Immigrants such as Junior Bosila Banya, known as B-boy Junior, who contracted polio at age three in the Democratic Republic of Congo, damaging the nerves in one of his legs and leaving him with an exaggerated limp. From this grew the roots of hip-hop and rap.īy the mid-1980s, break dancing had spread across the United States and eventually to Europe, particularly France, where hip-hop appealed especially to immigrants coming from Tunisia, Algeria and other African countries. The dancers formed crews and challenged each other in elaborate showdowns. Young artists in forgotten city blocks mixed dance moves with kicks from Kung Fu movies in a way that was new and dramatic. (Video: Red Bull)īreak dancing has been searching for acceptance since emerging a half-century ago from the Black and Latino neighborhoods of New York’s South Bronx. And in a country where artists get subsidies for their work, break dancing’s acceptance as part of an athletic event makes little sense to them.ī-boy Junior dances on a roof with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Paris Olympic officials and the International Olympic Committee are so enthused about the addition of break dancing - or “breaking,” as the competitive form is known - it’s a featured part of the Games’ promotion.īut France’s sudden embrace feels like a mixed message to break dancers here, many of whom come from Paris’s African and Arab suburbs and whose art often is caught amid festering tensions such as those that led to recent protests after the police shooting of an unarmed teenager. One year from now, Paris will host a Summer Olympics designed to celebrate the multicultural city with an opening parade down the Seine River, beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower and the introduction of a new Olympic sport, one pushed hard by local organizers: break dancing. He calls this routine “Dancing with the police.” Each time, he walks away, lingers for about an hour in a nearby cafe and then lugs his speaker back to the bottom of the basilica’s steps. They tell the dancers to leave even though Fenix senses that many of the officers feel badly about doing this. The officers make Fenix turn off the speaker and pick up the hat and the credit card machine. Then the police arrive, because for as popular as Fenix and Tournesol are, they don’t have the street performer permits required to trample on Montmartre’s Amelie vibes. Sometimes they pull out credit cards because Fenix, and his street show dance partner, B-boy Tournesol, have a device to run those, too. People gather to watch from the stone staircase leading to the Basilique du Sacré Coeur. His regular street show bursts into the afternoon with thumps of hip-hop from his portable speaker and flashes of flying arms and churning legs as he spins on the ground and twists in the air. With piercing eyes and tattooed hands, Deprez, a break dancer known as B-boy Fenix, decidedly does not have Amelie vibes. PARIS - The neighborhood near the top of Montmartre has what Arnaud Deprez calls “‘Amelie’ vibes,” as in the 2001 movie filmed around the hill’s cobblestone lanes where tourists linger in outdoor cafes and artists paint on sidewalk easels.
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