Break-Dance Champion Logistx Is Taking Success Step By Step

In Elite Daily’s I Have The Job You Want series, we tell the stories of people working in the most ridiculous, unbelievable, and totally envy-inducing fields you never thought possible. In this piece, we talk to a teen break-dancing champion who’s spinning her way to the top.

When Logan Edra was in elementary school, she absolutely did not want to try hip-hop dancing. “I was this flimsy Asian girl that couldn’t really do anything physical,” she recalls thinking when her dad suggested it. But after her dad tricked her into a dance lesson (she thought she was going to an art class), she found she loved it. “It was something that I wasn't used to,” she says. “It was like riding a roller coaster, where you kind of hate it but when you do it and after, it’s actually so fun.” She didn’t know it then, but that bait-and-switch from her dad would change the trajectory of her life. Now 18, Edra, who performs under the name Logistx, is a full-time artist and break dancer who’s fresh off one victory and already aiming at another.

Break dancing, or break, is a type of street dance that originated in the 1970s and ’80s, pioneered by young Black and Latinx dancers. Now in the 2020s, it’s grown to have a global competition circuit that includes the annual Battle of the Year in Montpellier, France; the Dutch-based competition The Notorious IBE (founded in 1998); R16 Korea (where the top 16 breakdancing crews in the world compete); and international tournament Red Bull BC One, which was launched by Red Bull in 2004. And it’s still growing: Break will be featured at the Summer Olympics in Paris, France, for the first time in 2024.

Edra is growing along with it: On Nov. 6, 2021, she became the youngest b-girl, as well as the first b-girl from the United States, to win the b-girl championship at the Red Bull BC One World Final in Gdansk, Poland. “I dreamed of just competing at Red Bull, so to be able to win, I don’t know how to explain it,” says Edra. She says that she manifested it for herself through hard work, visualization, and more hard work. “I wanted that to be my reality,” she says. It was extra emotional since she had lost at the 2019 championship in India, getting eliminated in the first round. “I was crying so hard [when I won], I just did that!” she remembers.

But it was a long road from that first dance class to her first-place prize. After starting hip-hop dance, Edra encountered break when she was around 8 or 9 years old at a local studio called Culture Shock in San Diego, where she was born and raised. She thought it looked cool, but what really caught her attention was when she saw a woman teaching a class. “I didn’t know girls could be good at this, and it really empowered me a lot at that time,” she remembers. That b-girl was Valerie “Val Pal” Acosta, whom Edra now cites as one of her first mentors in break. To this day, she has remained close friends with Acosta, who introduced her to the Underground Flow dance crew in San Diego.

“[Underground Flow] was really crucial in building my foundation as a b-girl,” Edra says. In addition to Underground Flow, Edra is now on two other dance crews, or groups of dancers that train, perform, and sometimes compete together: BreakinMIA, which heads up the only youth break-dance school in South Florida, and the Red Bull BC One All Stars. “I’m the youngest member of Underground Flow. I used to battle with them a lot more when I was coming up, but they were my first family in breaking.”

She went to her first competition within a year. “I was like, ‘I don’t really want to do it’ because I was scared, but people around me were very encouraging,” Edra says. And the contest was exhilarating. “Everyone is cheering for you — who’s not going to cheer on this little 8-year-old that’s breaking with a bunch of adults? It gave me a lot of confidence, and after that, I wouldn’t get as nervous.”

By the time she was 12 or 13, Edra was competing — and winning — in competitions across California and the West Coast, culminating in an invitation to the 2017 Silverback Open in Philadelphia and signing with her first manager when she was 15. “Silverback was like my first big invite, and then Silverback 2018, I ended up winning the whole thing for the b-girl bracket,” she says. It gave her a taste for competition. “After that, I was traveling every single month to a different city or country.”

My win is always going to be everyone’s win.

As a professional, Edra keeps a busy — very busy — routine. Five to six days a week she maintains a disciplined workout schedule, as well as a vegan diet and motivational training. When she was first starting out, her dad suggested the stage name Logistx because of Edra’s organizational approach; she started making schedules for herself when she was just 6 years old. She didn’t know what “logistics” were back then, but her schedule certainly relies on her logistical thinking now. In her two- to three-hour practice sessions, she trains and drills her moves and combos. During training season, which Edra describes as the three-month periods when she’s getting ready for a big event, she’ll also spar and practice battles with a crewmate. And throughout the week, she constantly watches footage — whether of herself and her competitions, or of artists or dancers that inspire her.

“If I’m training, I obviously have to look for flaws and correct them … to get better, to look at what I’m not good at,” Edra says. “If I’m watching footage just leisurely, I have to have a really, really positive outlook on it so that I increase my confidence because if it’s not training time, then the critic in my mind is not supposed to be there.”

When she’s not training, Edra teaches private and group break-dancing classes at BreakinMIA as well as other studios around the world. Depending on the type of class, Edra teaches choreography as well as break-dancing fundamentals. “I learn from the students, too, and I do like sharing what I have with people and getting to share the energy in the room as well,” Edra says.

According to Edra, break dancers are “just at the starting point” when it comes to being valued (and compensated) like other competitive athletes. That’s why in addition to competing, Edra teaches classes, books commercials and TV shows, and works with Red Bull, which has sponsored her since 2019 as part of the brand’s BC One All Stars crew. It might not be as consistent as a weekly paycheck, but she earns bonuses for winning battles, and her visibility as an athlete impacts how much financial support she receives. “Honestly, you have to win as a breaker,” Edra explains. “If you’re not ready, it gets really hard to make money.”

But while victory is clearly important, Edra is also interested in the impact she has as a role model for others. “My win is always going to be everyone’s win,” she adds. “When I succeed at something, I hope to represent and open up doors for my people in each and every lane that I represent,” whether that’s her crewmates, her family, or communities with which she has a connection as a young Filipina-American break dancer. “It just adds to the vision and obviously the training, but it’s not too different. In the end, a battle’s a battle.” She cautions against pursuing a career like hers just for the money, especially given the hard work, resilience, and motivation it requires.

The choice to follow in Edra’s footsteps “really has to come down to your ‘why’ — if it’s, ‘I want to inspire this group of people’ or ‘I want to provide for my family’ or ‘I want to build a school that will support young b-boys and b-girls,’” Edra adds. “You have to connect with your culture, your community, and learn about the history, pay homage to the people who came before you. It has to be a journey to self, more than anything. You have to just continue to grow as a human being.”

With that in mind, Edra is currently working toward the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, where break will make its Olympic debut. Break’s journey from street dancing to Olympic sport has been controversial within the community: In 2017, more than 2,000 break dancers and supporters from around the world signed a petition accusing the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) — which historically governed competitive ballroom dancing — of “exploiting” breaking to get into the Olympics. After the move was announced, WDSF President Shawn Tay said in a public statement that “the WDSF could not be prouder to have breaking included at Paris 2024,” thanking those who had made it happen. And among individual break dancers themselves, not all of them agree on whether their work is art, sport, or both. Personally, Edra sees herself as both an artist and an athlete.

Break, she says, is diverse and multifaceted. It’s no wonder there are differences of opinion. “We’re using our bodies in different ways and we’re all unique, and that's the whole point of the dance,” she says. “To be really unique.”