“I’m going to make a future out of this. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll create one. I definitely have a calling.”
By Ellyn Pak
Photograph by Eric Sueyoshi
Two young artists do a double-take when a familiar face approaches the graffiti wall in Venice Beach. The teenagers eventually put down their spray cans and introduce themselves to the newly famous Ben Chung.
Chung — who is more widely recognized for donning a blank-face mask — looks like an Average Guy, rockin’ cherry Pumas, a black, pit-bull-print T-shirt and baggy jeans. But the graffers’ inkling is correct: They’ve just met the Korean American member of JabbaWockeeZ, the group who weeks prior was crowned “America’s Best Dance Crew” on national television.
The young guys are atwitter about their encounter with Chung. “They came on and I was like, oh my God, they were the best by far,” says Lanny Markasy, an 18-year-old Santa Cruz native who once took classes with a member of the group.
Chung, a 26-year-old Los Angeles native, doesn’t quite yet know what to make of the sudden fame. At times, he says, the attention has been in your face. Just a week after their first-place victory on the MTV hit reality competition, produced by Randy Jackson, JabbaWockeeZ members were mobbed by fans at a McDonald’s in New York City.
“It really hasn’t set in,” Chung says. “I was just a kid who liked to dance, and now I’m kinda in a certain light when sometimes I’m walking down the street, and people will ask me for my autograph,” he says. “It’s crazy. … I’m just like, how do you even know who I am?”
Still, earning the title was a confirmation that Chung and other aspiring dancers could pursue their dreams, make a living and gain street-cred by doing what they love to do.
Chung grew up surrounded by hip-hop and was immersed in the culture, but didn’t get involved in dance until late in high school. Surprisingly, most of the moves he learned as a nascent b-boy came from studying Korean pop videos during the heyday of groups such as H.O.T.
“Man, this sounds kinda corny, but they could dance,” he says. “It was dope. I would try to emulate the moves and stuff like that in my own bedroom.”
At church, Chung became friends with a fellow breaker, and they swapped sweet moves drawn from music videos. Later, another dancer they met through a Korean church network was looking to create a team. Eventually, the group, dubbed Uniq, performed for a church talent show, then entered a Korean music festival competition at Cal State Northridge in the late ’90s.
Better than they thought, Uniq won the contest, and later earned top-billing at a Radio Korea-sponsored beach festival. Soon after, they helped put together the first-ever Kollaboration, a showcase of young Asian American talent that debuted in 2000.
Chung explored the hip-hop dance circuit by joining a team at UCLA. That’s when he was first exposed to Culture Shock, a community dance troupe that was home to members of what would become JabbaWockeeZ. Chung was overwhelmed by the cutting-edge, nonconformist approach of the group.
In 2004, Chung transferred to the University of California, Irvine from a community college, and made it into Kaba Modern, the school’s lauded hip-hop dance troupe. He danced with the crew until he graduated in 2005. Afterward, his mother badgered him. Why not keep dance as a hobby and pursue a master’s degree?
“This is something I love to do,” Chung told his mom. “I’m going to make a future out of this. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll create one. I definitely have a calling to do this.”
After finishing school, Chung honed his skills, taking technique classes and sessioning with friends. In 2006, Chung taught a master class at a studio in San Diego where Kevin Brewer, a dance veteran and member of JabbaWockeeZ, visited.
Days later, Chung tried out for Super Galactic Beat Manipulators, a group Brewer was assembling. Brewer then invited him to join JabbaWockeeZ, a crew Chung had long admired since he first caught wind of them at a showcase in San Diego in 2003.
Chung’s induction to the group had a certain “randomness” to it. In April 2007, JabbaWockeeZ members dance-battled with Chung in a garage. After nine rounds, Chung was official – the crew’s newest member.
“He’s real chill,” Kevin Brewer says. “A really good guy. He has a good heart. He’s down with the crew. He says I’m one of his inspirations, but he’s an inspiration to me.”
JabbaWockeeZ, comprised of members scattered throughout California, Arizona and Las Vegas, is based in San Diego primarily because of its Culture Shock roots. The name comes from Jabberwocky, a nonsensical poem by Lewis Carroll.
Outside of the crew, members pursue separate endeavors, including other dance troupes and industry work. In recent years, Chung has been hired as a back-up dancer for recording artist Omarion’s live shows, and has appeared in various music videos.
In 2007, the crew participated in the show “America’s Got Talent,” but was cut shortly after making it through the audition. Late last year, a casting director from “America’s Best Dance Crew” attended a JabbaWockeeZ performance and encouraged the group to audition.
Initially the members hesitated, but decided to try out for the show, largely inspired by the memory of Gary Kendall — a longtime member of the group who died of meningitis before the auditions. During performances on ABDC, Chung and the other members of JabbaWockeeZ sported white wristbands and pointed skyward again and again in tribute to Kendall.
The group’s popularity rose with each performance. More and more fans arrived at the show bearing rally signs, and calling out support. Party City stores throughout the region experienced a run on the white mime-like masks that the dancers wore exclusively during performances.
“So far it’s been an exciting, stressful, crazy and bittersweet kind of a situation,” Brewer says. “For all of us, it’s strange. In a matter of two months, we’re like the new ’N Sync, and we don’t even sing.”
Still, the group couldn’t predict their victory. For weeks, the competing crews (which included Kaba Modern) remained in separate bubbles, creating original interpretations of dance styles. When JabbaWockeeZ won, and the response from their fan base unfolded, Chung was floored by the love.
“I really feel like God gave me the gift of dance for a reason,” Chung says. “I’ve been able to see how that leads to me being able to talk to certain people I wouldn’t be able to if I wasn’t a dancer.”
The best message, Chung says, has been in the experience.
“Being able to share my life story,” he says, describing what he’d like to do with his gift. “And have people inspired by that.”
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One of the the biggest Asian cinema events to hit Southern California opens on May 10. The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, features the latest works by established and emerging filmmakers, along with seminars, panel discussions and symposiums on topics relevant to Asian Pacific cinema.
Opening Night features “Shanghai Calling,” directed by Daniel Hsia and starring Korean American Daniel Henney, who plays a Chinese American expat lawyer navigating his way through the mean streets of Shanghai (the picture above also indicates he is a raisin smuggler). But does he take off his shirt? Go watch the movie to find out! read more
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