The 16-year-old’s head spins are spectacular. His footwork, elevated by a DJ’s beats, light and tight. But the status of Jeff Dunne, AKA J-Attack, as Australia’s best male breaker relies on his swagger and the odd cold stare.
Despite that, J-Attack also has a not-so-secret weapon: his mother, Rhondda. “I’m super glad,” Dunne says. “It’s wonderful to have someone that supports me in my life, and will continue to support me until they die.”
Dunne, who will represent Australia at the Paris Olympics, was born in the Philippines. He moved here at the age of one when he was adopted by Rhondda and her husband, Tony. Rhondda now travels almost everywhere with him, acting, as she describes, as his “personal luggage carrier, bed hotel maker and organiser”. The pair have been overseas seven times in the past year, including to last year’s world championships in Belgium.
“He doesn’t feel comfortable going on his own, and it’s not like there’s an entourage of Australians, so it’s just us going over so he can compete and get ready, to get the feel of the big, big battles,” Rhondda says.
Breaking is very much an adult world. Watching J-Attack on the Australian scene, it’s easy to forget he is still a year 11 high school student in New South Wales’ Northern Rivers region. Although he says he received “good marks” in term one this year, Dunne’s trajectory is towards a future in breaking. His school has allowed him to travel, and he stays up to date with a laptop and the support of his teachers.
“They said if you need any help, or if you need any extra time on an assignment or anything, just call us up, because breaking is your priority and we don’t want to take that away from you,” Dunne says.
Dunne discovered breaking as a seven-year-old when he joined his older sister’s hip-hop dance classes. By 12 he was already an elite performer, winning the 2019 Australian Youth Championships, before quickly establishing himself in the open category.
The Australian breaking community has embraced the prodigy. The president of AusBreaking, Lowe Napalan, says local breakers have watched him develop since he was a child, and feel a level of investment. “He’s like everyone’s little brother,” Napalan says. But from what Dunne has heard, the scene hasn’t always been as welcoming.
“Breaking died down,” he says. “Specifically because breakers were too scared that if they trained a kid they’d become better than them, and they let their ego get to them.”
These days there is genuine camaraderie. After the Breaking Oceania Championship final last October that secured Dunne’s Paris place, the defeated finalist, 15-year-old Benji “BenMX” Cogdell-Baird, celebrated with Dunne as if he had won himself.
“It’s nowhere near as heated as it used to be,” Dunne says. “There’s no beef with anyone any more. We’re all pretty chill, we’re all supportive, and we’re trying to turn it into a supportive community.”
Alongside Australia’s female representative, Rachael “Raygun” Gunn, Dunne has become one of the faces of the Paris Olympics team. And as breaking is a new sport in the 2024 Games, the pair have been tapped for dozens of interviews and promotions. “It can get exhausting,” Dunne says. “Sometimes I feel like, ‘well, I don’t want to do this interview or this shoot, but you know, it’s gonna benefit my profile, get me out there more.’”
Dunne receives some government and Australian Olympic Committee funding, but it only covers training expenses and flights to Olympic lead-up competitions. The sport is far from a professional pursuit in Australia, and although some breakers overseas can eke out an existence through sponsors and endorsements, July’s Olympics offers unrivalled exposure.
Dunne has asked for financial assistance on social media in recent months in a bid to raise money for travel expenses for him and his mother. Dunne is hoping to get to two more international jams before Paris, to test himself against the world’s best.
“These past 18 months, my mum and dad have to have been using their money straight out of their pockets to get me to all these other places in order to get ready for battles,” he says. In April Dunne signed with management agency TGI Sport in a bid to secure his first endorsement deal.
Rhondda still holds out hope for a change of mind from Los Angeles 2028 officials, who have scrapped breaking from their program, and for the sport to return to the Olympics in time for Brisbane 2032, when her son would be 25. “I’m hoping they’re going to put it back on the table once they see what happens in Paris,” she says.
The Olympics represents a moment of mainstream legitimacy for a style of dance that emerged in the 1970s. Where once improvisation and expression were paramount in breaking, today athletes tune their routine to maximise their scores, and are judged across five categories.
Despite the shift in emphasis, the format of competition is largely one-on-one battles, and confrontation remains the sport’s defining feature. A breaker might be a refined athlete with a well-choreographed routine, but they still need to perform at the feet of their opponent, often under an avalanche of trash talk.
Dunne says breakers need to “deal with it and leave it all on the floor” but concedes he is still working on controlling his emotions.
“When people go at me, sometimes it lights a fire in me and I like to go back at them,” he says. “Mum always sees me as a humble kid, so whenever I do that, she’s like, ‘Oi, knock it off.’”
