Vicki Chang B-girl is also named “La Vix”…Vicki “La Vix”. She was born in San Jose, California and is the youngest daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who came to the states during the Silicon Valley tech boom. She started breaking at the age of 18 in Berkeley, where I studied ecology and restoration sociology. In 2021, she decided to change careers from an ecological consultant to a full-time b-girl in order to more fully pursue her artistic passions and try for the 2024 Olympics. She is currently on the U.S. National Team and has also recently collaborated with the Golden State Warriors, Nike, Red Bull, Lyft, and Jack in the Box.
Achievements of Vicki Chang
- Undisputed Majors – 2022 USA Champion
- Breaking for Gold USA 2022 National Champion
- Texas Breaking Open 2022 and 2022 Champion
- Break X Grand Jam 2021 – 2nd
- Red Bull BC One 2021 – Top 8
- World Championship Experience
- Most Recent: 2022
- Years of Participation: 2022
- Top Finish: 11th
Influenced by the diverse music and dance culture of the Bay Area, her dance style has been described as creative and intricate. She enjoys the innovative freedom of breaking and is deeply inspired by her friends and mentors. She is a member of 4th World, the Calamities, Elephant Graveyard, and the artistry collective “The Soulshifters.”
Now, breakdancing — or breaking — is on the cusp of making its Olympic debut in Paris. It will be the first dance sport ever included in the Olympic Games.
Chang, who goes by La Vix, didn’t grow up breaking. She didn’t even grow up dancing. She did taekwondo and played volleyball through high school but, she said, was “much too short” to ever think of competing in college. But she wanted to stay active, and after watching Sara Von Gillern break on “So You Think You Can Dance” she decided to check out the open practices on the Cal-Berkeley campus.
Competing, or battling, has always been part of the breaking culture. Chang herself started doing it regularly at local events about four years after starting, and then began traveling the country to battle about 10 years ago. Then in 2021 she decided to leave a job she enjoyed as a restoration ecologist to follow her passion and dedicate herself full-time to breaking. There are no routines; breakers just dance to whatever the DJ puts on, so they have to be adaptable and go with the flow. There’s also a lot of stamina involved. The Olympic qualifying events have generally been 18 rounds from preliminaries through finals, with round robins and then best-of-three formats in the later rounds.
Chang says her breaking style would be considered pretty detailed and intricate. “It’s a way to be really creative and move my body around, so a lot of my material is unique to me because I created it,” said Chang, who earned her first international podium last year with a bronze medal at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. “I don’t do the big power or dynamic moves, but my strength is in the details.”
No matter what happens, Chang hopes that with breaking on the Olympic stage people will get to see that as much as it is a sport, it’s also a dance. Athlete, artist, scientist… it’s impossible to put a label on Vicki Chang, aka B-girl La Vix.
The California native started breaking while studying for a degree in Conservation and Resource Studies at Berkeley. After graduating, she worked as a marine ecologist for a decade – which provided fulfillment, a stable income, and healthcare – while continuing to break on the side.
“I was a field tech. So I would go out to our habitat restoration sites to do field work and then come back and write reports. We were restoring habitats for native plants and animals to be able to live in,” she told Olympics.com. “When I first went into marine ecology, I couldn’t practice breaking for two weeks at a time when I was on a boat, so I changed to plant ecology which allowed me to be on the ground more and practice breaking.” But there was just one problem; Chang also had a dream to become a professional B-Girl.
So in 2021, she made the risky decision to quit her job and focus on a sport. “The decision was difficult because quitting my job would mean losing health care and I wouldn’t have money. And so it took me a long time to just be like, ‘OK, I’m just going to go for it because I’m getting older. Anything could happen. I’m just going to do it’.
Chang finished second at the 2021 Break X Grand Jam, before becoming the national champion a year later, and winning Pan American Games bronze in 2023. But even as a full-time B-Girl and a member of the US national team, Chang doesn’t see herself primarily as an athlete. “I see myself as an artist first and then an athlete,” she says. “There’s a saying that goes around the breakers: Treat the dance as an art, but practice it as a sport.
“The dancers don’t really know the music that’s going to play. So there’s just so many surprises that can happen. This creates so many moments that the crowd is able to catch on to. So I think it’s really exciting because everyone loves dancing, and everyone loves music!
“It’s a very creative process for me. So as a style, I describe it as intricate, creative, original, free.” Underlining the importance of culture in breaking, athletes even get judged upon their fashion choices.
This combination of sports and culture has seen breaking grow in popularity in Chang’s hometown.
Women Fitness President Ms. Namita Nayyar catches up with Vicki Chang an exceptionally talented break dancer, here she talks about her fitness routine, her diet, her beauty secrets and success story.
Namita Nayyar:
You were born in Jose, California US and where did you have your early education? Breakdancing or breaking, also called b-girling (women), is a style of street dance originated by African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the Bronx. Breaking is the only new sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics. You start breakdancing at the age of eighteen years. This later propelled your career to the height where you have been a leading US Break dancer. Tell us more about your professional journey of exceptional hard work, tenacity, and endurance?
Vicki Chang:
I went to my local public schools from pre-k through high school, and then went to UC Berkeley for university and graduated with a B.S. in Conservation & Resource Studies with focuses in Ecology and Environmental Sociology. I started breaking at 18 because I saw a b-girl on the tv show “So You Think You Can Dance.” At UC Berkeley, there were open sessions every Tuesday and Thursday, so I just started going and would ask people how to break.
Back then (2010s), it wasn’t common to have dance studios that taught breaking, so people that went to practice sessions would share their knowledge with beginners or anyone who wanted to learn. Battling/competitions were a natural part of breaking, so people would encourage me to enter battles even though I didn’t feel ready. This was helpful because really the only way to get better at battling was through experience.
Around 2019/2020, I started traveling around the USA to enter battles by myself and gain more experience and start making a name for myself while also working a full time job as an ecologist. I transitioned into becoming a full-time dancer in 2022 in order to put all my energy and time into qualifying for the Olympics.
The qualification process for me was difficult because I had to self-fund all my travels to about 15 different, mostly international competitions within two years. This was one of the hardest journeys I’ve ever taken, with the highest highs and the lowest lows, and I commend anyone who also went through it, especially those who had to pay their own way.
Participating in the Olympic qualification process was also a rewarding experience because we were able to connect with breakers from all over the world and get to know the international community. I think making genuine connections with people who have the same passion and are working towards making their dreams come true is one of the most worthwhile experiences I could have in my lifetime.
Presently, I just finished a two-month theatre tour across the USA, and am working on seeing where to go from here.
*A note: I don’t call it b-girling because the dance itself is not gendered – originally, it was called bboying because the large majority of breakers were men when the dance first started, but to be inclusive of all genders, I use the term breaking.
Namita Nayyar:
While performing Breakdancing that consists mainly of four kinds of movement—toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes—and is typically set to songs containing drum breaks, especially in funk, soul, and hip-hop, it’s about finding a balance between showcasing strengths and creating a captivating performance. Elaborate?
Vicki Chang:
For me, breaking is my personal creative outlet, so I don’t really think of it as showcasing certain strengths for an audience. My mindset is that if someone watching connects with what I’m putting out there through my dance, then that’s amazing.
So while there is a traditional performance aspect to breaking in certain arenas, such as during organized competitions or in a structured show, one performance aspect for me comes from emphasizing parts of the music, whether it is the drums, the horns, or the vocals so that the audience can catch how the dancer is interpreting the music at the specific moment.
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