We are counting down to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo next week, but some local dancers are already counting down to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

That is because the Olympic committee announced break dancing will be the newest addition to the Olympic games.

Sammuelle Evans has been break dancing since he was 10 years old, and now makes it a family sport. He competes with his footwork, moves, and headspins here locally.

“There’s a lot of culture and there’s a lot of history,” Evans said.

Breakdancing was born in the Bronx in the 1970s and now, the Olympic committee announced this form of dance would make its way to the international stage in 2024.

“To be where it’s at now is pretty incredible,” Luke Stockhausen said.

He dances alongside Evans on the Momentum Maniax Crew. He said dancing has done so much for him and he thinks it will open a lot of people’s eyes once they see it on the international level.


These dancers said taking it to the international stage gives it the spotlight it deserves.

“It’s going to open the world to a culture which they usually walk by the streets and say ‘awe isn’t that cute, those little street kids out there dancing,” Nathaniel Johnson, of Erie Dance Theater on Cherry Street said.

Johnson teaches breakdancing at his studio and said it takes a lot of strength, flexibility, and stamina to compete. You have a mix of gymnastics, dance, and martial arts.

“It’s very physically demanding and it takes a lot of time and patients,” Johnson said.

So how will judging work in the Olympics? Dancer, Brett Fallon said in competitions many times dancers go face to face and are not scored numerically.

“A lot of it is going to depend on artistic interpretation, which could be pretty much subjective and it’s going to be interesting to see how these judges are going to quantify the winners,” Fallon said.

However, the judge’s score, our local dancers will sharpening their skills in hopes of maybe making it to the Olympic stage.

Erie Dance Theater offers dance classes for expert breakdancers to sharpen skills and for beginners to learn. A link to their schedule can be found here.