Street dance, as a competitive sport, has had a powerful niche following for decades. But we’ve all recently been inundated with the conversation about what breaking should look like because of its Olympics debut — and Australian competitor Rachael “Raygun” Gun’s performance-turned-meme. While her routine was chaotic, to say the least, it’s looking like she’ll be fine. Meanwhile, breakdancing is not scheduled to be included in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Back to real breaking, though. The style of dance, rooted in 1970s Black culture during the inception of hip-hop in New York, has grown to become a globally recognized sport, spawning numerous competitions, including Red Bull’s Lord of the Floors, which debuted in 2001. Red Bull, widely known for its intentionally curated spaces for showcasing street dance talent, held its second coming of the Lord of the Floors, with 16 two-person crews battling it out, this past April in Seattle. A lot has changed since their first version of this competition 23 years ago — including how queer dancers are navigating the scene.
One dancer present at Lord of the Floors, b-boy Gabriel ‘Wicket’ Jaochico, is especially noteworthy. A musical artist, b-boy and lecturer at Texas State University, Wicket is still one of the few openly gay figureheads in the breakdancing community. Now 45, Wicket has only recently come out publicly, a move preceded by years of anxiety and internal dialogues about emotions he struggled to grapple with. While the dance world has always been a more open space for queer people, some hip-hop spaces clung hard to the homophobia that’s been ingrained in so much of American music culture.
“Not knowing how to express my feelings, or to be brave enough to talk to somebody about it, I would write and record songs about [being gay], and whenever I was done, I would just put it away,” Wicket, who has competed in and hosted several street dance events, tells me. “This happened several…
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