Urban dance in the past few decades has branched out on a global scale.
Urban dance has come a long way from its starting point in California. A style born from many (Hip-Hop, Contemporary, etc.), it has developed into its own culture that’s grown beyond its founders’ original intent.
Urban’s roots came from colleges mainly in southern California. One of the earliest appearances of urban dance was at University of California, Irvine. Arnel Calvario was a member of the college’s Pilipino cultural club and performed at the club’s yearly Pilipino Culture Night.
In order to dance more often outside of that single event, Calvario created Kaba Modern, a dance collective, in 1992. Later on, more groups like his joined the scene.
Eventually Calvario and his friends from Kaba Modern decided they needed to host their own event to showcase all the emerging groups and their interpretation of Urban dance. This decision lead to the creation of Vibe Dance Competition.
To this day Vibe is still going strong and its participants aren’t restricted to groups from So Cal. The competitions latest winner is Brotherhood, a Canadian dance team based in Vancouver.
There are more dance shows other than Vibe like Body Rock and Arena. What’s more is that these competitions aren’t just held in the U.S. Take Arena for example, it’s hosted by the dance crew Kinjaz (L.A.) and the dance studio Sinostage (Chengdu), and it has competitions in L.A., Chengdu, and Singapore.
Apart from dance competitions, Urban dance has been spreading across the globe through classes as well. Urban dance choreographers . Mike Song, a founding member of the Kinjaz, has taught choreography in the U.S., as well as foreign countries like Turkey.
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