Bumblebee was nursing a sore hand, but his athleticism and blossoming swagger were evident. In many ways, he seemed a typical teenager, one who can walk and talk and shoot off a stream of text messages from his phone at the same time. But he could also sound like a grizzled professional.

“I don’t understand parents,” he said at one point, referring to the low turnout of students over the holiday weekend. “When I was these kids’ age, I was here every day, for six hours, alone, all summer.”

He continues to dance for hours every day. But now he supplements those sessions with workouts in the gym and swimming in a pool. He goes to bed early, wakes up early and avoids sweets. In important ways, it is a disciplined lifestyle as demanding as that of any other serious young athlete or aspiring Olympian.

Still, Bumblebee said repeatedly that break dancing was not a sport but an art form. Sure, it required physical strength and coordination, he said, but it required much more than that, too.

“It’s about feeling, and without this feeling, without this sense of art, you can’t do anything,” he said. “And you can’t get that feeling if you’re not part of the culture, if you’re just doing the moves.”

Many in the break dance community, Bumblebee included, therefore held their breath as the Youth Games competition began last year in Buenos Aires. Was the I.O.C. equipped to handle hip-hop? Would it be a cringe-inducing debacle?

By most accounts, it was a success. The World DanceSport Federation, which generally oversees ballroom dancing competitions and had no previous involvement with break dancing before taking the mantle as its governing body, calmed many doubters by leaning heavily on established personalities within the breaking community for help.