Two years ago, Justin Phung and his friends decided they wanted to create a dance crew at San Diego State University. They started small, practicing with their close group of friends.

To get exposure and traction at the university, they began by performing at the Vietnamese Student Association’s shows and named their own crew VSA Modern. When they started in 2017, the crew consisted of 10 people.



For the record: Arnel Calvario is the board president of Culture Shock International, not Culture Shock L.A.

This fall, more than 57 people auditioned.

Growing up as an Asian in America, Phung felt caught between his identities of his Asian parents and his American persona. When he moved away from home for college, dance was one of the ways he tried to find his own place.


“A lot of Asian cultures are very collectivist,” Phung said. “You’re not supposed to disrupt the group. That doesn’t align with Western culture — it’s very individualistic. So it’s very hard to figure that identity out.”

Phung credits his neighbors up north at UC Irvine for creating the phenomenon of Asian American collegiate hip-hop dance crews.

San Diego State student Maria Sulaiman, 19, front, leads her group as they practice their hip-hop dance that she choreographed before performing in the end of the year choreography project put on by the SDSU Vietnamese Student Organization Modern, a collegiate hip-hop dance troupe, in a parking garage on the SDSU campus on Thursday, December 5, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

In 1992, the urban collegiate dance group Kaba Modern, one of the oldest collegiate dance teams in Southern California, was founded at UC Irvine by Arnel Calvario.


Calvario grew up in Los Angeles County and spent his childhood surrounded by hip-hop dancing. He also grew up doing Filipino cultural dancing, and saw the parallels in the two styles.

“For Philippine culture, because we were dominated by Spain, our cultural dances were the representations of the different regions,” Calvario said. “That’s a way Filipinos hold onto their heritage, despite other influences.”

When he came to UC Irvine, he immediately joined the Filipino club, but noticed they were only performing cultural dances.

So, he created Kaba Modern. Soon after, other Filipino clubs in Southern California took notice and started creating their own clubs.


By the next year, there were at least six other collegiate dance crews branched off of Asian cultural organizations at other schools.

“It literally spread like wildfire in one year,” Calvario said.

Kaba Modern was also featured as one of the final crews on the first season of the MTV show America’s Best Dance Crew in 2008, which brought the Asian American hip-hop dance scene into the spotlight.

The Jabbawockeez, a San Diego-based crew with majority Asian members, won the first season of America’s Best Dance Crew and even further solidified the Asian presence in the hip-hop scene.


Calvario also credits the Culture Shock San Diego dance studio for encouraging more Asian Americans to pursue hip-hop dance. He’s currently the board president of Culture Shock International.

“While all of these teams were sprouting, Culture Shock San Diego was really the first premiere exhibition team that everyone looked up to to be a part of,” he said. “What I loved about Culture Shock is that in the face of the media, we had no Asian American representation. At all. We were absent. In Culture Shock San Diego, it was so diverse. You had everything.”

The rise of the Internet brought underground hip-hop to the light. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all allowed for creative expression, and young people jumped on that opportunity. TikTok sprang into the social media scene in the past five years, and as of March, it was the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store for five consecutive quarters. The app heavily features dancing videos and challenges.

Artists such as Beyoncé, Childish Gambino, and Sia brought dance into their musical popularity. Media companies such as 88rising popularized Asian hip-hop artists like Joji, Rich Brian, and Niki.


Cole Dungca, 19, left, and his brother Aldrin Dungca, 18, perform their hip-hop dance for fellow dancers during the end of the year choreography project put on by the SDSU Vietnamese Student Organization Modern, a collegiate hip-hop dance troupe, in a parking garage on the SDSU campus on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Hip-hop and Asians aren’t an immediate connection in some people’s minds when they hear the two words. But in the past decade, Asian-American collegiate hip-hop dance crews have been sprouting up around the nation, particularly in California. It’s just dancing for some. For others, it’s a chance to reshape what it means to be an Asian American.

Ascension UCSD, UC San Diego’s longest-running competitive hip hop dance team, celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Ascension started as a branch of UCSD’s Chinese-American Student Organization, then eventually broke off into a separate club. While anyone is welcome to audition for the crew, the majority of its roster is made up of Asian Americans.


And for Jason Shin, artistic director of Ascension, the crew gave him an outlet and community he had been searching for his whole life.

“I think in America, Asians and Asian Americans don’t really have too much of a social group to fit in, besides just being Asian,” Shin said. “Dance kind of fills that niche. And that’s kind of the reason why a lot of Asians gravitate towards dance. It’s where we find our community.”

Joshua Candelria, 19, is reflected in a water puddle as he and other members of a hip-hop dance group perform during the end of the year choreography project put on by the SDSU Vietnamese Student Organization Modern, a collegiate hip-hop dance troupe, in a parking garage on the SDSU campus on Thursday, December 5, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

He emphasized the American roots of the rise of collegiate Asian American hip hop dance crews.


“This is definitely not something that came from Asia,” he said. “Actually, right now, a lot of dancers from SoCal are actually going to Asia to spread dance there because it’s on the rise.”

Underground break dancing has existed for decades in countries such as Japan and China, but Chuyun Oh, an assistant professor of dance at San Diego State University’s School of Music and Dance, attributes this particular trend of collegiate hip-hop dance crews to Asian Americans — those born in the United States. She said they’re using dancing to combat the myths Asian Americans face.

“They are employing dance personas to resist the stereotype about Asian-American identity,” Oh said. “They have very active, aggressive dance movement and it’s highly expressive. They’re channeling their identity so their voices can be heard.”

And while the genre of hip-hop comes from black culture, other minorities can relate to it, particularly because it’s one of few pop culture channels that have been created by ethnic minorities, Oh said.


“One of the reasons hip hop is beloved by ethnic and racial minorities is because it has storytelling elements,” she said. “There’s very powerful, grounded movement. They’re using the resistive history in its past.”

Less Than Three Dance Crew, a hip-hop dance crew at the University of San Diego, is open to every member of the USD community, but attend one class and you’ll notice mostly Asian faces in the crowd. And while Asians makes up over 15% of San Diego’s population , USD’s Asian population lags behind at 7% .

Sydney Lee is a member of Less Than Three. She says there’s heavy expectations placed on Asian Americans from the time they’re born, both familial and societal. The stereotypes of Asian youth, including stellar academics, playing an instrument, and career interests in the medical field, can be confining. Hip-hop dancing is one of the ways Lee tries to break out of the model minority stereotype she’s faced since childhood.

“It gave us a way to not be what the rest of the world views as Asian,” she said. “It gives me a safe place for me to feel and express things I usually don’t.”


“Confidence. Sassiness. A little bit sexy.”

Tim Pham, and Megan Chua, both 21, smile as the crowd applauds after their dance performance during the end of the year choreography project put on by the SDSU Vietnamese Student Organization Modern, a collegiate hip-hop dance troupe, in a parking garage on the SDSU campus on Thursday, December 5, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Lee is from Fullerton, where almost a quarter of residents are Asians . In high school, when she told people her interests, she was frequently met with the response, “you don’t look like a dancer.”

Yasmeen Abushahla, the director of Less Than Three, says hip-hop dancing is a way to break away from the pressures of being a stereotypical shy and quiet Asian, naming a few traits she was taught as a kid.


Keep your cool. Don’t make a scene. Keep quiet. Look good.

In dance, the uglier the face you make, the better you’ll perform, Abushahla said. Commonly known as the “stank face” in pop culture, frowning your lips and scrunching your brows can show concentration, grit, and passion for the performance.

And while some collegiate dance crews participate in competitions, the quality of the performances ultimately come down to teamwork within a crew. This teamwork, according to Abushahla, also contradicts the trait of fierce competition Asian Americans are taught growing up.

Often, Asian Americans are taught to be in competition with one another, whether it’s for getting into an Ivy League school, the highest SAT score, or the first chair in the band. But community is the core of these dance crews.


Fellow dancers cheer and applaud as a hip-hop dance group performs during the end of the year choreography project put on by the SDSU Vietnamese Student Organization Modern, a collegiate hip-hop dance troupe, in a parking garage on the SDSU campus on Thursday, December 5, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Hayne Palmour IV/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Shin echoed that sentiment, mentioning that he’s found his closest friends through Ascension.

“There’s a lot of this mentality of growth and sharing, and I think that’s really beneficial to anyone who’s been on Ascension or any of these other teams,” Shin said. “Having a family outside of their immediate family; a family you can talk to and be open to and be invested in each other’s growth.”

Oh says there’s a fine line between whether these dance crews are practicing cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation, especially because the ethnic roots and tradition of hip-hop dancing have become more diluted as the genre becomes more popular globally.


However, she says the dedication the Asian-American dance crews have put into their work should be noted.

“They’re not just ‘putting on’ hip-hop,” Oh said. “They’re spending their life doing hip-hop dancing.”

As the current director, Abushahla has tried to be more inclusive beyond just Asian Americans in the dance crew.

She says at the end of the day, people don’t care about your race, as long as you’ve got the talent.