When he’s breaking — sometimes called break dancing, by those who aren’t in-the-know — Coleman “Church” Caldwell, 32, feels a mix of anxiety and freedom. Dancing surrounded by a circle of fellow breakers, called B-boys and B-girls, in a formation named a cypher is “an opportunity to show yourself.”

“It’s kind of like speaking a different language that everybody can understand,” said Caldwell, who lives in Anne Arundel County. “It is truly poetry in motion.”

That hip-hop language was broadcast in a new way Friday and Saturday when 17 B-girls and 16 B-boys from countries around the globe faced off for the first time at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Snoop Dogg, who has been commentating for NBC, told Vogue it’s the event he was most excited to watch. It’s the only new sport to debut this summer.

Some Marylanders anticipate that the spotlight will boost breaking’s fame. Already, it’s drawing attention to how breaking has changed over the decades.

“It’ll definitely be more popular. That’s pretty much a given,” said Antonio Castillo, a Prince George’s County resident who’s helped put breaking on a bigger stage. “But will it last for a long time?”

Black and Latino kids started the dance style in the Bronx in the 1970s, and it emerged as a pillar of hip-hop culture. Today, competitions like Red Bull BC One bring together breakers worldwide.

At the Olympics, four breakers were set to compete on Team USA: Victor “B-boy Victor” Montalvo of Florida, who became the first American ever to qualify last year; Texas’ Jeffrey Louis, known as B-boy Jeffro; and B-girls Sunny Choi, from Tennessee, and Logan “Logistx” Edra, of California.

They were up against top contenders including Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim of Canada; Japan’s Shigeyuki “Shigekix” Nakarai, Ayumi Fukushima and Ami Yuasa; and Lithuania’s Dominika “Nicka” Banevic.

Since a DJ gets to pick the tracks, breakers improvised during battles as judges evaluated them on criteria such as technique, “vocabulary” and originality; a 133-page document lays out the World DanceSport Federation “Breaking for Gold” rules and regulations.

“I’m probably going to cry. … Because for me, I associated breaking with America,” said Castillo, who encountered it for the first time as a kid in Mexico, where he was born, and started practicing.

In 2011, he founded the academy that became ALL10 Breaking, which offers classes, camps and workshops in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. He also created the Competitive Breakin’ League in 2014 and launched USA Breakin’ as a D.C. nonprofit in 2020.

A few years earlier, he started a petition for two slots at the Youth Olympic Games for American breakers. Breaking appeared in the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, but without U.S. representation.

This week, spectators had a chance to witness “the best in the world compete at the highest platform that ever existed for breaking,” Castillo said.

His first student in D.C., Isaac “Fawzy” Witte, also views the Olympics as a boon for breaking.

“It’s going to bring a lot of attention to breaking, which is really dope,” said Witte, a 17-year-old Montgomery Blair High School senior who lives in Silver Spring and coaches at ALL10 Breaking.

He’s battled in big-time competitions — including winning bronze in last year’s teen Breaking for Gold USA qualifier in New York — after getting into breaking as a kid “with a lot of energy and no way to really use it.”Zoe Kirk, aka B-girl Rage, a senior at Chesapeake High School and a member of Baltimore’s Deadly Venoms Crew, also competed in a New York Breaking for Gold USA qualifier in 2022, where she came up against Team USA’s Sunny and others. She battled Logistx that same year in Orlando, Florida.

“I really like her style and the way she does things. And I even like the way she talks positively about learning and experimenting,” Kirk, 17, said of Logistx.

Kirk’s parents, Keely and Russ Kirk, own Pasadena’s Jamz Dance Studio, which played a part in courting the International Olympic Committee to propel breaking to new heights.

“Breaking is one of those styles that people don’t necessarily understand. … So seeing something like breaking — like a raw, original style — in the Olympics, is probably one of the best things that people could see,” she said. “It’s going to be very intense.”

The Olympic stage is undoubtedly a departure from the humbler side of breaking.

“We’re all used to practicing in hallways, on cardboard, in the streets,” said Matthew “Match” Chan, 30, a University of Maryland, College Park computer science Ph.D. student who is the president of the school’s B-Terps club.

Chan said he’s interested in seeing breaking featured more consistently in the Olympics (it won’t be included in 2028).

“It is, to a lot of people, first and foremost a culture. And you want to preserve the community,” he said. “I remember … seeing documentaries when I first started, basically about how breaking and all these other street dances became kind of like a fad. … And it kind of destroyed the image and the culture a little bit.”

Shawn Stevens, a Jamz Dance Studio instructor and co-founder of the Deadly Venoms Crew, was drawn to the “outlaw feel” of breaking in the ‘90s, back when the venues were Baltimore clubs, including The Paradox and Twilight Zone.

Judging USA Breakin’ and Competitive Breakin’ League battles, Stevens, 49, got an inside look at the rise of breaking to an Olympic sport, something he said will be “authentic, with a professional feel to it” — and could grow interest in workshops and classes.

“We allow it to be judged as a sport. … But in reality, after it’s over, the essential love of the dance is the art,” said Stevens, aka B-boy Shogun. “If stuff stays stagnant, it doesn’t really grow. So it’s always changing.”

But change comes with challenges.

Caldwell, who works in education and is part of a crew called The Elusives, said he prefers a freer, “natural” style. He doesn’t break as intensely as he used to, but still practices with crewmates and occasionally competes and judges.

He said the Olympic version of breaking is more focused on “athleticism rather than musicality.” Music licensing issues can get in the way of high-profile battles (at the Olympics, DJs will choose from pre-cleared tracks, The Guardian reported), and videographers don’t always catch key moments, Caldwell said.

“There’s just more rules in place, unfortunately, when it comes to Olympic-style breaking,” he said. “It’s … never going to show the complete picture. Because the complete picture is either at a jam, or a party, or a social event where people are just getting down naturally to the real music playing around them. There’s just going to be aspects that are kind of the core of breaking that won’t be there.”

“It’s a hard shoulder shrug for me,” he added. “It wasn’t meant to be fancy.”

There’s been talk in the breaking community about how the Olympics could prompt newer generations to focus more on big moves and the “athletic elements” over the subtler, artistic ones — but that awareness means that outcome could be prevented, Deadly Venoms Crew’s B-girl Gala said.

“Some of the best dancing is done when you’re not thinking and it’s coming from within,” said B-girl Gala, 27, a nonbinary Baltimore breaker who uses they/them pronouns.

With crewmate Angela Miracle Gladue, aka B-girl Lunacee, B-girl Gala runs an organization called Break With No Fears, which connects women, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary and LGBTQ+ breakers.

They’re optimistic that the Olympic platform will open up opportunities for breakers to make a better living, and have an impact on people who might not have seen themselves in breaking before.

“I’m hoping that the Olympics will inspire more girls to learn breaking,” B-girl Gala said. “Because seeing B-girls compete on an international stage would show that breaking is not just for boys.”