feature | dart
dirty dan-cing Growing up in a world of poverty, East senior Danny Uy has found a way to recover. story dillon mitchell | photo dan turner Each issue the Spark staff picks a random East student and covers a unique aspect of his or her life.
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own a brick path, past the University of Cincinnati’s (UC) Steger Hall is a box. Not a literal box, but a small box of a room surrounded by glass windows. It is a small lobby, but around 6 p.m., it transforms. It thumps with the beat of music. Dub-step style remixes flow through the windows, infecting the air with sound. Inside, four guys are slipping, sliding and spinning across the smooth concrete floor. One of the friends, shorter than the others and wearing black-framed glasses, is spinning on his back, seemingly breaking the laws of gravity in classic, 80s film style. In the middle of his move, their computerized soundtrack accidentally switches to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me.” The group begins to laugh heartily, and the dancer’s concentration breaks as he falls back to Earth. The gravity-defying dancer is East senior Danny Uy. He hefts himself off the ground and starts the story of his love for breakdancing. “[Breakdancing] isn’t just a recreational thing for me; it’s more like part of my lifestyle,” says Uy. “It’s been in my life since I was seven or eight [years old], but I didn’t get too [involved with] it until two years ago. I go down to UC for practice four or five times a week.” For three hours of practice, Uy works with his friend Daniel Pham. “I first met him at a battle,” says Pham. “He was one of those kids that was just [watching the battles]. He used to always come with friends. He asked me for advice sometimes, so I finally just asked him if he wanted to battle. After that, he started coming down to our practices and we started to battle together.” Uy’s latest dance gig was featured in the East winter pep rally. “I was excited to show people what I love to do, and who I really am,” says Uy. “I could always inspire someone to start break dancing. That’s just another exciting possibility of getting the [art form] out in front of people.” Despite Uy’s intense passion for the art form, his mother Konitha Vonnida was surprised to hear about his love for it. “I didn’t know Danny could dance. He has no rhythm whatsoever,” says Vonnida. “He didn’t strike me as the break dancing type. I had no idea he would go that route. When he told me that he liked to dance, I said, ‘Why?’” The disbelief stemmed from Uy’s early talent for art, a hobby that
22 | Spark | April 15, 2011
Danny Uy practices his break-dancing with fellow breakdancers at the University of Cincinnati campus.
requires completely different skills. “He’s a great artist. He can sit down and sketch you in a matter of minutes. He’s very good when it comes to artsy stuff,” says Vonnida. “I think he’s very into arts and design. Maybe he would like to do something like that one day.” Uy’s proclivity for art usually goes past the classroom and out into the environments in which he dances. “Outside of school, I work on a lot of pieces that deal with the culture of hip hop, the breakdancing I do,” says Uy. “It ranges from painted pieces to drawn out sketches to graffiti pieces. It all reflects who I am.” Although Uy leads an extremely urban lifestyle, he insists that his fashion is just to keep his family proud. “I don’t try to portray myself as a fashion icon. I just want to make sure I look good,” says Uy. “It’s an image you try to portray for your family. That’s why I do it, not just for my own sake, but for my family’s image.” According to Uy’s friend Liz Nguyen, his sense of style comes naturally. “He just wears what he thinks looks good, and doesn’t try to fit the image of what everyone else looks like. He doesn’t want to look like every other person in the halls at school,” says Nguyen, a junior at Mount Notre Dame high school. As Uy drives past his old house on the way to a break dancing practice, he recalls being made fun of in elementary school for his unpopular clothes. “Nike Air Force Ones were the ‘it’ items. Everyone had them back then, but we couldn’t afford them,” says Uy. “We shopped at thrift stores. My general attire tended to be pants and shirts that were too big for me. Kids would gang up on me and pick on me just because my clothes weren’t as nice as theirs.” Uy never got any Air Force Ones, but he never needed them. He does not need any of the trivial things that other people think they need to be happy “I don’t take anything for granted,” says Uy. “Not my house, not my clothes, not this education. I know how lucky I am." n