KP: Hello everyone, my name is Kalyani Puthenpurayil and I am joined here with Lauren Chuu and Daphne Huang for Episode 13 of Time Out!
LC: Each episode, we dive into the sports scene here at MVHS and explore the journeys of athletes from various sports. In this episode, we are joined by seniors Matthew Lau and Pranai Raina, both of whom are breakdancers. Let’s take a look at their journey.
DH: How long have you been breakdancing and how did you guys start?
PR: I’ve been breakdancing since I was eight years old. I was part of this organization called Dance Academy USA where I initially started doing hip-hop but then I started breakdancing because I saw a lot of my friends and other people who were breakdancers and it seemed like a very interesting style of dance. I got interested when I was eight years old, and I’ve been doing it since.
ML: I started in sixth grade and did it for two years. Then, I took a break and then started again my freshman year of high school and it’s ongoing into my senior year. When I was young, I attended multiple weddings and parties, and my cousins would always start breakdancing on the floor. That’s when I first was introduced to the style of dance and I thought it was cool because it’s something that I’ve never seen. I mean, you got dudes doing acrobatic movements and gravity-defying spins and stuff like that, so I thought it was cool and I just wanted to learn because I thought it was not too popular in our area in general, but it’s something more popular back in the day and I thought it was cool to bring an outdated style of dance back to the community.
KP: Have did you get back into breakdancing?
ML: I stopped breakdancing just because I was playing basketball — all sorts of stuff — it just didn’t give me time to breakdance in general. And Pranai is the one who got me to start breakdancing again because I think it was freshman year, the summer after freshman year, they needed homecoming dancers for the skit. We had three people and two people couldn’t come and he’s the one who convinced me saying, “Oh, it’s gonna be fun, imagine us dancing like we used to do and being up on a stage doing what we do normally.” That’s what brought me back into it and I don’t regret it at all. The experience was definitely worthwhile. I made lots of friends breakdancing together and overall just had a community to be there with.
LC: Since you guys performed in the Homecoming dance, could you talk about how you developed and choreographed it?
PR: From the start, I think it was sophomore year when we had our first Homecoming dance and what happened was we didn’t have any boy dancers. I was the only one and I was designated to be the choreographer, so it was definitely hard to get people to join the dance group because no one knew what the dance was going to look like. So, as soon as I got a couple of friends and convinced them to start breakdancing with me, we created this routine through some choreography that I picked up from my previous mentors. I definitely was able to get a bigger community of breakdancers that would perform in our junior year and senior year. That’s because breakdancing is very eye-catching, and everyone’s like “I want to be a part of that next year.” So I think it was definitely because of the style of dance that we did and because it seemed like so much fun — we had a good spirit about it, and people wanted to join the next year’s dance.
LC: Do you breakdance outside of school?
PR: So we actually made a dance group called the Ghungaroo Boys — my mom actually came up with the name and she told me “You guys should start a group and perform at all these events because I’m sure a lot of people would like this style of dance since it’s not very popular in this area, specifically, as well.” So that’s how it started, and then I just brought together all some people and we started making routines and started creating choreography for all these different songs and we went from there. Now, we perform at these Indian festivals, we perform weddings and we perform at all sorts of events, fundraisers even. And it sort of got a combination of everyone from the Homecoming dance and some more people and we performed the skits that we did at Homecoming at these different events. And, we add in the little new routines that celebrate Indian culture. It was me, Matthew Lau and Dylan Chaahoub that started the group and we brought in a few other people from the Homecoming skit to perform as well, so now we have a group of 15 or 20 people just dancing at these events and it’s really fun.
DH: And how did you practice together during quarantine before the Homecoming dance practices?
PR: When it wasn’t so strict about all the masks and stuff we started coming together going to Lincoln and Monta Vista practicing on the turf field getting our cardboard and setting it up and sort of just practicing all the moves that we could — all the windmills and flares — and trying to perfect our crafts.
KP: What motivated you both to continue practicing without a structured schedule during quarantine?
ML: It’s more of our passion for dancing in general and just being together and just having fun. We just love doing it. Nothing about it or the idea of breakdancing gives us the impression that “Oh, we have to go practice at this certain time.” It’s more like, “Oh we’re bored,” and it’s something we enjoy doing together, so that’s what motivates us.
PR: It’s definitely fun learning a new move that you haven’t learned before and seeing your friends doing it and being like, “Wow, that looks really cool.” And then when you finally get to do it, I think that’s definitely something that we look forward to when we go to the practices. We have our vibes and music playing very loud. We have our cardboard and we’re just doing our moves, practicing. We have all our friends around us and it’s definitely really fun.
DH: Can you tell us about some of your favorite power moves and why they are your favorites?
ML: My favorite power move is the windmill. It’s the first move that caught my eye and the first move that one of my cousins taught me at an early age, but obviously, I didn’t have the physical strength when I was in middle school. So I tried to learn it when I was freshman year outside of my backyard with carpet and Home Depot boxes and recorded myself every day just trying to learn the move, but after that, I learned how to head spin, which is my second favorite. And after a while, I didn’t practice and kind of lost muscle memory. So I forgot how to do that move, but the windmill was my primary move for sure.
PR: For me, my favorite move is an air flare. That’s my favorite move ever because whenever I see that people are spinning on their hands, and it’s a really cool move and it’s just a move that I definitely want to learn but moves that I can do. I got inspired by Matt during quarantine when I saw him doing the windmill. We would get on FaceTime calls and he’d be performing over and over again and showing me and I’d be like, “I’m trying to learn that too.” He showed me how to do it and I started practicing, looking at YouTube videos and asking my mentor, so I kind of learned how to do the windmills. It’s not perfect, but then also I tried learning how to do the flare during quarantine. It’s a different power move. And, because of injuries and hurting your wrist and pulling your groin, I kind of stopped doing that. It’s hard to practice power moves when you get all sorts of injuries.
KP: You mentioned you got injuries from breakdancing, so what injuries have you sustained and how has that affected your breakdancing journey?
ML: It was a couple of days before the Homecoming performance in sophomore year when I pulled my groin pretty badly, and it was pretty tough honestly because in breakdancing you’re doing all sorts of things with your legs, so if you’re not warming up correctly or not being careful with your surroundings and not being mindful of where you are, anything could happen. It is just the smallest thing, the smallest pull of a muscle like everything could just go bad for you. So, that’s what happened my sophomore and junior years, but honestly, after a while, the adrenaline once you start dancing, once the nerves kick in, you’ll forget about all the pain in your body. But other than that, you learn how to manage it for sure.
PR: Definitely when you’re on the stage, the injuries, they don’t really come to you because of the adrenaline and stuff but when you’re practicing yourself you have to make sure you’re stretching and stuff make sure you warm up properly or else you’re risking injured your legs get like tired out you pull the groin or pull a muscle. For me specifically, I have so many wrist injuries because of a move that I do called the flare, and then groin injuries from Matt’s windmills. Like I remember every time Matt would practice the windmill, he would always be pulling his groin and he’d have to go to basketball practice. So there’s definitely injuries like that that put us back and made it harder for us. I remember one time I was doing a windmill and actually hit my foot on a wall and I broke the wall and that hurt my foot. But it also is like, you have to be mindful of your surroundings as Matt said before because he also got hurt from other things.
LC: Do you look up to anyone in breakdancing?
PR: Yeah, so B-Boy Issei is one of the breakdancers that Matt and I look up to. He’s one of the dancers who introduced these power moves and put it to a different level. The moves that you see him doing, it just doesn’t make sense how he’s even putting his body in these positions. But he was definitely one of the breakdancers that we were both inspired by and also one of my mentors who used to be a breakdancer professionally, his name was Nasty Ray. He’s a breakdancer in the local Bay Area and he performs at these competitive events Seeing my teacher perform these professional events, breakdancing and doing the moves that he would teach me and show me when we freestyle, it’s really cool and interesting to see how he’s putting that into like the actual competitive space.
ML: Yeah, I definitely say B-Boy Issei is my role model. He was, I think when I was in middle school, the one who introduced me. He was all over YouTube and he was actually the most well known breakdancer at the time. He brought the outdated, breakdancing style back to today’s era. And I will say, when you think of breakdancing, there’s different styles. You got people who do footwork and —
PR: Yeah, there’s this thing called top rock where you’re just performing up on your feet, and it’s you’re moving your body in this position. It’s more like a hip-hop style of dance.
ML: I would say that’s a more traditional style of it. It’s just doing the footwork, but Issei’s the one who brought the athleticism aspect of breakdancing to the culture and that’s what really caught my eye. So I model and try to reflect my style of dance after him to the best of my ability.
PT: Those type of dancers are called power B-Boys or something like that where they do straight power moves —
ML: Powerheads.
PR: Yeah, powerheads is what they call it, because they just do straight power moves, and you see them moving in these crazy positions, but the traditional style of breakdancing as Matt said is that it’s more footwork and it’s stemmed off hip-hop, I think it started in New York.
ML: It’s like an integration between both so that’s pretty cool.
DH: In the future, do you plan on continuing breakdancing professionally?
PR: Professionally is a stretch. I think definitely in the future I want to join a breakdancing or maybe a hip-hop dance group at the college that I attend because I know they have all sorts of clubs that offer things like that. And if breakdancing is not a style that is popular or that you can partake in in that college, then I want to bring that into the college and add to the diversity, sort of how I did at MVHS.
ML: I definitely want to continue it in college. It’s something that I want to do when I have more spare time for sure. If it weren’t for the injuries, then I’d be more motivated to do it. But other than that, breakdancing with friends is something that I can’t miss out on. It’s something I’m gonna miss once I graduate high school, so I can’t just leave it behind for sure.
KP: What would you say to others who want to or are trying to start breakdancing?
PR: If you want to partake in breakdancing, I think you should just go ahead and do it because it’s a really fun style of dance and there’s no problem with doing it. You can meet a lot of new friends like I did and Matt did. So I think it’s definitely something that people should try participating in. And also breakdancing is not just limited to boys, anyone can breakdance, I know a lot of B-Girls, I know a lot of people who breakdance who are not just B-Boys. So definitely breakdancing is for everyone. It’s not just for boys.
ML: Adding to what Pranai said, I’d say to give it a try. I feel like it’s a unique style of dance, so nobody really does it. Everyone needs to have some dance moves in their bag once in a while, so I feel like it’s cool to have, especially at Homecoming, prom or—
PR: It’s a good party trick, for sure.
ML: Party trick, yeah, it’s a good crowd-pleaser or just a good move to have while you’re at it.
DH: That’s it for Episode 13 of Time Out! Thank you so much, Matthew and Pranai for joining us today. I’m Daphne.
LC: I’m Lauren.
KP: I’m Kalyani.
DH: And thanks for tuning in!
Music credits: Lukrembo – Affogato
