Phil Wizard, Champion Breaker and Olympic Contender, Isn’t Convinced ‘Breakdancing’ Is a Sport

Philip Kim knows what you’re thinking: Breakdancing? At the Olympics? That’s not even a sport.

He agrees with you, mostly. He just prefers you call it by its proper name: “Breakdancing” is something only outsiders say. Those who know call it breaking. But Kim, who is better known as Phil Wizard, is pragmatic enough to know that “breakdancing” is better for SEO. He usually doesn’t bother to correct people.

So, let’s be proper: Kim is the top-ranked B-boy in the world and a favorite to bring home the gold for his home country of Canada. This has made him a hot commodity for every press outlet in the country, and he admits the pressure is getting to him. And the interviews all seem to follow a pattern: How’d you get your name? What’s your best move? Is breaking a sport? Then they ask him to do a couple tricks for the camera. Kim knows I’ve flown to Toronto to make him do it all again for probably the fifth time this week, but he doesn’t seem to mind. If it’s good for the culture, he’s down.

There’s not a lot of room for the culture on the official Olympics website, which glibly says that breaking started at “lively block parties.” Not wrong per se, but it obscures a cold irony: that one of breaking’s founding figures might have had a shot at the Olympics in his time, had he not been so poor. Richard Colón, now known as the B-boy Crazy Legs, trained as a boxer in his neighborhood and as a teenager wanted to compete in a Junior Olympics event. His single mother couldn’t afford the $14 registration fee. Left without opportunities, Colón stayed in the Bronx streets, where he helped pioneer an explosive style of dancing. Back then, rapping was a novelty; hip-hop’s main event was breaking. And for a while, mainstream culture found breaking useful: Colón appeared with his Rock Steady Crew in 1983’s Flashdance; another crew performed at Ronald Reagan’s 1985 inauguration gala. Then, the calls stopped coming. A lot of the kids went back to the streets.

One of Paris 2024’s “most fashionable sports” wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the pressure cooker that was late-’70s New York—the structural racism, the oppression, the poverty—that forced those Bronx kids to find a way to survive.

Philip Kim didn’t know about any of this back in 2009 when, as a 12-year-old in Vancouver, he saw a performance by a breaking crew that put on shows at weddings and corporate events. He thought it looked cool, so he went home and watched the first thing that came up: a competition on Red Bull’s YouTube channel. He’s now sponsored by Red Bull and a growing list of increasingly un-hip-hop companies that includes Lululemon (he prefers the flowy, baggy women’s pants; the men’s line is too tight for him), Toyota, and Royal Bank of Canada.

Kim is a rarity. He estimates he’s one of maybe a couple hundred breakers worldwide who make enough money to focus full-time on dance. In fact, he only recently deactivated his Patreon, which, before all the sponsors, had helped him scrape together enough to get by. (It’s wild to think that a couple years ago you could get one-on-one training from a future top-ranked Olympian for $50 per session.)

This leaves the majority of breakers in the scene to find a day job. Kim hopes the Olympics can help change that; mainstream exposure means more opportunities. And the scene might not get another chance: The IOC announced last year that breaking will not be featured in the 2028 events in Los Angeles. (Among the sports that got a nod instead are flag football and squash.) So Phil might not only be the first gold medalist B-boy, he may well be the last.

Before we finally sit down, our video producer asks Kim (inevitably) to do a couple moves for the camera. After he helps us clear out a space just inside the entrance of the surf-goods shop where we’ve been chatting, Kim prepares to spin into a photo-friendly windmill move. Just then, a scruffy brown dog, which until now had been lazily watching customers flick through beach-themed tank tops, dashes across the shop floor.

Fascinated by the movement, the dog rears up on its hind legs and leaps toward Kim. Kim pulls his legs back into a tighter spin; he doesn’t want to smack the dog, but he isn’t gonna stop his flow. For a couple minutes, the video shoot turns into an impromptu battle/roughhousing session, with the dog playfully snapping at Kim’s legs and Kim playfully lunging back, laughing as it barks. It takes Kim a bit to figure out the chaotic style of his new “opponent,” but before long he has incorporated a few puppylike hops into his movement. Kim has the same goofy grin he always has on stage. For just a moment, the pressure—not just the expectations of his country, or his friends, or his scene, but of 50-plus years of history—is off his shoulders.

DEXTER THOMAS: That was hilarious. I think you made a new friend.

PHIL WIZARD: [scratching the dog behind the ear] I love dogs, man. I love dogs. I wish I could have one. But I travel too much.

Yeah, weren’t you just in South Africa? And Hong Kong. You’ve been all over. Do you remember when things started feeling “real” for you, doing this as a profession?

It was a Red Bull event, Red Bull BC One. It’s the biggest one-on-one event in the world, and there was a qualifier in LA. I bought my own flight and stayed with a friend out there. I told myself that if I win this event, then I’m just going to drop out of school and pursue it. And if I lost, I’ll focus on school. But I won. It was unexpected, I was just this kid from Canada. I had a little bit of name recognition, but I beat people out who are veterans.

And then you told your family?

Yeah. My parents had immigrated from Korea. They’re like, “We sacrificed our lives to give you guys a different opportunity.” They weren’t super pushy, but they were just … traditional. My dad was like, “I’ll give you three years to show us that you can do it. We’ll support you, you can live at home, whatever. But then after that, if it doesn’t work out, you go to school.” My parents were always supportive, they were just worried about me, right?

How old were you?

I was maybe around 20 at the time. So I did it: I dropped out of school, and I pursued dance. But I still struggled mentally. Because it was so difficult as a dancer to make it. Every day was a challenge of like, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

I actually found an old video of you showing off some moves and combos. I think you’re still 17 in this one.

Haha, look at the big shorts I’m wearing! This is in my friend’s basement. That’s where we would go to practice. It’s actually really funny seeing this now. There are certain movements, there are certain shapes, the way that I move is still very similar. But you can see the energy, you can see the hunger that I had at that age. That’s changed.

What do you mean? What’s changed?

It’s always more pure when you start. You dance because you love to dance. Now, there’s sponsors, there’s media. At that age, when I would go to an event, everything was super exciting. I still have the same love, but it’s lost the shine a little bit, for sure.

OK, boilerplate question: Is breaking a sport?

Good question.

You knew this was coming.

It’s a conversation we have to have. Whenever I get asked this question, I say I’ve always seen it as an art and a culture first. I’ve never seen it as a sport. Most of us have never seen it as a sport. It’s self-expression, it’s culture. It’s an element of hip-hop culture. Now it’s going into the realm of sports. To be completely honest, I don’t care what people label it. Hip-hop in general, it can transcend these labels.

It’s kinda funny to me that there are two groups of people who agree that breaking isn’t a sport: the haters who are mad that breaking is in the Olympics, because they don’t respect it, and the breakers themselves. I don’t get the hate, though. What you do is really athletic, it’s really difficult.

There’s also a ton of subjectivity involved. There’s no cookie-cutter “if you do this move, you get this many points.” You have categories like originality, execution, and difficulty. But “difficulty” is a hard one to judge, because you could do something physically difficult, but you could do something equally creatively difficult. How do you gauge those factors? It is still extremely subjective; it is very political when it comes to judging.

Right. And even when this was first announced as a 2018 Youth Olympics event, there was that petition from a B-boy who accused World DanceSport Federation and the International Olympic Committee of exploiting breaking for their own gain. It got over 2,000 signatures—other B-boys, B-girls.

Yeah, some people in the community don’t want us in the Olympics. But there are a lot of OGs and people who are very respected in the game who understand the opportunities that will come from it. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. At the end of the day, the positives outweigh the negatives. So let’s focus on that and just do our best.

Just like you said, all of this isn’t just a sport, it’s a culture. And that’s where things get really deep.

Of course. You have to respect that side too. For me, I understand that I am a guest of this culture. I’m just someone who came in after. It came from Black and Latino culture. It came from the hood. It’s grown outside of that. It touched people like me who come from a middle-class family that just saw breaking and were like, “I want to do this.” Same thing with the Europeans and the Asians. If you go to Japan, there’s a lot of kids whose parents see it as something fun and positive their kid can do. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I do think that people will notice, when they see breaking in the Olympics on TV, that there are way fewer Black and brown faces than they might expect; that it doesn’t look like it used to.

A lot of the scene has moved to Europe and Asia. So that’s why you see predominantly Asian and white people in the scene competing at the highest level, because that’s where the scene has shifted. It might just be an opportunity thing. In Japan, it’s huge.

Yeah. North America, in general, breaking seems way more rare, you know what I mean? Compared to how Korea had a boom of breaking in the mid-2000s, when it got really popular for a while.

Exactly. But even if you look at Korea now, they don’t have that next generation. It’s shifted to K-pop. Even among dancers, breaking is seen as like a “Oh, you’re still doing that?” kinda thing. Hopefully the Americans see the opportunity with the Olympics and they open more doors for breaking to be showcased, or to teach at school. And then that’ll bring more people in, right?

You’re in an interesting position as one of the “faces” of this sport. I don’t think anyone expects an Olympian sprinter or swimmer to educate people about the cultural context of their sport. Do you feel like there’s a responsibility?

I do think we should talk about it. I do my best to learn about it, but I could probably do a better job. Hopefully when people see us, they want to learn more and want to get into the culture.

So we’re in Toronto now, because you’re out here for work. But you grew up in Vancouver. Do you see differences in the two scenes? Can you tell what city somebody’s from in how they move?

I think Canada in general has always been known for a creative approach, a lot of threading, which is when you create an illusion with your body, one body part going through another. I think there used to be probably more of a difference between cities. That changed in general with the YouTube generation. There’s less difference now.

That’s happened with music too. Southern hip-hop had a particular sound, so did California. Even within California, you had a more Bay Area sound, and LA had multiple different sounds, and you can tell by listening to someone …

… where their music comes from, yeah. Now you just watch videos, so it’s changed. You have a lot of background in hip-hop culture, don’t you? You know your stuff, I can feel it. You’re very invested in it.

I am, I guess. I am a DJ, but I can’t scratch. I didn’t learn on vinyl. I learned on computers. I feel a little like a poser because of that. I’m kinda like you: I’m not old enough to have been there in the beginning days, so I don’t know if I even have the right to gatekeep. But then I look at all the commercialization last year of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, and I see LinkedIn’s content division posting “brand tribute” listicles, and I think, “What?”

Yeah, like, “What is your connection to this?”

Yeah, like, “Who are you?”

Exactly.

So you get me! We got looked down on for being into this culture, you know what I mean? I used to DJ at this one club where the management would tell us, “Do not play hip-hop because it attracts the wrong crowd.” And now I see people glomming onto it. I feel like, “Yo, what? You trying to make money off of this after, like, everything that we’ve been through?”

But my question is, isn’t that the whole idea? To bring more people together, right?

Yes, of course.

There will always be people who are just latching onto it, but then you also introduce it to new audiences, and people that will fall in love with it. That’s part of the process. Nothing’s ever cookie-cutter and clean. That’s the grit you have to go through to get to the other side. That’s my view of the Olympics. Of course, you’re going to get brands and shit that jump on, and they’re just in it for the hype. But you might get those few brands that jump on and be like, “I love the culture. Let’s keep supporting this.” I think it’s good to bring that financial stability and support into breaking, to provide a lot of opportunities for a lot of people now, which is all I’ve ever wanted. For people to be able to live off of this.

I think I see what you mean. There’s this rose-tinted idea we have of a time when a scene’s motivation was 100 percent pure. Almost like they wanted to suffer for the culture. But I also look back at some of the original B-boys and B-girls, and they were very clear that in the early days they were trying to get paid.

It’s the same. Exactly. You could look at rap artists. What do they talk about most of the time? It’s about money. Everyone’s just trying to get paid. Money changes everything always, but I think you can still keep cultural roots and love for the art of it.

I’ve also seen people recently saying that the concept of “selling out” is a Gen X thing. And that millennials and Gen Z don’t really … well, they either don’t understand it or it’s not relevant, because they start out from the standpoint of, “I should get paid to do this.”

Exactly. Yeah. What is “selling out,” right? If you do something and you do it at a high level and people respect you for it, of course you should get paid for what you do. So that’s not selling out. If you’re doing something that you really don’t want to do, like, “This is not me. This doesn’t represent me at all. But I’m doing it for the paycheck.” That, there, is selling out.

I hear you grew up watching anime.

Yeah.

What’d you watch?

I watched a lot of One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, the big three shonen anime. A lot of breaking to me is kind of like watching One Piece, actually. It’s all pirate crews. You form a crew, you travel the world, people have bounties, and they’re notorious for something. It’s like that for me when I go to an event. It’s like, “Oh, I know this person, Victor [Montalvo, an American B-boy also headed to Paris]. He’s notorious for this, he’s well known for that.” You want to battle him to see, to test yourself. You form a crew as well within your community, and you go out and represent.

Speaking of which, things have changed, shifted from battles between crews to individuals, haven’t they?

For sure. With Red Bull BC One, and now the Olympics, there’s a lot more focus on individual battles and competitions. I still think the root of breaking is in crew battles, though. That’s where it started, and that’s where the energy is. And, honestly, it’s the most fun to watch for me, too. The two-on-two, the three-on-three crew battles. You can see the chemistry. I think that things will start to change, and we’re going to see the crews and stuff start to come back after the Olympics.

Hmm. Why do you think that is?

I think it’s just an energy shift. I think people are tired of one-on-ones. I’m tired of competing in one-on-ones. It’s more fun to do two-on-two, three-on-threes. It’s cool to win by yourself, but it’s more fun when you’re winning with your boys.

OK, the One Piece thing is starting to make sense to me now. One thing that I imagine is going to surprise a lot of people at the Olympics is the judges’ showcase. Before the event starts, the judges have to perform in front of all of you, the athletes.

So the judges’ showcase is a part of what has always been in competitions. The judges at most events are people that are very respected in the culture, that are known for their style, known for their contribution to the scene. And so the judges’ showcase is like a nod to that, to showcase why they’re up there on the panel. With the Olympics, it’s probably a little bit different, to be completely honest. A lot of us don’t even agree with who’s judging these events.

Really?

You’re going to see some weird calls, and that’s been the case in the last year with [Olympic] qualifications. And there’ve been some bad judges’ showcases, to be honest. We all talk about this openly. I don’t know half the people that are up there. Some of them are very respected in the scene, and some of them are not. That’s one of the flaws of the system, but it is what it is. So we just go and adapt.

Wow. So as you’re watching them dance, you could be strategic and go: “OK, I see who’s here. I know what will play well. I’m going to adjust my movements to get points,” right?

Yes, some people do that. I do not do that. There are definitely people who will look at the judges and say, “I can tick more boxes if I do this. This person prefers this type of dance. And so I’ll try to cater more toward that.” But for me, that’s when you take away the art of it. The idea of breaking is self-expression. Not catering to other people.

Even at the Olympics? When a medal might be on the line?

No. At any event that I go to, I’m going to do my thing. The majority of us are like that. We don’t care who the judges are. We’ll complain, be like, “Fuck, these judges suck,” whatever. But it’s your style versus someone else’s style, you know?

I get it. I’d imagine there’s a lot of future potential Phil Wizards out there, and if you do something corny, you risk turning that kid off.

Exactly. People think I like to compete, but I don’t. I’m not a competitive person. I’m a very anxious person. So when I go on stage, it’s super anxiety-driven, and I don’t like being there. My love of breaking comes from dancing. I like to be with my friends at practice, just creating and dancing. If I could do that, I would just do that.

Speaking of which, breaking won’t be at the next Olympics, and there’s no guarantee it ever comes back after that. How do you feel about that?

I think it’s a missed opportunity for the Olympics. I think they’ll regret it when they see it in Paris.

You mention “opportunity,” which reminds me that the IOC president said breaking as an event is part of an “opportunity to connect with the younger generation.” Who needs who more, the Olympics or breaking?

I think the Olympics needs breaking more than breaking needs the Olympics. This is a big platform to showcase breaking on another level, and there’s been incredible funding and opportunities for people, but I don’t think that it is the end all, be all. I compete the next week and I compete the week after that. There’s literally an event, IBE, one of the biggest events, the week after that, and I’ll be there. So it just keeps going.

You’re going to compete again, the week after the Olympics?

The Olympics is just one event. It is one event of many.

It’s almost like y’all are thinking of this Olympics thing as a big commercial to advertise your scene, the culture.

Yeah, I guess. I hope that brands see that it’s a cool thing to invest in and start working with people in the community. And I hope that when people see breaking, they fall in love with it. If the Olympics don’t invite us back, we go back to what we’ve been doing. Breaking was here before they brought us to the Olympics. It’ll be here after.

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