Weekly Pajama Session

​I'm perpetually torn between my mentality as a cultural practitioner and a business owner. My impulses from the cultural point, if allowed to be primary, would likely result in me not operating a school or doing it very differently. I think if I were led more by my cultural impulses, UMA would be more similar to how I imagine a Zen monastery functions, or at least how my meditation guides have described their experiences.


The business of American Street Dance often falls somewhere on the spectrum of some sort of amusement park like experience or a cult. It is an amusement park in the way that it takes folks for a ride, aligning people with some sort of aspirational tie to their favorite pop celebrity or aesthetic that they admire. The cult side of the thing often manifests as a dance team in which everyone starts referring to one another as family when there is clearly some sort of dominant figure making money or holding the highest status point, or it's the gatekeeping sort of thing when a select few maintain that they are the chosen holders of "the information" and all must go through them to get anywhere. UMA at moments inevitably can express fragments of either of the above. But I like to think that when it reflects any of the above it is not by my direct doing, but more so my facilitating a space where folks, both patron and workforce, are able to mold things to their liking (of course only up to a certain point haha).

My practice, on the other hand, is a bit more idealistic. For me it is sacred. I use the dance in so many different ways. It is a machete that cuts through the forest of life. It is a microscope that looks into myself and the world around me. It is a mirror that shows me various expressions of myself through time, revealing only truths. It is my medicine. Altogether, it is something that I do for myself first and foremost. And my idealistic view of UMA is that it provides people with a method for capturing and cultivating their own tool for self-service. 

I hope at UMA you are sharpening the tools that serve you in the best way possible.