Breaking’s B-Girls, Once Sidelined, Take Center Stage at Paris Games

The story is an essential piece of hip-hop canon: DJ Kool Herc set the musical genre in motion at a party thrown in the Bronx in 1973. A detail sometimes left out is that the party was the brainchild of his sister Cindy Campbell, who wanted to collect enough money to buy new school clothes. That night, at their apartment building, he extended the breaks — the popular drum interludes in songs — allowing partygoers a longer period to show their moves and helping to launch breaking (never “break dancing”).

Women have been involved in hip-hop since its inception, though pioneering figures like the rappers MC Sha Rock and Lisa Lee, and B-girls including the Lady Rockers, the Female Break Force and the Mercedes Ladies are sometimes overlooked in the historical account.

As breaking makes its debut at the Paris Olympics, B-girls will be at the forefront, leading off the competition on Aug. 9, with the men’s battles following the next day. Some observers view breaking’s evolution as most apparent in the development of its female athletes, a far cry from the early days when male gatekeepers sidelined women who wanted to throw down.

“It’s easier to find the guys,” said Odylle Beder, a B-girl who goes by Mantis. “It’s so much easier to find history on B-boys and what the B-boys have created. But the women have contributed a lot.”

Though breaking blew up to a wider audience in the 1980s through films like “Beat Street” and “Breakin’,” and international demonstrations conducted by foundational crews, that geographic spread didn’t immediately blast down doors for women who wanted to windmill.

“Honestly, in the ’90s, it was a very small population of B-girls,” said Ronnie Abaldonado, a veteran breaker who will be a commentator for NBC. “I could probably count them on two hands.”

Growing up in Miami in the 1990s, Beta Langebeck hoped to follow in the footsteps of her older brother, Michael, who had made a name for himself in the local breaking scene where everyone gathered at Hot Wheels, a roller-skating rink.

Langebeck tagged along, often seeing only boys dip in and out of the cypher. She began dressing like one — T-shirts and jean shorts — to blend in and compete.

“I was the only girl,” said Langebeck, known as B-girl Beta and Beta Rawkuz, who went on to compete internationally and now judges contests. “Now, it’s nice to see they have a platform for both.”

B-girls still found ways to influence breaking, which has greater numbers of women competing outside the United States. Some were mentored by men in regional scenes. Others break in alongside siblings. But Nakarai Ayane (B-girl Ayane) was already entrenched in the local scene in Osaka, Japan, when her younger brother Shigeyuki Nakarai (B-boy Shigekix) first took up breaking. “She’s always, like, my inspiration,” he said. Now the siblings will both represent Japan at the Games.

Dominika Banevic, a Lithuanian teenager known as B-girl Nicka, was 16 when she won last year’s World Breaking Championship. She started breaking after YouTube tutorials caught her attention. For a generation, women like Langebeck were held back as the large, sponsored competitions with cash prizes offered no category for them to compete.

“The girls would enter the male competition, probably not win or get far,” Langebeck said. “But I saw it change with when they started introducing the female category, and then I saw them getting motivated.”

That change happened in 2017, when Ayumi Fukushima, a Japanese B-girl, narrowly lost to South Korea’s B-boy Kill in a first-round battle that dazzled observers at the Red Bull BC One World Finals in Amsterdam. The next year, Red Bull held its first B-girl competition.

“Now, literally, there’s B-girls all over the world, in every region,” Abaldonado said.

The new guard have pushed past previous limits. “Women were always better at dancing on top rock, footwork,” Langebeck said. But now, B-girls more frequently perform power moves — the dynamic full-body floor moves like flares and windmills — and at a volume she didn’t think was possible. “That’s where I would see the biggest obvious elevation,” she said before noting that competitors now strength train or come with backgrounds in gymnastics or other dance forms.

Portugal’s Vanessa Marina Cartaxo Farinha, known as B-girl Vanessa, cultivated her own strength and conditioning program for breaking. Others regularly weight train to build the core and upper body strength needed for gravity-defying freezes and spins.

Sunny Choi, who will represent the United States, took up breaking only after an injury forced her off her collegiate gymnastics team. She has said her background tumbling informed her breaking style.

She was drawn in by breaking’s “cool factor,” she said, and has encountered young girls looking to break out of the stilted movement of other activities.

“I think it’s more of a draw, especially for kids who don’t want to be super rigid,” Choi said. “With breaking, you can also not pay and just show up to a practice and somebody will help you out if you ask, which makes it so much more accessible than something like gymnastics.”