamic.”
Her participation — indeed her presence — at the Olympics is a political, racial, and religious message. Some, like the Taliban and apparently Summer Games officials call it propaganda, but I’d rather let the world judge that one.
The Olympics at its core is political, racial and religious. For proof, see: flags, national anthems and the banning of some countries and not others. Let’s not even mention the countless athletes who endlessly credit some sort of God.
The problem is Talash isn’t making her political, racial or religious message through any of those venues.
Maybe she should try dancing like a kangaroo.
In the end, daring to challenge convention is what got Talash disqualified — in a sport that is far less unorthodox than it thinks it is.
niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist
Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.
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