Tony Wesley is a pioneer known within the breakdancing, or “breaking” community as “Mr. Wesley.” I never imagined that breaking “Wave” would be featured in the Olympics.
“I never imagined it would grow to this point,” Wesley said. “It helped us clear our minds. It helped us gain positive thinking and work seriously on something we weren’t used to working hard on. And… To move to this platform all the way to the Olympics and be recognized globally, that’s a great thing. A feat.”
For Wesley, breaking is a sport, but first and foremost an art form.
Wesley got his start as a dancer in the ’70s after watching his idol Michael Jackson do a robot dance during a performance of the Jackson 5’s hit song “Dancing Machine.” At the time, breaking was a new style of dance that was booming in New York City’s primarily black and Hispanic communities.
Growing up in New York City, Wesley remembers feeling a destructive cultural explosion.
“I was at an aid facility and I saw this kid named Monroe, and he was doing robots… It reminded me of the old Michael Jackson sentiment,” he said.
As a pioneer, Wesley didn’t have a breakout idol. But soon the sport will appear on the Olympic stage for the first time in his 2024 Paris Games. Wesley believes this visibility is a development tool for young people, something that wasn’t available to him when he started breaking out as a teenager.
At the time, Wesley was a teenager when he left a group home and moved in with his aunt in the Bronx. He remembers feeling at the time that the culture was growing even more.
“The Webster Project was a very, very dangerous project…but when they played the music and brought out the speakers, it was just serene. Everybody was fascinated by the music,” he said. Told.
Decades later, Wesley and his crew of the New York City Breakers became legendary to a new generation of breakers. Many of them are trying to earn a spot on Team USA for the upcoming Olympics.
Jeffrey “Jeffro” Lewis, from Houston, Texas, is one of the up-and-coming B-boys vying for a spot on Team USA in the 2024 Olympic Breakthrough competition. He will have 16 B-boys and his 16 B-girls from around the world aiming for gold at his August Olympics. All sessions of the Olympic Breaking Competition sold out within two hours.
“When I started breaking out, I didn’t even have the Olympics in mind. I just loved it, just for the freedom of movement and that freedom, that freedom to express yourself through movement and dance. , and that’s what got me hooked. That’s what kept me there,” Louis said.
He teaches demolition workshops and after-school programs at detention centers and offers free classes at public parks.
“I love it because these kids are really attached and it’s something you can do without money. All you need is a floor,” Lewis said.
Lewis considers breaking to be a sport that involves many cultures and believes that breakers should do their due diligence to understand its history. He himself had little knowledge of Breaking’s history until a teacher at his school introduced him to his rich past.
“My heroes are the teachers who taught me how to break. Everyone around me, from my middle school teachers to my high school teachers to my crew mates. They are my heroes,” Louis says. .
Now the 29-year-old aspiring Olympian wants to pass on his love of the sport to the next generation.
“In braking, we have a motto: each person, a leader,” says Lewis. “So I’m giving back to others what was given to me, and hopefully they’ll give it back to the next person.”