Urban Paradise 2014

Being a professional dancer means that I am constantly surrounding myself with dance related things. And while it is a little embarrassing to admit, I'll say it anyways: There are times when I get tired of dancing and feel uninspired to take class or even to create.

But before I ever sink too deeply into that negative ravine of boredom, I encounter people and experience events that re-instill in me a wild love for dance. And this year's Urban Paradise was that event.

Urban Paradise is a dance showcase that is organized every year by Bay Area hip hop group, The Company. Dance groups from all over California flocked to Chabot College theater a few weeks ago and shared their talents with the dance community. The lineup included Southern Californian favorites like Cookies and SBGM as well as Bay Area groups like Press Play.

Among these groups was a project put together by Pat Cruz titled, "Homebase". It featured choreography by: JekaJane Kalotkin, Amanda Grind, Pat Cruz, Ade Willis, Aggie Loyola, and my roomie Sorah Yang. I got to be in Pat and Sorah's pieces, and it was awesome dancing alongside my talented friends:

Entity was also invited to perform; we debuted our newest piece titled, "Bloom", which was choreographed by Raymond Naval and Will Johnston:

Dance community events like this are always humbling. They remind me of the amount of passion and creativity that exists outside of the industry. These were a few of my personal favorites of the evening in no particular order:

I feel so grateful to be surrounded by people whose greatness reminds me of why I love doing what I do. A huge thank you to The Company, Entity, Pat, Sorah, and everyone involved with Urban Paradise! You were all, and continue to be, a unique collective of artists from whom I draw an immense amount of inspiration from. 

My Class to "Bravado" by Lorde

An (Un)likely Collaboration

Finding the perfect roommate in LA is tricky. Craigslist is generally questionable and even friends can make faulty suggestions. So I believed it to be incredible luck when I found my roommate Sorah Yang (or rather, when she found me).

If you listed a few of my and Sorah's characteristics on paper, we would appear to be identical humans:

-Dancers
-From the Bay Area
-College graduates (USC and UCLA, go Bruins!)
-Received business degrees
-Worked in fashion PR
-Community dancers
-Asian
-Small

Even our morals and ways of thinking are rooted in the same ideals; we've had notoriously long and deep conversations on random subjects, all to find that we feel similarly.

But even though we share many of the same qualities, we are in actuality quite different in style and personality. Sorah and I both dance powerfully; that is, we both execute movement with a lot of aggression. However, our dissimilar dance backgrounds results in very different types of movement:

Additionally, unlike myself, Sorah is a beautiful singer. While I can jam out on the piano and belt a nice tune in the shower, don't expect me to be doing anything like this anytime soon:

All that being said, Sorah and I talked for a long time about collaborating together. We felt that despite our differences we could come up with something really cool and unlike anything either of us had ever done before. 

Weeks and months passed; our separate and busy schedules deterred us from turning our idea into a reality. We were finally presented an opportunity at the end of September, when our dear friend Kelly Masumiya was coordinating an arts event titled, "Passage": 

The event was an amazing arts experience hosted by Kelly, George Anzaldo, and Jillian Meyers. It featured Kelly's "Vintique" series photographs, artwork by George, and a sleuth of beautiful live performances. Among these performances was a collaboration between me, Sorah, and her friend David. Sorah found and tweaked the arrangement for the song, and I discussed with her the parts of the music I wanted to dance to. We only rehearsed a few times, but the end product was pretty awesome (you can judge for yourself): 

This was fun to work on because it was not only time pressured but also a kind of project I had never done before. It definitely won't be the last time that she and I work on something together. And hopefully, we can collaborate on a more regular basis from here on out. You might even see some contemporary moves to a Machine Gun Kelly song in the near future.

Our "Passage" collaboration was a melding of two nearly identical yet completely different artists. It was also a perfect representation of our relationship as roommates and friends: harmonious, balanced, and dynamic. 

Happy Holidays from Bangirlia