Dancing legend Buddha Stretch has choreographed for the likes of Mariah Carey and Will Smith, and he couldn’t turn down Mark Cha, a Churchill junior who took a bus from Potomac to New York last year just to ask for some lessons.
“I told him I’m from D.C., and he said, ‘You came all the way from D.C. just to learn?’” Cha said. “He wound up liking me, so he gave me free lessons.”
Such dedication, with just enough chutzpah, has helped make Cha a local breakdancing champion who can get some respect on the New York scene. He placed second in the NYC BBoy Jams Popping Competition in New York last month. More than 30 dancers competed in the tournament-style dance-off, which concluded with Cha swapping “battle” moves with long-time New York dancer Tiny Love.
“He’s one of the most dedicated dancers in D.C. that I know,” said Randy “Tippi” Tipton, a funk-style dance instructor from Annandale, Va.
At 17, Cha is one of the youngest dancing instructors in the Washington, D.C. area. Yet only a handful of people at Churchill have seen his moves.
Not all adults have positive views of breakdancing, said Cha, whose family didn’t approve when he took it up four years ago. “At first, they didn’t like it that much, because they think of drugs or gangs,” Cha said.
With students, there’s the opposite problem. Students flip out when they see his moves and demand encores, said Alex Kao, a Churchill senior and friend of Cha’s. “They think it’s really cool,” Kao said.
For Cha, breakdancing has nothing to do with gangs, drugs, or fads. “It’s like the anti-drug, on those commercials,” Cha said. “With struggles in school, or when you have some bad days, you just turn on some music, and it’s gone.”
BREAKDANCING was popular in the early 1980s, but in just a few years, it flamed out as a national fad. It’s been back since the mid-'90s, said Tippi, on a level that’s neither underground nor mainstream. At most of the local high schools, there are a handful of students who are into breakdancing.
“It’s definitely a dance on its own,” Kao said. “It can definitely hold its own with ballet or jazz.”
Hollywood portrayals of breakdancing take some license, said Cha, who has seen both “Breakin’” movies from the ‘80s, and the more recent “You Got Served.”
“It had really good dancing, but it doesn’t really represent how we dance,” Cha said. The movie moves are choreographed; serious breakdancers improvise, said Cha.
Cha didn’t take on breakdancing until he moved to Rockville from South Korea four years ago. In Korea, he’d been dancing since he was 6, mostly hip-hop styles of dance. After moving to Montgomery County, Cha wanted to try some new moves. “Dancing was the only way to communicate, because I couldn’t speak English,” Cha said.
Tippi first saw Cha at “pop shops” he ran. Pop shops were open-house times at area dance studios, where aspiring dancers could drop by and work on their moves. Many dancers came and went, but Cha began showing up every weekend, Tippi said.
DEDICATION IS the source of Cha’s ability, said Kao from Churchill. “I remember when he first started out, and he wasn’t that good,” Kao said. “He takes it so seriously. [Now] his dancing is so impressive, and so dynamic.”
Cha agrees that he’s come a long way, and doesn’t believe there’s anybody who has “two left feet.”
“That was me. I thought I couldn’t dance, but I could, so there’s proof,” Cha said. “They just don’t try. They think they can’t dance. Positive thoughts can make it all possible. … Be yourself; don’t try to be a stranger from TV. Just be free.”
This is the mentality Cha tries to instill in his students — mostly adults — when he teaches at dance studios in Montgomery County, Northern Virginia, and the District. Last year, Cha became a licensed dance instructor, and Tippi believes Cha may be the youngest instructor in the D.C. area.
Cha recently was one of 176 performers out of 20,000 applicants selected to perform at the 2005 USA World Showcase in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas this June.
As with many of the arts, New York is more of a hotbed than D.C. for breakdancing. Tippi thinks a dancer like Cha could be good for the region’s dance and club scene.
“Further down the road, he’s going to get involved in the hip-hop scene,” Tippi said. “Watch out. … He is definitely on his way to becoming a phenomenal dancer.”