This sport is making its Olympics debut in Paris. Just don’t call it breakdancing

Breakdancing began on the streets of New York in the 1970s. Now the artform and sport, known competitively as breaking, is in the Olympics — and its athletes are ready to show off their moves.

As a DJ spins music, the athletes twist, whirl and leap — each move a dizzying mix of fancy footwork and contorted limbs. It might seem more like an artform than a sport, but breakdancing — known professionally as breaking — is making its Olympics debut this month in Paris. Breaking has been flourishing on the streets of New York and other US cities since the 1970s, but Paris marks its first time its athletes, known as B-boys and B-girls, will freestyle their moves on perhaps the world’s biggest stage. The two-day breaking competition this Friday and Saturday features competitors from more than a dozen countries, including China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the United States. The Games will expose breaking to a wider audience, said Victor Montalvo (nicknamed B-boy Victor) of the US, who’s been called the “Michael Jordan of breaking” and is a favorite in Paris to bring home a medal. “It’s reaching a different audience, a global audience, an audience that thought breaking was dead or was never there, an audience that has the stereotypes or misconceptions of breaking back in the 1980s,” Montalvo told CNN En Espanol in a recent interview.