Breaking New Ground

Sunny Choi is heading for Paris, where her sport-yes, sportwill make its olympic debut

- By Sean Gregory. Photographs by Lanna Apisukh

When Sunny Choi tells strangers she's going to the Paris Olympics for breaking-more colloquially known as breakdancing-she gets her fair share of quizzical stares. Sometimes people laugh. And she's seen the comments when, say, the Team USA account posts on X about her event. "What the?" replied one man. "Please no," wrote another. Someone used the clown emoji.

Often Choi laughs with her haters. I know, it's crazy, right? She explains that breakers today don't carry around cardboard and start spinning on street corners, like they did in the 1980s.

The sold-out inaugural Olympic competition in August will take place at a dedicated venue in the Place de la Concorde, the largest public square in the French capital. Still, it can be difficult to convince someone, on the spot, of breaking's worthiness as an Olympic sport. "I just have to hope that you see it one day," says Choi, 35, over green tea at a coffee shop in Queens, N.Y., where she's lived and danced for more than a decade.

Breaking is a judged event, just like ratings darlings gymnastics and figure skating. Even better, since breakers battle head-to-head, there's no convoluted points system. Whoever moves better moves on. At the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, in November, Choi front-flipped, shuffled her feet, spun to the ground before flashing a peace sign at her opponent, B-girl Luma of Colombia, as if to say, "This is mine." The judges agreed.

"There's no doubt in my mind this is a sport," says Choi, whose first name is actually Sun. Her parents nicknamed her Sunny at a young age, and she kept it for her B-girl stage name.

"Dance, art, sport, all together. These things aren't mutually exclusive. It's one of those things, like politics. When somebody is so far in one direction, you can't help them see the other.