ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines one specific round in a breaking battle to explore how Sunny is looked at and how she looks back within this spectacular dance style. Women who participate in breaking enter a practice rendered visible as a male-dominated dance form that is discursively framed as masculine. Here, Sunny acknowledges how she is read according to the trope of the Asian model minority, which excludes the possibility that she can engender the audacious and defiant physicality of a b-girl. At Skillz Over Politicz Street Dance Competition in 2016, at the beginning of her Top 16 round, Sunny looks directly at her opponent, b-boy Akuma, feeling the groove of the music. Pough’s interest in notions of show and spectacle in female rap performance is productive for examining women of color in breaking battles.
