We did not expect that when pushing the doors of the Pierre-Doussaint dance center in Les Mureaux (Yvelines). When we were told about a breakdance training that took place there, we imagined sneakers crunching on the floor, legs flailing and bodies spinning. In short, hip-hop dance on the ground, breakdance.
But, for the dance, you had to come in the morning. This afternoon in late October, a handful of people are seated around a square of tables, each in front of a laptop. A flipchart poses the topic of the day: “Develop methodologies for research and analysis of hip-hop culture. »
This is the first official breakdance (also called breaking or break) coaching training in France, launched in September and organized by the French Dance Federation (FFD). For ten weeks in the year, six trainees (five men, one woman), aged 23 to 38 and coming from Bordeaux, Lorient, Troyes, Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), will meet at Les Mureaux then at the National Institute for Sport, Expertise and Performance (Insep), in the Bois de Vincennes.
It is no coincidence that the city of Yvelines welcomes the initiative around this urban dance which will be present in competition for the first time at the 2024 Olympic Games. The municipality wants to be part of the heritage of Paris 2024 and make Les Mureaux a “Breakdance Clairefontaine” – in reference to the national football center.
The town hosted a training course for the hope center of the French breakdance team in February 2022. In April, the FFD organized the Ile-de-France-Normandy interregional battle for the French breaking championship there. Latest event, 1er October saw the first edition of the Breaking Expert Battle, an international competition where top names in the discipline competed.
“Carte blanche to focus the project on hip-hop dances”
If Les Mureaux is not the cradle of breakdance in France, the city was marked by the eruption of hip-hop culture and urban dances (including breakdance) in the 1990s. “It developed in the social centers, there were battles between neighborhoods”remembers Monica, in her forties at Parc Molière.
A figure symbolizes this culture: Antoinette Gomis. Born in Les Mureaux, the 38-year-old dancer and choreographer enjoyed success until being acclaimed at the Apollo Theater in New York or collaborating with Madonna. She founded in 2001, in her native district, the Funky Ladies association, which has become a reference, which has nearly 250 students (from 4 to 50 years old) in hip-hop dance. “It was in Les Mureaux that my own hip-hop grew upsaid smiling Antoinette Gomis, often back to give lessons. We all trained at the Georges-Brassens social center with my brothers and sisters, I watched them break. »
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