Global HipHop Studies Journal - Special Issue "Breaking and the Olympics"

 

I am thrilled to announce that the article "Breaking in Morocco: Opportunities and challenges for professionalization and gender equality in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games" by Friederike Frost & Jaspal N. Singh (2023) is now published in the Global HipHop Studies Journal and available as open access! 

 

Edited by Mary Fogarty and Jason Ng, the Global HipHop Studies Journal Special Issues “Breaking and the Olympics” (GHHS 4.1-4.2) explore contemporary debates about breaking in the Olympics, developments in local breaking scenes, historic reference points and develop critical discourses that can offer insight to practitioners, cultural organizations and institutions. In these double issues, members of the global community of breaking scholars and practitioners have come together to present research and artist statements that engage local, regional and national perspectives.

Issue 4.1 and 4.2 are available as open access: https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/ghhs/4/2 

 

Friederike Frost & Jaspal N. Singh (2023): 

Breaking in Morocco: Opportunities and challenges for professionalization and gender equality in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games. Global HipHop Studies Journal Special Issue Breaking and the Olympics, 4:2. p. 91-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/ghhs_00093_1 

 

Abstract:

In Morocco, breaking’s formalization through governmental bodies already took off years ago and federations have played a crucial role in the organization, implementation and control of competitions. Formal institutions have shaped the local scenes and provided opportunities but also posed challenges for breakers on the ground. In this article, we explore formalization, gender inequalities and pathways for professionalization in Morocco in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Utilizing ethnographic vignettes, interviews and survey data, we investigate how dancers navigate the top-down institutionalization of breaking and we give voice to their criticisms. We discuss how the formalization of breaking affects the Moroccan breaking scene, what critical opinions about this formalization exist and how formalization can be organized in culturally sustaining ways. In our investigation we paid particular attention to opportunities for professionalization and achieving gender equality for dancers from the Global South as well as the question of access to the western structure of the Olympics. We found that institutional formalization is perceived as disappointing and detrimental to the long-term and bottom-up development and self-organization, while nevertheless also opening up support and new opportunities for professionalization and achieving equality for b-girls.

Fachexpertin für Breaking - Olympische Spiele Paris 2024

Kölner Rundschau, Juli 2024

Durch die Aufnahme von Breaking in die Olympischen Spiele 2024 in Paris erhält Breaking neue Aufnerksamkeit seitens der Medien. Was macht Breaking aus? Wie wird es bewertet? Wie kommt es, das Breaking nun eine olympische Disziplin ist? Es gibt viele Fragen, die zu beantworten sind.

Ich freue mich, hier als Ansprechpartnerin und Interviewpartnerin für die Kampagne #womenofthegames von Paris 2024 - wo es das erste mal eine Gender Equality in Hinsicht der Anzahl der teilnehmenden Athlet:innen gibt - und für die Liste der Expertinnen und Experten zu den Olympischen und Paralympischen Spielen der Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln dabei zu sein.

Vielleicht findet ihr ja ein Interview mit mir in der nächsten Zeitung?

Droppin' Science Hip Hop Conference 2024

In May 2024, i was invited for a keynote panel about "Breaking and the Olympis" within the DROPPIN’ SCIENCE: Hip Hop Ciphering and Deciphering in Cork, Ireland.  

With Mary Fogarty, Imani Kai Johnson, Tobi Omoteso, myself and morderated by Jason Ng, we discussed the inclusion of Breaking in the Olympic Games 2024.

Keynote Panel "Breaking and the Olympics" Cork, 2024

The international hip hop conference, organised by the ERC CIPHER Team in collaboration with University College Cork’s Centre for Arts Research and Practice, was an amaizing meeting of hiphop practicioners and scholars from all around the world, and at the same time the seventh annual Meeting of the European HipHop Studies Network. 

Additionally, I presented my lecture-format "Dialogic Movement, Dialogic Chaos", that works with the cultural tradition of call&response and discovers its role in Breaking, as well as the disruption of the academic space when using call&response as guiding principle for a lecture. 

Through call&response, i created a "lecture game" that lets go of hirarchical setups and set roles in academic space and looks for the participation and interaction of every person in the room. My "leading principle" is the quote of the dancer, choreographer and dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild, who states that

„In the call-and-response interaction, it can be difficult to tell who is leading and who is following. In fact, the concepts of ‚lead‘ and ‚follow‘ lose much of the hierarchical connotations attached to them by traditional Europeanist usage [...] Call-and-response implies that every part of the community is important to its continuity and richness, that every one has a voice and, through it, the power to act, enact and react“ (Gottschild 1998, 143-144).

The conference was one of the best I attended so far, with a range of topics, deep and thriving discussions, and great exchanges between scholars, artists and practicioners who love the culture of hiphop.

Source: Gottschild, B. D. (1998). Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Dance and Other Contexts (2. Aufl.). Westport, Conneticut: Praeger.