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Now Olympic Bound, American B-Girl Logan Edra Is Breaking the Mold for Team USA
Pressure you say – what pressure?
Heavy is the crown.
With the 2024 Paris Olympics around the corner, Team USA athletes are preparing for their moment on one of the biggest stages in the world. It’s a time for juggernauts like the gold medal-winning artistic gymnastics trio of Suni Lee and Simone Biles to stand up to pressure and perpetuate their dominance, or LeBron James trying to keep Father Time at bay for one final Olympic run with Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and a slurry of other NBA sentinels — a stellar cast whose collective talents have been hailed as the greatest since the elite 1992 Dream Team.
And while most eyes will be on those big-ticket names, along with other known greats like Coco Gauff and Olympic titan Katie Ledecky, a different form of pressure – one perhaps more intolerable than most — is reserved for the likes of Logan Edra, whose lifelong dedication is breaking the mold without breaking under pressure.
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Her Early Life
Born May 8, 2003 in Chula Vista, California, Logan Edra is an Filipino-American break dancer but she’s not your average “B-girl” by any means. Having first tried soccer and tennis, Lo (as most people call her) struggled at first with being an uncoordinated youngster, and the expenses associated with traditional forms of dance prohibited her from pursuing them, but that would all change by the time she was seven, thanks to a little bit of trickery from her father.
“My dad grew up a hip-hop kid… And I was dancing a lot when I was younger, like ballet and jazz, but it got really expensive, so I started going to a local church that had different activities,” Edra recalls in an exclusive interview with NBC Insider. “I thought I was going to an art class, but it ended up being a hip-hop dance class, and I told my dad I didn’t want to try it, that I was scared, but he wanted me to try it, so he tricked me!”
That little white lie by her father, who also gave his daughter the nickname “Logistx,” led to Edra coincidentally discovering her raison d'être in breaking — a form of street dance comprised of dance “battles” and ciphers that would go on to take center stage in her life.
“So, I end up trying it, and I just fell in love with dance,” she adds. “I think that was one of my earliest experiences with the feeling of bliss, and what brought that to me was hip-hop dance.”
Born Out of Struggle
The elation Logan Edra felt while breaking wasn’t the only element that drew her to the dance. Having struggled with depression and generalized anxiety disorder throughout her youth, part of what kept her coming back to the world of breaking was that it allowed her to divest herself of past traumas, if only for a few hours at a time, and fully give herself to this burgeoning art form.
“Breaking is from the Bronx in the 70’s from hip-hop culture, and personally, I’ve always felt connected to breaking because it was one of the only things that allowed me to fully escape from the pain that comes with life,” Edra reveals.
“There were a lot of traumas and hardships I had to get through as a kid, but when I'm breaking, it helps me find release from those and balance,” said Edra on her Red Bull artist page. “Breaking was born out of struggle, so I feel at home and like I belong when I'm dancing. When I break, I feel like a superhero. I feel empowered."
By embracing breaking, she not only strengthened her mental fortitude, Edra was also able to center herself and find her True North early on in life. She says, “It’s a dance, and I believe dance is very spiritual because it literally connects the mind, the body and the spirit all in one. And it’s not really possible to dance without all three being engaged.”
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A Lifetime of Dedication
The rigorous nature of breaking also means that athletes like Logistix must pay specific attention to their diets and training.
“It’s very difficult,” notes Edra. “It’s so athletically demanding. And it’s not common or easy for anyone to do.”
Since physical training plays a huge role in Edra’s success with breaking, in order to keep up with her fitness, she turns to her secret weapon against fatigue: Go-Go Squeeze.
“It’s crazy because I grew up with Go-Go Squeeze — it was a childhood snack for me,” says Edra. “For me, it’s perfect because they have the new ones with electrolytes in them, and I can tell the difference in my training when I’m not getting all the nutrients that I need, including all the electrolytes, supplements, vitamins, proteins — all these different things.”
“I’m all about having a wholesome, conscious approach to my diet and overall lifestyle, physically, mentally, spiritually.”
Her Olympic Calling
When you’re as dedicated to honing your craft as Logan Edra has been throughout her breaking career, the accolades tend to not remain long in the shadows.
Quickly rising through the ranks of other B-girls through her intrinsic musicality and dynamic usage of power moves, Logistix scored a career-defining win in 2018 with her victory of the Silverback Open B-Girl solo competition in Philadelphia. She followed up that triumph with an outstanding performance during the 7toSmoke battle at Singapore's Radikal Forze Jam two years later, and she became the youngest woman ever to win the Red Bull BC One title when she took home the title in 2021 at age 18.
Now that Edra has officially qualified for the Paris Olympics, where she’ll join Sunny Choi on Team USA breaking, the expectations to bring home a gold to the USA is more palpable than ever, but that kind of pressure is exactly what she’s been preparing for all her life.
“Since I started, I would just grow really fast into dance and make really fast progress, so I always felt the pressure, but with this opportunity, it’s just even more pressure because I’ve also become a young leader and a voice for the culture, so people want me to represent,” Edra explains. “I’ve had to find it within myself what I want to do and why, and as I reconnected with my love for dance, it allowed me to instill my motivation to go for this goal despite all the pressure.”
The Weight of a Nation
As Logistx and the rest of America’s top breakers prepare to battle the world’s best across the pond this July, she and her teammates are well aware of what’s expected from breaking’s maiden Olympic voyage. It’s the sport’s debut for the world’s audiences, so not only does Team USA breaking want to win, they want to ensure the sport’s Olympic future. While that’s a burden for any handful of people to shoulder, Edra’s counting on their authenticity and style to put on a good show and power them to the podium.
“We all naturally feel this pressure and responsibility… Because breaking is from New York, [and] hip-hop culture is from the Bronx… And U.S. breakers have always been known to just represent a style that’s closer to the original essence of the dance,” states Edra. “We feel a sense of pride, and we feel a sense of responsibility. And I think it will help breaking just be amplified and uplifted… And I think that can help the overall evolution of the dance.”
She adds, “For me, to win and represent the games authentically which I believe I can do, that’s winning for me.”
Though Edra’s cultivated nerves of steel by strengthening her mental fortitude, the one thing that she does sometimes worry about comes after the official closing ceremony.
“What makes me nervous is when the Olympics are done,” admits Edra. “I don’t know why. I feel that it’s also because I know there’s a lot of big changes, and I feel like my life has already been changing…I’m very much used to the process of training and battling and getting ready in that way, but it’s more like ‘How is my life going to change? How are our lives going to change? Is it going to be for the better or for the worse?’
“And so, I don’t even like to use the labels good [and] bad, but I’m just like, ‘I’m nervous because I think my life is changing.’ But it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. I think these are actually great times in breaking," she reflects.
Embracing the Moment
The pressure of winning and the thoughts about her future aside, as much consideration as she’s giving to those, Logistx realizes that making the inaugural Olympic squad for Team USA breaking and representing the Stars & Stripes at the Paris Games is one of those “pinch me” moments she’ll never forget.
So, besides staking her claim as one of the best B-girls in the world, what is she going to cherish the most?
“I think standing next to other elite athletes, that is something,” says Edra. “In the past year because of the Olympics… I was standing next to Sha’Carri Richardson, Serena Williams, and I’m just like, ‘Wow!’ But then I realize, they’re at the top of their field, and I’m at the top of mine. I felt respected. It was very emotional too because I realized it’s going to take more time for us to build because we’re still I think globally not as recognized, and that’s okay.”
She continues, “But it was just a very intense emotional feeling because I was like, ‘Wow, I need to see myself more, and we deserve the respect.’ So, I’m excited to see more athletes.”
