Photos of classical dancing, from waltz to rumba, hang on the wall. That is what the German Dance Sport Association (DTV) understands in the first place. But here, in a training room in the Max-Schmeling-Halle in Berlin, dancers who, a few years ago, could not have imagined finding themselves in a German sports association, came together for a course this weekend.
But because the breakdancers will be going to the Olympics next year, because the 16 best b-girls and the 16 best b-boys, as they call themselves, will be fighting for medals in Paris, the dance acrobats had to balance the freedom of the street with the customs connect to Olympic practice. A symbiosis of fire and water, breakdance is one of the four pillars of the essentially subversive hip-hop culture that emerged in the Bronx in New York in the 1970s.