Breaking has become the talk of the town and we are right on it, covering the Steeze-Aversary: Breaking Battle organised by the Steezy Walrus Initiative as part of a partnership between Dancehouse and Performance Review to commission and produce critical responses to the 2024 Dancehouse program. In recent months and thanks to the theory-come-praxis viral performance by homegrown b-girl Raygun at the Paris Olympics 2024, the sport has shown to evoke a kind of breaking point (excuse the jeu du mots). It highlighted the limits of potential engagement of contemporary youth sports within institutionalised and corporatised environment like the Olympics, evoking rich discourse on race, class and gender. However, this article is not going to focus on that, but rather on the incredible collective run by two b-girls, Emmy Li and Fauntine Lariba, who over the last three years have been bringing to Melbourne some of the best community-led breaking events and jazzing up the local dance scene. The Initiative celebrated its anniversary by convening a whole weekend packed with breaking workshops and battles in early August, one of which I had the pleasure of attending.

Behind the double doors of the Sylvia Staehli Theatre, where the event took place, five hours quickly vanished. A genuine sense of excitement filled the space. You could see the crews beating around each corner of the room, cheered on by their supporters; random audience members following them around and forming cyphers, while standing in jaw-dropped awe of the performances that took place. The breakers were there to compete, but most importantly to have a good time with their peers and mentors, which was obvious from their genuine hype and commitment. Anyone who has ever witnessed a competitive dance environment would understand - it is like the outside world ceases to exist. From the outset, it became apparent that this was not like any other dance event in Melbourne, but a rare opportunity to pull back the curtain on a particular dance community.

Unlike more commercial sports, breaking is part of a culture that has its roots in the four pillars of hip hop, the others being deejaying, emceeing and graffitiing. As Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett write, “Global hip-hop has emerged as a culture that encourages and integrates innovative practices of artistic expression, knowledge production, social identification and political mobilization. In these respects, it transcends and contests conventional constructions of identity, race, nation, community, aesthetics, and knowledge”.¹ Not only does breaking demand continuous exercise to be able to meet the physical demands of the sport, but it also subscribes its members to a global community, which self-sustains this practice. The question of physicality, most often needed to perform ‘power moves’ is, as we now know thanks to b-girl Raygun, forms a heated topic for the breaking community which touches on inclusivity and gender politics. As Rachel Gun writes: “…greater visibility of the male breaking body not only limits female participation, but also reinforces breaking’s normative masculine construction. Furthermore, breaking’s’ ‘demanding physical skills’ (Mitchell 2003, 44) are a popular reason for its male dominance and may also contribute to the exclusion of b-girls in mainstream performances.”² Despite the male-presenting breakers largely competing on the day, it was particularly exciting to learn that the Steeze-Aversary was wholly organised by the b-girls of the Steeze Walrus Initiative.

Despite the persistent tone of gender essentialism, there is also a tangible possibility of de-gendering breaking, as well as it surpassing the material constraints of the body. Fracturing, bending and spinning are amongst some of the verbs that describe this style of movement. In observing the performances, breaking’s counter-cultural essence was made obvious. This in turn, led me to consider how ambitious the sport’s inclusion in the 2024 Paris Olympics was and then, how predictable was its withdrawal from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. As b-girl Raygun tried to comment, breaking is a style that is fundamentally uncorrupted by convention, tradition and dogmatic signposts of ‘good vs bad.’ If assessed, it is judged by various performance elements, including vocabulary and originality, which are commonly relied-on elements of cultural production. Perhaps, institutional settings are rarely good at digesting true freedom of expression and the potential cringe that often accompanies it.

The possibilities of breaking must feel as liberating as it appears. In movement, the body seems to lose its firmness, with breakers bouncing around like a yoyo, unafraid to ignore the rhythm, before picking it up again at the perfect moment, in a way that seems almost rehearsed. On the day, I was again reminded of the imaginative wonder that dance offers. Despite the mainstream discourse on seeming aggression within hip-hop and breaking, ³ its ultimate manifestation is in fact the opposite – instead of becoming externalised, the emotions get fermented in the body to charge forth the momentum.⁴ In the middle of a trick it may loosen and the body drops like a spinning top, only to bounce back again and into the next move.

Breaking is uniquely engaged in fostering new vocabularies of movement through a kinetic dialogue between the breakers as a key element of performance. At the battle, there was the quintessential facetiousness to the attacks, with the crews encroaching on their opponents through dynamic footwork, headstands and jumps. Special shoutout goes to the six-year-old who despite her height, was determined to video record the performers on her mum's phone and inadvertently got pushed by the other audience members, which only appeared to make her more determined to get to the front.

To the side of the DJ booth, a drummer was jamming to the most eclectic set of music, masterfully layering drums over James Brown, Polyrythmics and Brownout's Olividalo to create the necessary beat for the breakers. Rarely did the music stop, as even during the intermission, nobody really left the room. As if by exiting the theatre, some reality was going to be replaced by another.

What was different about this event, as opposed to more conventional dance performances, was the extent to which audience participation contributed to the overall organism of the room, utilised in the forming of the cyphers and contributing to the woos-and-wows backdrop to the performances. There was none of the fidgeting in the dark void of the theatre or holding out for the intermission to purchase another glass of subpar Pinot Noir. The battle felt more like a nightclub. The audience signalled to the breakers when they endorsed their moves through their reactions while also indicating to the judges the crews’ affect on the audience. The Steeze Walrus Initiative had lined up prominent breakers, b-boys Ippy, Blue and Reflex to judge the competition. At specific moments, the MC would ask the three judges to cast their vote, who would, on the count of three, unassumingly gesture in the direction of the crew that had their vote.

The space regularly shifted, instead of one big cypher, there would suddenly be three. The different elements (technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality and originality) of the performance were judged in each iteration and one could rove around the room to observe all the talent on offer. Being close to the breakers meant that you could literally catch an errant bead of sweat from their foreheads, which contributed to the overall fever of the event and hyped everyone up.

It is impossible not to mention the steeze, which I would describe as being deeply nostalgic of Y2K hip hop and featured caps over bandanas, trucker hats, oversized vintage Gap T-shirts and Ecko tracksuit sets. My personal favourite was a white T-shirt that simply said “I love Paris” and inoffensively stood out in the crowd. If anything, it pointed to the flexibility of the breaking scene, which welcomed everyone who was there to have a good time. Like the sport itself, there was no concern for homogeneity or uniformity of dress, cultural background or music. As a teen who obsessively watched You Got Served (2004) on repeat, I knew I was going to have to rewatch it that weekend. The hustle was comparable only to that of the Lil‘ Saints.⁵ As the MC announced the competition categories, the dancers held out for their vote, hugging, high-fiving and clutching each other.

Breaking offers an important outlet for many marginalised youths. It keeps young people engaged around the urban environment and contributes to the overall landscape of a city. Whether or not you think of it fondly is a topic that you could best debate with your grandparents. Personally, as a mixed-race person growing up in Saint-Petersburg, dancing hip hop offered a space where talent and dedication mattered more than one’s socio-economic background or skin colour. You can often spot youths like me in the gutters of the city – under university campus stairs or vacant parking lots. For example, walking past the RMIT city campus at night, every time I pass by the rehearsing crews, I think about stopping to watch, but the fear of interrupting them propels me to stay the course, their music blending into the sounds of the cityscape. For many, subcultures like breaking counteract the sense of isolation that permeates in the modern world and offer to be part of a global community. Collectives like the Steeze Walrus Initiative connect the Australian breaking scene across the local and global contexts, uniting diverse groups of people around the beat of hip-hop. In Melbourne’s dance and performance scene which often feels like an insular web of dominant culture, the Steezy Walrus Initiative offered a breath of fresh air.⁶ This is the kind of liberal and community-based practice that gets easily overlooked by the cultural elite, governments and funding bodies. Yet it has the greatest potential to not only enrich and educate young people but also open our social and cultural context to external and diverse influences.