Feature: Breakdance and the adidas Falcon

adidas launched the Falcon with a global campaign fronted by Kylie Jenner. We had a smaller budget and a better idea: four London b-girls, an empty room at the Old Truman Brewery, and a nineties hip-hop track.

B-girl with blue hair in denim dungarees holding a low floor freeze, wearing adidas Falcon trainers Dancer arched backwards in wide jeans, beside a close view of adidas Falcon trainers in pink, grey and black B-girl in a patterned shirt and adidas three-stripe track pants crouched low on the concrete floor The four dancers moving together, beside a b-girl inverted in a headstand freeze The four b-girls standing in a line in front of warehouse windows at the Old Truman Brewery Four dancers mid-move across the floor in adidas Originals and wide denim The four b-girls stacked close together in a group pose against the tiled wall B-girl balanced against a red steel pillar with one foot raised, in adidas track pants and Falcon trainers Two b-girls upside down side by side, holding handstand freezes on the concrete The four dancers in a layered group pose, arms extended, in adidas Falcon trainers

Who's in it

Emma Houston, who dances as B-Girl Shortbread, choreographed and directed the piece. She brought in Roxanne Miliner, Angelica Lee and Gemma Kayh — all of them working London b-girls rather than models who'd been taught eight counts that morning, which is the difference you can see in the footage.

Jack Pointer MacKenzie shot the film. Tom O'Neill took the stills. We filmed it at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, in a room with tiled walls and concrete and nothing else in it, because the dancing didn't need help.

The shoe

The Falcon came out in June 2018, in women's sizes only, and it's a rebuild of the Falcon Dorf — a running shoe adidas made in 1997. That's the same shoe adidas renamed the Yung-1 around the same time, which caused a certain amount of confusion, and which they eventually went back to calling the Falcon Dorf in 2024.

What you get is a mesh base with a suede mudguard running through the middle and wrapping the heel, leather overlays, reflective panels and a moulded heel unit on a chunky EVA midsole. Loud, and unapologetic about it.

Why we did it this way

The nineties reference in the shoe is real, so we went to the people who carry that reference in their bodies rather than borrowing it as a mood board. Breaking came out of the Bronx in the seventies and was fully formed in Britain by the nineties, and the women doing it here have been doing it a long time.

It's aged better than we expected. Breaking became an Olympic sport at Paris in 2024, six years after we shot this, and the film reads now as a document of a scene that was doing perfectly well without the recognition.

They're in Originals throughout — three-stripe track pants, a Trefoil vest, denim over the top. The Falcon is the shoe, but the shoot was never only about the shoe.

Hypebae covered the campaign at the time — you can read their piece on the film.

Credits

Direction and choreography: Emma Houston
Dancers: Roxanne Miliner, Angelica Lee, Gemma Kayh
Videography: Jack Pointer MacKenzie
Stills: Tom O'Neill
Location: The Old Truman Brewery, London

The Falcon is long gone from our rails. What we have now is in our adidas collection.

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