BCNC Spotlight Stories, sponsored by State Street, are stories about people from the BCNC family and how BCNC has impacted their lives.

May's Spotlight Story features: Khai Vu – “Creativity is probably the most important thing a child can have.”

From the classic worm to the side slide, Khai Vu has got the dance moves. He started in middle school, and he’s been practicing, teaching, and performing B-Boy dance at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) for the past five years. Khai is a 19-year-old student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His interest in this particular hip-hop dance style, known as B-Boying or breaking, was sparked when he and his friends started experimenting with different dance moves. As regulars at the BCNC open gym held at the Josiah Quincy School, they continued to exchange new techniques and eventually created a B-Boy group, the Krazy 88's. He commented, “After I started practicing, it became something that I enjoyed, and then something that I love—now it’s become a big part of my life.”

Two summers ago, Khai got the unique opportunity to make B-Boying a bigger part of younger kids’ lives. He got permission to start a summer session at BCNC and it was free and open to children from the community. By volunteering as an instructor, in return Khai and his dance mates received a free rehearsal space at BCNC. After a successful summer session, Khai was offered a position as an after school B-Boy instructor, and he has been blasting beats at BCNC ever since. His group has performed at the annual Oak Street Fair as well as BCNC talent shows. “I’m really grateful BCNC gave us a rehearsal space, a volunteer position and now a paid job. I’m kind of speechless – I think I’ve got a good thing going here,” adding, “I want to be able to show my parents that I can be successful at something that I love to do, and receiving a little bit of income from B-Boying helped me to do that.”

Getting to teach dance to youth has also been particularly rewarding for Khai because it has strengthened his appreciation for arts education. He commented, “Creativity is probably the most important thing a child can have; it helps a kid to be open-minded. We don’t want kids growing up to be similar to one another – we need singers, dancers -- we want lots of different things because that is how the world grows.” Khai has found that some parents are hesitant to send their children to a street dancing class because of the ‘dance battles,” but he says, “Parents will let lots of kids be competitive in football and basketball – so why not dance?”
Now that he’s put in two years of instructing at BCNC, he is thinking about the next step in his education. He plans to double major in dance and a career-oriented field. After that, he hopes to open a dance studio so he can continue to teach B-Boying and foster the evolution of new dance styles. “I don’t want it to end with me, and I’d like to see my students be my successors. I still want there to be a B-Boy presence at BCNC.”