posted
Interesting, Dr Rachael "Raygun" Gunn is a 36 year old academics from Australia
quote:Rachael Louise Gunn (born 2 September 1987), known competitively as Raygun, is an Australian academic and competitive breakdancer. She is a lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Macquarie University Faculty of Arts. Gunn competed in breaking at the 2024 Summer Olympics, the sport's debut at the games, but did not progress past the first round.
Early life and education Rachael Louise Gunn was born on 2 September 1987 in Hornsby, New South Wales. She danced as a child, and was trained in ballroom, tap, and jazz styles.
Gunn attended Barker College[5] and then Macquarie University, completing a bachelor's degree in contemporary music, graduating in 2009, and a PhD in cultural studies, graduating in 2017.[6] Her PhD thesis, titled "Deterritorializing gender in Sydney's breakdancing scene : a B-girl's experience of B-boying" focused on "the intersection of gender and Sydney's breaking culture"
So one could say that American pop culture has reached both the lecture halls of Academia and the Olympic stadia.
Archeopteryx Member # 23193
posted
The first girl that Raygun meets in the video is American (with Filipino ancestry) dancer Logan Elanna Edra nicknamed "Logistx".
quote:Logan Elanna Edra (born May 8, 2003), known by her nickname B-Girl Logistx (pronounced "logistics"),[1] is an American breakdancer. She qualified for the United States at the 2024 Summer Olympics, featuring the debut of breakdancing at the Olympics.
Biography
Edra was born on May 8, 2003, in Chula Vista, California, and has Filipino ancestry. She took ballet classes when young, but was unable to continue due to costs associated with classes. When she was age seven, her father suggested trying out hip hop dance classes; Edra said that "I told my dad I didn't want to try it, that I was scared, but he wanted me to try it." She said he responded by tricking her into attending the classes, telling her that she was going to be attending art classes instead. According to NBC: "She quickly became hooked, inspired by her B-girl teacher and the feeling of bliss that hip-hop brought her. Hip-hop classes quickly turned to breakdancing classes, and her career continued from there."
Edra was nicknamed "Logistx" by her father at age 10, and went on a strict schedule to develop as a dancer, which included gymnastics classes.
Viral Australian Breaker Raygun Accused of Manipulating Olympics Qualifier Published Aug 14, 2024 Newsweek
There were plenty of memorable moments at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Simone Biles making her triumphant Olympics return. Noah Lyles barely winning the 100m. The Turkish shooter who had the coolest shooting position of all time.
Then there's Raygun's "Kangaroo Dance."
The representative for Australia in Olympic Breakdancing, Raygun (aka Rachael Gunn), went viral for her unorthodox dance that many people online claimed they could recreate.
While this mostly garnered laughs, others felt this was an offense to the sport and to the Olympics in general. In fact, one critic, who named themselves "Someone Who hates corruption," created a petition asking that Gunn and Australian Olympic Committee President Anna Meares be held responsible.
The Change.org petition alleges that Raygun manipulated the selection process and prevented other competitors from entering because she "set up her own governing body for breakdancing." Further, the petition claims that she won her own qualifier, which was influenced by her husband, who served as the Olympic team's coach.
The petition calls for a public apology from Gunn and Meares as well as a full investigation into the selection process, "an audit of Dr. Gunn's business dealings," and a global apology to the breaking community. As of this article, the petition has more than 40,000 signatures.
There's just one problem. None of this seems to be true.
Not only did the petition constantly spell Gunn and Meares' names wrong, a recent deep dive from Vox's Aja Romano proved that none of the claims in the petition are true. Gunn did not found AUSBreaking, the "governing body" for Australian breakdancing.
On top of that, she and her husband, Samuel Free, didn't have any say in who joined the team. In fact, the entire list of judges for the Oceania Breaking Championships, which served as a qualifier, is available online.
One of the judges for the qualifier, Te Hiiritanga Wepiha, explained that she legitimately won the competition. He even provided a 90-minute commentary on Instagram explaining her victory.
Additionally, multiple other breakers came out in support of Gunn, including veteran New Zealand breaker Dujon Cullingford.
"This is what happens when people outside of our dance want to control the narrative but have absolutely no expertise of technical knowledge on our dance, particularly in an Oceania context," Cullingford said.
Another person who stands by Gunn is the head judge at the Olympics, Martin Gilian, who goes by MGbility.
"Breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table and representing your country or region," MGbility said in a press conference. "This is exactly what Raygun was doing. She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo."
"We have five criteria in the competitive judging system (Technique, Vocabulary, Execution, Musicality, Originality) and just her level was maybe not as high as the other competitors. But again, that doesn't mean that she did really bad. She did her best. She won the Oceania qualifier. ... Unfortunately for her, the other b-girls were better."
If you look at the scores, Raygun didn't completely fail. When she faced off against Logistx from the United States, some judges scored her better in the Vocabulary and Originality categories.
Were her moves silly? Yes. Was that being true to herself? Also yes. Did she manipulate her way into the Olympics? Absolutely not.
Breakdancing Won't Be Part of 2028 Los Angeles Olympics?
Following the closing ceremony of the Paris games, the claim that breakdancing would not be included in the Los Angeles summer Olympics in 2028 received widespread coverage in television, print, and social media.
It's true that breakdancing will not be an event at the 2028 Los Angeles games. But it is inaccurate to say it was "removed" because of, or that its absence is related to, events in Paris. Breaking was never proposed as an event in L.A., and the L.A. Olympic committee's proposed schedule was released in October 2023.
Breakdancing was first announced as an Olympic event in December 2020, after successfully being included in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. Events are continuously added and removed from the Olympic program in order to keep it relevant. As described by Encyclopedia Britannica, some sports that don't make the cut one year may come back in later years, while others are lost to time:
Tug-of-war, for example, was once a respected Olympic sport. Polo, power boating, rackets, roque, and waterskiing were all once part of the Olympic Games but have been discontinued over the years, while cricket and lacrosse are among the sports that were dropped but later reinstated.
In October 2023, the Los Angeles Olympic committee voted to approve an events program that did not include breakdancing, but that did include five new events: cricket, flag football, baseball and softball, lacrosse and squash.
While this schedule has not yet been ratified by the IOC — that won't happen until 2025 — it is likely that any future changes to the program would be the removal of events, as the L.A. plan already goes over the allowed limit for athletes, per Washington Post:
posted 