Some five years ago, a Kabul teenager named Manizha Talash came across a Facebook video of a young man spinning on his head. She was taken aback. “I couldn’t believe it was real,” Talash tells TIME through a translator. She sought some other clips of people breaking—the pioneering form of hip-hop dance, which includes head-spinning, that is making its debut as an Olympic sport in Paris this summer.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]No matter that she didn’t see any girls doing it. Talash, who’s now 21, knew she had to try.