The 2024 Summer Olympics get underway in Paris in about two weeks, and they’re boasting a new sport with Central Florida ties: breaking! It’s sometimes known as “breakdancing”- incorrectly, as it turns out. That term is never used by those who call the culture home.
The dance, which sprung up in the New York hip-hop culture of the 1970s, entered the Olympic arena in the 2018 Buenos Aires Summer Youth Games, and was such a hit as a sport that it was added to Paris 2024.
Orlando resident Javier Andres Singh Chavez – B-Boy name Spindian – is a member of Team USA.
He’s not only an Olympic athlete. He also takes time out to teach kids the art of breaking at a local dance school called DGBEK Studios. And he recently became a symbol of hope for people with Type 1 diabetes when he went public with his own battles with the condition.
Chavez said the process of being chosen for Team USA was an exercise in perseverance. “If I tell you that this is when I learned how persistency is key, I learned it from here. Because if it wasn’t for persistency, I wouldn’t be on Team USA.”
The national governing body for the sport, Breaking for Gold USA, held a series of six tryout events across the country, Chavez explained, each one packed with hundreds of talented Olympic hopefuls. He said he made it past the preliminary rounds of these tryouts only three times, excelling in the final two events in Florida and Arizona.
Even so, he recalled some doubts creeping in after Arizona. “I didn’t think my performance was too good, but I’d done the best I could,” he said.
But soon after, he found out he’d made the cut…on social media. “They released a picture on Instagram of Team USA, and right there, at the very end, it said ‘Spindian.’ I was like, ‘whaaaat?’” he said, chuckling at the memory. “I was totally ecstatic. It was amazing.”
Chavez is quick to point out that while breaking is now an Olympic sport, it’s also an art, and a foundational part of current hip-hop culture. Those lessons make it into the classes he’s been teaching for nearly a decade.
“I love the dance so much,” he said, “and I know how much it did for me as a kid…that I would like to do that for the next kid, or the next person. And to do it in the best way that I can and keep the culture moving forward.”
As for balancing all his activities with managing his Type 1 diabetes, he’s candid: it’s difficult. But he has a message for others who also have big dreams and a chronic condition.
“Don’t quit,” he said. “Persevere. Like I said, persistency is key. Just find something that you love doing, and do it every single day, and it’s inevitable – the growth. You’ll get to where you need to go.”
