As an Australian I was fucking embarrassed. We have put forward our best performance in a games ever… and that.
I actually have very mixed feelings on this… Because you are right: there are aspects to it that look silly and cringe. She also didn’t execute big ‘power moves’ that truly define high level b-boying, but check this out…
Explaining her performance, Gunn said: "I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?
“I was always the underdog and wanted to make my mark in a different way.”
So, it’s kind of an amazing situation.
It’s also interesting to see that she has been involved in this scene for a while and has received support from the scene.
More on this stuff:
The Olympic breakdancing community has rallied behind breaker Rachael Gunn, better known by her stage name Raygun, after her performance at the Paris Olympics drew both ridicule and praise. …
“She was trying to be original, bring something new to the table,” he said, adding that he felt sorry for Gunn after seeing the backlash to her performance.
“From our perspective, there was nothing really shocking.”
Gilian said that, while Gunn’s “level was maybe not as high” as other competitors, the breaking community stood by her.
“That doesn’t mean that she did really bad; she did her best,” he said.
“She won the Oceania qualifier … Unfortunately for her, the other b-girls were better.”
But yeah like, this is wild…
At the same press conference, Sergey Nifontov, general secretary of the World Dancesport Federation, said the federation had offered support to Raygun in the wake of the strong social media response.
“We offered support of our safeguarding officer,” he said.
“We are aware about what has happened, especially on social media, and definitely we should put the safety of the athlete, in this case, mental safety in first place.
“She has us as a federation supporting her.”
If I ever did something so bad that people I didn’t know were talking about putting my ‘mental safety’ first, I would know I had done something truly dazzling…
As someone who has posted & done cringe before…
I will not cast the first stone.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also offered up his support on Sunday.
“Good on her and a big shout-out to her. That is in the Australian tradition of people having a go. She’s had a go representing our country and that’s a good thing,” Mr Albanese said.
“The Olympics is about people participating in sport. That’s a good thing and Raygun had a crack.
LOL this language is also wild in its own way because it really is what is only ever said when you have mucked it up.
… And that’s not bad to say about the guy who joined as a backup on the Company or Church basketball team that would go on to make some humiliating mistakes on the court…
But we are talking about an Olympic performance.
I would also go so far as to say that the best thing you can really say is just that “Nah, nah, it was actually very satisfactory and good from an artistic perspective though it lacked power moves,” and just Chad face it.
As interpretive dance or freestyle it was fine and didnt take no skill but yeah. If you were going to be judged on technical difficulty and knew you couldnt compete on that criteria it seems a little wrong to take that opportunity from someone who might have been a stronger competitor.
The fact that she’s crying sexism over the people making fun of her really makes me dislike her
The fact that she’s saying the criticism of her dancing is due to sexism just made me dislike her. Way too trivialize actual sexism by claiming that people who don’t like your crap dancing are sexist. I’ve seen great female break dancing and she’s awful. It has nothing to do with gender.
This is a pretty common reaction these days. Any time valid criticism is leveled, it’s discounted as bigotry against whatever group they’re a part of. Okay, not any time, but often.
As a kiwi- could you do better?
You’re stealing our tall poppy syndrome.
Does anyone have a link to her actual performance? I tried looking yesterday and every single article and YouTube video is just talking about it, without showing it.
It is also here in this facebook reel but has a guy remarking on it below. I post it in case the top one gets pulled before you get a chance.
Thank you. That was… something.
Rokafella: We watched the battle [breakdancing competition] live, but we’ve watched many battles, sometimes in person, sometimes with one of our dancers, our b-girls, competing.
The kangaroo hop, that was a surprise.
However, what I’m trying to get at is that in b-girl battles occasionally, but more often than not, you will get dancers who are not at a high skill level. In general, we all have to work hard and we have to train. In general, we’re doing the same steps, but mentally, physically, there’s a lot of differences here.
And so when people want to criticise her performance, we trust that the judges will see what we’re seeing. And no, she does not get to move to the next bracket, so we trust that.
Kwikstep: My initial reaction when I saw Raygun was, how does she make it into this, to begin with? What were the checks and balances? In every event, there’s people in last place, but nobody’s focusing on that for days and days, making it into memes. And they’re on talk shows and all of that kind of stuff.
Let me give you an example. So I have a young man who called me, and he was almost in, I can say, in tears. His voice was shaking because he owns a school teaching breaking in a rural area.
And parents came in and said, “Teach my kids the kangaroo.” And he said, “Please don’t come in here and say that to me. It’s very disrespectful.” They didn’t listen. Now they’ve been asking him to teach their kids the kangaroo and sending him memes. He called me, said, “I don’t know what to do because I think I’m going to lose all my students and their parents because this is all they want.”
And I told them, if you lose all of them, it’s time for you to do something else. Because they weren’t loyal to you to begin with. If they had empathy, they would understand you and say, you know what? You’re right, I’m wrong. And remind people that this dance is about soldiers in the trenches.
If you look at the headlines at that time, it said, “New York can drop dead.” They left us for dead, literally. And post-civil rights, where I watched leaders get assassinated, I’m listening to rhymes that say “I am a somebody” and I’m cognisant that that comes from what? Civil rights marches. I am somebody.
And so when you have all of this happening in my mind and in my soul now, here I come to watch the Olympics, and I’m watching people at the top of their game. Some things are missing, but I’m like, it’s cool. The movement is what I’m watching. This is not just about moves. It’s about the movement of the people.
But then they chose to focus on her instead of, you know, Logistx or Sunny or Nicka, for that matter, who’s killing the game. They were incredible. And so you take away all the momentum to focus on this one person who doesn’t have the skillset. But it’s almost like a knee-jerk instinct to make a parody of a Black and Brown dance, because that’s what you were taught how to do. That’s not cool.
And I really feel bad for Raygun and what she has to deal with, because mental health is a real thing. And as a community, we come from a place where we’re mentally up against the wall, and this dance and music healed us. And so to turn around and take this very same culture and beat somebody up with it is not the right thing to do.
Raygun says Olympic criticism has been ‘devastating’
(full text of article follows)
Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn says the backlash to her performance at the Olympics has been “devastating”.
Gunn - who is known as B-girl Raygun - has been the subject of a social media storm since breaking’s debut at the Paris Games last week.
A petition calling for an apology from Gunn, 36, as well as from Australia’s Olympic chef de mission Anna Meares, now has more than 54,000 signatures.
In an Instagram video, external Gunn said she didn’t realise her appearance would “open the door to so much hate”.
On Thursday, Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) chief executive Matt Carroll said the petition had “stirred up public hatred without any factual basis”, adding it was “vexatious, misleading and bullying”.
Meanwhile, the petition says Gunn and track cyclist Meares - who is a two-time Olympic champion - should say sorry for “attempting to gaslight the public and undermining the efforts of genuine athletes”.
After thanking her supporters, Gunn said: "I really appreciated the positivity and I’m glad I was able to bring some joy into your lives - that’s what I hoped.
"Well, I went out there and I had fun - I did take it very seriously. I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and I gave my all. Truly.
“And I’m honoured to have been a part of the Australian Olympic team; to be a part of breaking’s Olympic debut.”
Gunn, a university lecturer from Sydney, lost all three of her round-robin battles by a combined score of 54-0.
However, she hit back, saying: "Bit of a fun fact for you: there are actually no points in breaking.
“If you want to see how the judges scored me compared to my opponents, you can actually see the comparison percentages across the five criteria on Olympics.com, external - all the results are there.”
She also asked her critics “in regard to the allegations and misinformation floating around”, to refer to Carroll’s statement, in which he said Gunn was “selected through a transparent and independent qualification event and nomination process”.
Gunn added: "I’d really like to ask the press to please stop harassing my family, my friends, the Australian breaking community and the broader street dance community.
“Everyone has been through a lot as a result of this, so I ask you to please respect their privacy.”