It’s hard to get started if the music doesn’t have a “soul.”

A breakdancing pioneer from the Bronx is thrilled the sport was featured at the Olympics for the first time ever on Friday – but says dancers suffer from “soulless” beats and huge crowds that make it difficult for them to find their own unique “style.”

“I heard some of the music and it was garbage,” Bronx break legend Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón told the Post.

“It was just a modern kind of breakbeat that you could tell was computerized – there was no funk or soul,” he said. “The dancers have to find a mood.”

The 58-year-old Colón gained his first experience breakdancing in the 1970s in parks and apartment buildings in the Bronx – the birthplace of this semi-acrobatic, improvised dance form.

The groundbreaking B-boy, who helped introduce the world to breaking adventure with his appearance in the 1983 film Flashdance, is also credited with inventing the dazzling and difficult “Windmill” move.

During the performance, a dancer rolls his upper body across the floor while twirling his legs in a V shape through the air.

Although Colón is “excited” to take to the world stage in Paris, he says it is still a far cry from the art form’s boogie down street roots.

“The Olympics were never the ultimate goal – it was about community, about having fun and nothing else. That’s what we black and brown people do,” he said.

He said there are simply “limitations” when performing in a large arena with formal rules.

“When you’re far away from people, it’s harder because you don’t feel their energy,” he said. “Out in the community, you can be the most free.”

Nevertheless, he said that this year’s dancers have extraordinary technical skills.

“There is no shortage of talent,” he said. “There is a lot of new and amazing stuff in terms of difficulty.”

Breaking made its Olympic debut on Friday, with competitions lasting the entire weekend.

In this sport, artists are judged in five categories: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality and originality.

However, Colón believed that there was an intangible element of style that was difficult to quantify or judge in a formal setting.

“The word would be ‘taste,'” he said. “It’s kind of like putting an outfit together – it’s what makes a person cool and original with swag.”

Unlike sports such as gymnastics or figure skating, DJs are allowed to choose the music to which the Olympic breakers dance.

Brooklyn-based DJ Fleg is mixing for the event and will have a list of 390 licensed songs to choose from, including some early hip-hop and funk songs, as well as 20 of his own.

Colon said he first saw breakdancing in 1976 when he was 10 years old on Garfield Street in the Bronx.

His brother and his friends played drums and pop music – without music – and he wasn’t immediately smitten.

“When I first saw this, I thought, ‘This is really embarrassing for my family, my brother throwing himself on the ground,'” he said.

“But in the summer of 1977, I went to my first park jam and fell in love.”

At that time he danced to James Brown, the Incredible Bongo Band and the soul group New Birth.

He soon became part of a group called Rock Steady Crew, which also included breakdancing pioneers such as Mr. Freeze, Frosty Freeze and Prince Ken Swift.

In 1983, Colon and the crew were seen in the film “Flashdance” performing short breakdance moves, which helped to make this dance form popular.

Breaking itself first appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Bronx among young blacks and Latinos, who often danced it on sidewalks and in parking lots.

In the 1970s and 1980s, B-boys and girls across the country began performing their shows.

In 1984, breakdancing gained wider public attention when it was performed at the Kennedy Center Honors. In the 1990s, official breakdancing competitions emerged, attracting performers from all over the world.

In 2004, the energy drink Red Bull sponsored the first annual international breakdance competition in Biel, Switzerland, which attracted thousands of people.

It was proposed by Paris organizers about two years ago, following the success of tests at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, and then went through further approval phases in 2019.

With breaking now the focus of the 2024 Olympics, Colon said he plans to get together with his old breaking friends on Saturday to cheer on the USA.

“We’re having a watch party, kind of a celebration… It’s an opportunity to represent your country,” said Colon, who now serves as the event’s organizer. “Breaking has evolved.”