I tried to avoid meeting my own eyes when facing the tall mirrors of Sydney’s Crossover Dance Studios, but the reflective glass taunted me as b-boy Ota Kohey led a warm-up to kick off Thursday night’s beginner breaking class. It’s one thing to attempt an Olympic sport on your own just to see if you are able. It’s an entirely different thing to attempt an Olympic sport in front of other people, and worse, in front of a mirror.
Because I refused to stare at myself, and the track pants I’d bought an hour earlier for the occasion, I could only look at Kohey, who oozed the coolness that seems to be a prerequisite for anyone who gets remotely good at breaking. I was yet to ooze anything but a light sweat. B-boy Kohey, my new tracksuit pants and I in studio 3 of Crossover Dance Studios in Sydney.
Credit: Edwina Pickles Breaking is easily the Olympics’ most contested sport, having been included this year for the first time, with spectators and participants alike questioning the validity of its place in Paris. Kohey, 37, is one of six members of the Sydney-based breaking crew called Vanguards of Style, the same crew that Australian Olympian Rachael Gunn and her coach are a part of. But he wasn’t certain about having breaking in the Olympics.
And it turns out that he’s not the only b-boy that feels this way. “It’s good for opportunities for us because breaking is too underground, so it’s good to see the Olympics or TV programs show that breaking exists somewhere,�.