An exciting new sport is making its debut at the Paris Olympics, and Pennsylvania has some ties to those looking to pop-lock their way to gold.
Pennsylvania sent an estimated 37 athletes to the Summer Games this year, and breaking is one of the sports where Philadelphia will receive a spotlight. The city is no stranger to the dance. It hosted one of the largest breaking competitions last August.
Sunny Choi is making history as the first woman to qualify in the competition for the United States.
She was introduced to the sport at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 2011. Choi was the president of a breakdancing student group “Freaks of the Beat” during her undergraduate years.
"Being part of Freaks of the Beat during college is probably what kept me going. I did everything I was supposed to do, so I think doing something that was a little bit against the grain, like breakdancing, helped me to stay grounded," Choi told The Daily Pennsylvanian last November.
Before pursuing breakdancing full time, Choi worked in the corporate world in various marketing jobs, including as the director of global creative operations for skincare company Estée Lauder.
“I was a robot every single day. I felt nothing. I just showed up and did what I needed to do,” Choi told NBC News. “Dancing became so difficult because you can’t be a robot when you’re dancing — it’s all about expression and about being present.”
Last year, NBC reported Choi, then 34, had quit her job to focus on breaking ahead of the Olympics.
She received silver at the 2019 World Urban Games and silver at the 2022 World Games. In 2023, she won the first gold given for breaking at the Pan American Games.
Choi is looking to add another gold for breaking for the first time at the Paris Olympics.
Paris is a long way from breaking's birthplace. According to ESPN: Breaking originated in the 1970s among Black youth and gang members in the Bronx. DJ Kool Herc popularized the term “breaks” to describe "the part of the song when the rhythm breaks free."
The dance made its debut at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. Two years later, the International Olympic Committee gave breaking its Olympic status in December 2020.
Choi couldn’t believe the news.
“When I first heard that it could happen, before the final vote, I thought it was a joke. It's not because breaking couldn't be an Olympic sport,” Choi said in a Q&A with PopSugar. “It's just that the Olympics have been so straight for so long and there's this energy and rawness in breaking that you don't see in a lot of the traditional Olympic sports — so many of those feel so elegant and refined. So, in my head, I thought: ‘There's just no way.'”
How will the competition work?
The sport involves 32 competitors or “breakers” broken into groups of 16 b-boys and 16 b-girls. One-on-one battles will be judged by five criteria: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality.
The DJ chooses the music while breakers figure out how to fit their moves to the sounds.
The battles take place on August 9 and 10. Here's how to watch.
—Tanisha Thomas, newsletter writer | 
