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4 The News Argus March 31, 2008 Features Street dancing nnakes its move Katherine Nguyen MCT WIRE SERVICE Ask hip-hop dancers to describe what they do and they might have a hard time. Instead, ask them to show you. There's a new school of hip-hop dance that is evolv ing beyond '80s-style break dancing or the moves you see on MTV. It's new enough that it has yet to form a solid identity. Another difference is diversity. What used to be a primarily an urban art form has jumped to places like Orange County, Calif., par ticularly among Asian Americans. It's also no longer under ground. This year, urban dance has popped up in movies such as "Step Up 2" and in reality TV shows such as MTV's "America's Best Dance Crew" and "So You Think You Can Dance?" "It's not a fad," said Elm Pizarro, founder of Boogiezone.com, a social networking site devoted to hip-hop dancers. "It's a cul ture, a way of life." Pizarro picked up hip-hop dancing as a teen while liv ing in Seattle practicing in his back yard, at the clubs, anywhere but inside a stu dio. "For me, it was the '90s when hip-hop dancing emerged, right around when I started watching music videos for MC Hammer, Kwame and Public Enemy/' said the 33- year-old, who now lives in Aliso Viejo, Calif. "A lot of my dancing now is still rooted in that basic style." When Pizarro moved to Orange County about five years ago, he was surprised to find a thriving hip-hop and street dance scene with collegiate and exhibition teams performing in an established competitive cir cuit. There are an estimated 15 to 20 urban dance crews in Orange County now, from various teams at the University of California, Irvine like the Chinese Association Dance Crew and Common Ground, to exhibition teams like Mavyn Entertainment and Breed, which was formed by Pizarro to market the Boogiezone site. The first was UCI's Kaba Modern, founded in 1992 by Arnel Calvario. As a UCI freshman, Calvario joined the campus' Kababayan, or Filipino student organiza tion. Every year, the club sponsored a culture night, an event that drew a crowd of 1,500 to 2,000 for a show case of traditional Filipino dances and performances. Calvario — who had been dancing hip-hop routines with his friends at high school talent shows and at house parties — wanted to add hip-hop dancing to the event, "I thought it would help blend the traditional with the more American aspects of our generation," Calvario said. Calvario was approached by so many stu dents who wanted to dance that he started Kaba Modern and modern hip- hop routines became a regu lar part of the culture night. From there, the group performed at import car shows and other community events. Soon, other Filipino student organizations in California followed suit, forming groups like Cal State Fullerton's Team Millennia and Cal State Long Beach's PAC Modern. That eventually led to annual competitions like Vibe, which draws some 3,000 spectators and some of the best collegiate hip-hop dance teams from all over California to vie for trophies and notoriety. Stage shows are elaborate and consist of co-ed teams of 30 or more dancers performing choreo graphed routines. Today, there are at least four major events in the competitive collegiate dance circuit, including Prelude, in both Northern and Southern California, Fusion in San Diego, Vibe in Irvine and Body Rock in San Diego. "The scene is definitely exploding," Calvario said. "I think it's a good thing for the dance community to grow and for more people to recognize hip-hop dance as an art form." Riding the top of the wave right now are six members Photo courtesy of MCT Wire Service Shows such as “Step Up 2,” have brought dancing back to the forefront of the mainstream. of UCI's Kaba Modern dance team. They are one of several groups across the country vying to win the title of "America's Best Dance Crew" on MTV and a $100,000 cash prize. In the early 1990s, when guys like Calvario and Team Millennia founder Danny Batimana started, hip-hop dance styles were less com plicated. Batimana, who's trained in jazz and funk, said he didn't even get into hip-hop dancing until junior high. "We'd get all dressed up in our Hammer pants and creepers and go battle," recalled Batimana, who co- owns Team Millennia Dance Center in Fullerton. "Back then it was all about energy and entertaining the crowd ... it wasn't so difficult." Today, hip-hop dancing is so versatile that it blends elements of more classical forms, including jazz and ballet. Any hip-hop or street dancer can spout off a mind-bending laundry list of current dance styles: breaking (break dancing), krumping, whacking, buck ing, popping, locking, house, tutting, old-school, waving, grooving and then some. All basically stem from street styles of dancing that emerged in the '70s. "It's having a certain pos ture, bending your knees right, how you control your body, how your face looks and how you execute the moves," said John Abas, who danced with Team Millennia in 1994. "I know it when I see it." Today's almost-anything- goes vibe lends itself to what's being called the new school or new-style hip-hop. The goal now is to inno vate new ways to move or contort the body in manners that don't always resemble dance. The emphasis is to be different from everything else that's out there. Smaller, more controlled and intri cate movements also are popular. "People out there might not realize how diverse hip- hop dancing can be," Calvario said. "Some of the best b-boys and b-girls (break dancers) are balleri nas and gymnasts, because breaking takes a lot of disci pline and poise. And pop ping is so difficult to do because you have to isolate every muscle in your body." Instead of going by counts for steps, many instructors now go by beats, too. So instead of the traditional "5- 6-7-8," instructors can now be heard vocalizing the beats to teach the steps: "Crack, boom, crack." Historically black colleges are struggling, educators tell Congress Halimah Abdullah MOT WIRE SERVICE WASHINGTON Financially strapped historically black colleges across the country are at a crossroads. Cutbacks in federal and state spend ing and competition from mainstream institutions for the best students, edu cators and academic programs have taken a toll on schools that were cre ated to educate African-American stu dents after slavery, said presidents from some of the nation's top histori cally black colleges on Thursday. Now, critics are questioning the rele vance of historically black colleges and universities, commonly known as HBCUs, in a post-segregation era, and some decry the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for them. "I am often asked as the president of a historically black university whether HBCUs continue to be viable. The answer I give is a resounding yes," Mary Sias, president of Kentucky State University, told mem bers of the House Education and Labor Committee. "HBCUs are and continue to be needed and are as vital now to the educational system in America as they have ever been. "KSU and other HBCUs take the terror of poverty, hunger, fear and hopelessness and turn it into hope,' she said. "With a little more money and capital we can do even more." The Princeton Review listed KSU as a "Best Southeastern College"; U.S. News and World Report listed it as part of its "America's Best Colleges 2007." Still, the school is facing a $3 million cut in state funding, and Sias said she's fighting an uphill battle when it comes to helping some of her school's nonterminal degree graduate pro grams become eligible for a federal competitive grant designed to help schools that serve large minority pop ulations. Historically black colleges represent only four percent of all higher-educa- tion institutions, but roughly 40 per cent of all African-American students graduate from them, said Dorothy Yancy, the president of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C. Fisk University, a school in Nashville, Tenn., with a student popu lation of less than 1,000, graduates more black students who go on to earn doctorates in the natural sciences than any other school in the nation, according to a National Science Foundation study. However, historically black colleges and universities face huge financial and social hurdles. According to a study by Education Trust, 60 percent of the nation's stu dents complete their undergraduate studies in six years. For an African- American student enrolled at a histor ically black college or university, where 70 percent of students are low income, the odds of completion are even lower, Sias said. Over a lifetime, the average American with a bachelor's degree will earn roughly $2.1 million, while an African American with the same degree will earn $1.7 million, the col lege presidents told the panel. Over the past two decades, at least seven historically black colleges have lost their accreditation. While some schools were able to regain their accreditation status, others, such as Knoxville College and Morris Brown College, remain open without regional accreditation. In fiscal 2005, six percent of the nation's top mainstream universities received more federal funds for research than 79 historically black col leges and universities combined, according to a report by the National Science Foundation. "We've always been able to wash clothes without washing powder," Yancy said. For less-educated workers, good jobs will be harder to find Tony Pugh MCT WIRE SERVICE WASHINGTON The steady loss of "good jobs" by less-educated workers has left them more vulnerable to recession than at any time in nearly 30 years, and signs are mounting that a recession is either already here or com ing soon. High-school dropouts and even high-school graduates who lack specialized job train ing have seen their already limited employment prospects steadily decline during America's decades- long shift from a manufactur- ing-based economy to a serv- ‘Good jobs’ disappearing High-paying U.S. jobs with benefits are down, especially for workers with little education. Workers with good jobs Pay at least $16.50 per hour {in 2005 dollars) with benefits* 1979 2005 No high school diploma 14.8% 3.9% High school grad 21.0% 14.0% Workers with bad jobs Pay less than $16.50 per hour, no benefits No high school diploma 60.6% 29.3% 36.3% High school grad 'Heafth insurance fully or partly paid by empk>yor; pension p)an with worker partiCipaJion © 2008 MCT Source; Jofin Schmitt, Center tor Economic and Poifcy Roseafch (U.S ) Graphic: Judy Treibfe ice economy. Not long ago, Americans who were unable to attend college could count on find ing local factory jobs after high school. The lucky ones landed in muscular industries such as aviation, steel and automobiles, while others found work on assembly lines building durable goods. These and other "good jobs" were the signature byproducts of a robust econ omy that once was the envy of the world. The jobs pro vided stability and decent wages that allowed families to buy homes, provide for their children and retire in modest comfort. The Center for Economic and Policy Research defines a "good job" as one with health insurance, a pension plan and earnings of at least $17 per hour. That works out to abouf $34,000 a year, the inflation-adjusted median income for men in 1979, when U.S. manufacturing jobs numbered 19.6 mil lion, an all-time high. Since then, however, the economy has lost nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs 52,000 in Febmary alone. Among them were many of the 3.5 million "good jobs" lost from 2000 to 2006, according to John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR. As those jobs disappeared, many blue-collar workers were forced to take jobs with far less pay and benefit secvirity. This caused the share of high-school graduates with good jobs to fall from about one in five in 1979 to one in seven in 2005, Schmitt found. For those who didn't finish high school, the decline was even steeper. The share of these workers with good jobs fell from roughly one in seven to one in 25 over the same period. With a recession certain to accelerate job losses, experts say that less-educated workers who lack marketable job skills likely will have the hardest time holding onto their jobs and the toughest time finding new employment. "People in the middle and at the bottom (of the wage scale) are going to be the bulk of the victims in a recession," I Schmitt said. "They're proportionally going to take a much bigger hit." In Groveton, N.H., where papermaking has long been a part of local life, Murray Rogers was among 300 workers who lost their jobs in December when the sprawling Wasau Paper mill on the Upper Ammonoosuc River shut its doors after more than 100 years of operation. A 50-year-old pipefitter and welder, Rogers was a year out of high school in 1976 when he began working at the mill. Over his 31 years at the plant, his wages had swelled to : nearly $21 an hour. , As president of the local steelworkers union, Rogers took a ;! one-year job with a group that helps find jobs for displaced mill workers. Most are taking pay cuts as they try to find new careers without the higher education and specialized training that the new job market demands. Helping fuel the loss of good jobs has been a decline in union membership, industry deregulation, increased out sourcing of state and government services and economic policies that focus more on containing inflation than on maintaining full employment, Schmitt said. As good jobs become harder to find, bad jobs have become much easier to get. In 1979, 41 percent of workers who didn't finish high school held "bad jobs," those with no health insurance or pension plans and paid less than $16.50 an hour in inflation-adjusted wages. By 2005, that number had grown to 61 percent, Schmitt found. David Meza of Beaverton, Ore., is struggling to escape that trend. Meza, 47, worked 14 years assembling heavy-duty hoicks for the Freightliner truck company. But when most of the production operations were moved to Mexico, he was laid off in March 2007. An llth-grade dropout who taught himself to read and write, Meza never earned his General Equivalency Diploma because he was making $21.50 an hour without it. He didn't realize his mistake until he started looking for a new job. "I had a lot of experience. I ran a forklift, worked at can neries in Alaska, been a truck driver, but none of that matters unless I've got a GED. So I'm pushing myself as hard as I've ever done in my life to get it," he said. As the job search continues, Meza longs for the days when overtime was plentiful and employers interviewed job appli' cants in person, instead of reading their resumes online. "Those were the good ol' days," he said. r
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