Breaking Bad

Senior correspondent Mike Osborne gets head spin busting some moves with the school boy and university academic who’ll make history as Australia’s first Olympic break dancers at the Paris Games. 

Teenage dancer Jeff Dunne, AKA J-Attack, is puffing hard after performing his “cool stuff” – a series of power moves that include head spins, one-arm lifts and twirling on his hands upside down.

How does he feel about being Australia’s youngest crash test dummy in the new Olympic sport of break dancing in Paris? “It’s gangsta,” the 16-year-old grins.

Australia will have all guns blazing for Paris with “J-Attack” joined by female breaker “Raygun” or Rachael Gunn, a Macquarie University lecturer who at 36 is old enough to be Dunne’s mother.

Dunne is hoping the experience and exposure in Paris will lead to a professional dancing career.

“The Olympics – to be able to brag about that to my friends – it’s crazy,” says the Filipino-born teenager who was adopted by Australian parents when he was one.

“I always hoped I would reach a stage to get maybe sponsorships but going to the Paris Games to represent Australia is phenomenal.”

Paris is a long way from the small Brisbane dance studio where Dunne got his start about a decade ago.

“I got into breaking from my sister who was taking hip hop classes in Brisbane and there was a breaking class next to it,” he said.

“I just decided to go into the breaking class because I used to see bits of it on TV and I thought the power moves were wild. I sat in the corner for weeks until I thought I could do it.

“And when I started trying the power moves out, the teachers saw me and must have thought I had some potential because they took me in and I’ve been dancing ever since.

“Now I see myself becoming a professional breaker. There have been a few people making a living out of breaking and I hope after the Olympics that group will grow bigger.”

Based with his family in NSW’s northern Tweed Heads area, Dunne is committed to a tough training regime that requires a lot of gym time building mobility, strength and flexibility.

“I’m usually up at 5am and I train until 6.30 or 7am before I go to school,” he said. “After I get the bus home I either go to the gym three days a week or I go to my coaches house four times a week to train there and they really push me. It’s a long day.”

While Dunne is just beginning his breaking journey, Gunn is a veteran. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies and lectures at Macquarie University in modern dance and youth cultures and admits she is doing it “the wrong way around”.

“I had a career and now I’m an athlete. I’ve got a split personality,” she said. 

“I like to be full of surprises and I like to push myself and see where it takes me. But it’s such a privilege to represent Australia. I’m so excited and so honoured.”

Gunn hopes her extensive experience in the breaking community and her deep knowledge of the culture will give her an edge in the Olympic competition being staged at the Place de la Concorde in central Paris on August 9 and 10.

Breaking evolved into an international sport after getting a foothold in the 1970s in New York’s Bronx, where African-American, Latino and Caribbean youths pioneered a form of movement and self-expression set against a backdrop of socio/economic hardship and political struggle. Competitors are known as B-boys and B-girls.

In Paris, only 16 B-boys and 16 B-girls will face-off in two single-sex events, battling one-on-one with the winners progressing to the next round.

“When the battle starts a DJ plays the music with a breaker on each side,” Gunn explains. “We don’t know what music will be playing until we are out there, so we have to adapt our movements to fit the music.

“The first breaker performs for around 50-60 seconds. Because of the intensity you can’t really go much longer than that. Then the second breaker goes while the same music is played. 

“Then the DJ changes the music and the two breakers go again. There is an advantage in going second because you’ve had longer to get used to the music. The first breaker has to adapt a bit quicker.”

Breakers are judged on their creativity, personal technique, variety, overall performance, originality, spontaneity and improvisation.

And that’s where Gunn believes her long and intimate knowledge of breaking – which she says is not just a dance but a culture, sport, art form and community – will come to the fore.

“I like to think of my maturity as an advantage, absolutely,” she said. “I’ve looked at breaking from so many different perspectives and understand the significance of the moves and some of the traditions which I hope gives me a more rounded and deeper performance.

“To have been able to go so deep in researching and understanding breaking culture from an academic standpoint and now from a physical standpoint, I’m lucky to experience breaking in those two dimensions.”

The Olympic battle is expected to be fierce with Japan, China and the US providing strong competition in both events. Gunn may not even be the oldest competitor with a 42-year-old B-girl from Japan finishing runner-up in last year’s world championships. 

Both Gunn and Dunne – who qualified for the Games by winning the Oceania Breaking Championships – want to be among the medals in Paris, but both have different reasons for chasing Olympic success.

“I do think about medals but my coaches always tell me to ‘just do your best and that’s all you can give’,” said Dunne who admits he has no Plan B beyond using Olympic success to become a professional dancer.

Gunn on the other hand is competing for the future of the sport which is not on the program for the next Olympics in Los Angeles 2028.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about medals but I’m trying to just focus on what I need to do and my own performance goals,” she said.

“It’s a real shame that there is no breaking in LA, but it’s amazing to have the opportunity and platform to show the world what breakers can do. We are just focussed on the opportunity that Paris brings and we want to inspire the next generation of breakers.”