How Urban Dance changed my life at NYU

It’s more than just a hobby

Transitioning to college is tough. You start with a need to meet people since everyone is a stranger, while also balancing schoolwork and living with your new roommates.

Although this sounds pretty simple, I definitely stressed out about pretty much every aspect of living at NYU for the first couple of weeks of my first semester. One of my methods of relieving stress is dancing. When I need a break from the hectic city we live in, I make time for dancing to refresh my state of mind.

Like most students’ regular schooldays I wake up early, go to class, come back to my dorm, and do homework while also maintaining a social life, school clubs, and job searching for the school year and summer break. But no matter how busy I am, I make time for dancing. My love for dance comes from my love for music, specifically trap, house, hip hop, electronic, and alternative. I have been playing the drums since fourth grade, so I particularly love songs that have percussive beats.

My passion for music turned into a passion for dance when I watched Poreotics win the fifth season of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV.

I saw how much they loved to dance and how fun it can be, so I started practicing in my basement at home. At first I was really bad because I just tried to copy their moves without taking any real classes. Eventually, I reached out to one of their members, Can Nguyen, and took a foundations class on tutting and waving through Skype. Recently, I took another Skype class from one of their former members, Charles Nguyen, who is now a member of Kinjaz.
Although it was difficult, I realized I couldn’t just start a new activity without learning the basics.

A couple years later, I took my first in-person classes taught by Mike Song and Anthony Lee of The Kinjaz. These classes were more challenging because I had to actually learn how to count music in terms of choreography, but they taught me a lot about perseverance. After learning their choreography, I practiced everyday until I perfected it because it was so intricate and really inspired me to keep taking classes to learn different types of urban dance. Since then, I have continued to take classes from professional teachers, most of whom are from California which has a strong influence in the urban dance community.

I love dancing because it allows me to better understand music, as it serves as a secondary form of artistic development. Singers and musicians can make a cover of a song and change the genre, but they still have a set of lyrics and notes that they generally have to follow. I feel that everybody hears music differently, and dancing allows other people to see your personal understanding of music.

Understanding music through dance is known as musicality, which is different for everybody. For example, two choreographers (Chris Martin and Charles Nguyen) with completely different styles made choreography to the same song, “Superstar” by Aluna George (Cosmo’s Midnight x Lido Remix).  These videos are probably the best explanations of musicality, as they utilized the same music in different ways to produce two different understandings of music.

Chris Martin of Choreo Cookies:

Charles Nguyen of the Kinjaz:

I wrote my supplemental essay for NYU about wanting to utilize the urban setting to make dance more than a hobby, and I am slowly accomplishing that goal. I did not audition for a team this season because I think I still need more experience, but I hope to join one in the fall. Until then, I will continue to use the dance studio in Third North to make choreography and take online classes through a program called Steezy Studio. I hope that I will figure out how I want to grow with dance, and to meet other people that share my interests.

 

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