Kevin Zachary Cruz Bangi

Agustin Tongson

SRP 199: Archival Research

History of Samahang Modern

Abstract:

I will log the history of Samahang Modern, a competitive Urban Dance Team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I will portray the roots, mission, and upbringing of Samahang Modern while also analyzing their aspects in dance culture and how they made revolutionary movements in dance politics. I will provide history of their past leadership and how their style has evolved and changed throughout the years. I am interviewing past leadership in order to gain a greater scope of not only the evolutionary change in style but in dance politics within UCLA. I believe with this information, students will be able to connect further with Samahang Modern mission to provide a safe space for anyone capable, willing, and passionate for dance.

Introduction:

Samahang Modern originated from the Pilipino Cultural Night of 1986, the 9th annual cultural night of UCLA’s Samahang Pilipino organization. Samahang Modern started off as the jazz exhibition within the cultural show but slowly turned into the urban dance style it has now. The shift in dancing style can be attributed to the help of Arnel Calvario. From UC Irvine, Arnel Calvario recognized the abundance of urban dance within cultural nights. The urban dance community was hidden within the mother organizations at these universities cultural nights. His passion and dedication to dance and roots, led him to coin the phrase “The deeper the roots, the higher the branches.” (Steezy). He founded Kaba Modern in 1992 which initiated the wave of urban dance teams within Southern California. From Pilipino Cultural Nights and Chinese Association Culture Nights, sprouted teams such as CADC in 1994, PAC Modern in 1995, and Samahang Modern in 2003. The competitive scene was growing and so was the dance community outside of UCLA.

Internal Look of Dance within UCLA:

The dance community has only risen in individuals and in passion. From the origins of Arnel Calvario. Dance Teams were at first competitively centered, with the emergence of dance competitions. Samahang Modern first began their competitive career in 2003 at Body Rock. Soon after that competition, Samahang Modern became competitively driven to the point where it caused problems with Samahang Pilipino Mother org. In an interview with CJ Varias, he mentioned the disconnect with SP but also the growth in competitive dance.

“We didn't start competing until 2002-2003. This caused issues with SPCN at the time cause it was forcing Modern to shift focus into a whole other world of dance. I think we wanted to follow our Filipino sister orgs like PAC and Kaba to create our own Modern team. It helped that our director at the time previously competed in an SD team called Formality. He helped formulate a lot of our core values, one of which was Cultural Roots, in an effort to sustain our SP beginnings.

We did compete in more mainstream comps before ACA. And since the UCLA dance community back in the early 2000s was very small and with low time commitments, members were on multiple teams, balancing between ACA, NSU and Sama. Eventually ACA and NSU broke into the mainstream dance community as well. Then came VSU around ~2012 and other UCLA-based teams like Vmo.”

In a wider scope, being UCLA’s premiere dance team, Samahang Modern defined the dance community in the early stages of urbanc dance within the collegiate level at UCLA. The dance community has grown bigger and closer together. With the help of foundations and their contribution of passionate dancers, UCLA has grown into a community rather than an association of dancers. Mentioned by CJ Varias,

“The dance community is definitely A LOT bigger. Back when I first joined in 2010, there were only 3 competitive UCLA teams: Sama, NSU and ACA. VSU was slowly making their way into the competitive scene but mainly did culture night. There was no Foundations at the time, so the 4 teams were all fighting for the dance space. Being such a small community, we all became more competitive about the spotlight. Especially with drama that trickled down to my generation, there was still some intensity when it came to Battle Royale or any other competitions the UCLA teams competed at together. The founding of Foundations definitely helped alleviate some of that competitive drive and pushing our community to be more holistic and wholesome. Members of teams were now stemming from a beginner-friendly environment and helping cultivate a space for growth amongst the teams.

I personally experienced the integration of Foundations into our community when they first joined the All-Team meetings. When Foundations became almost half the UCLA community and we found ourselves fighting for more dance space, the competitive teams banded together more often in an effort to help defend their incumbency as a UCLA dance team. This resulted in closer interactions amongst the Lships and our competitive drive subsided.

Another factor in helping the community feel closer together is ACA's break into the mainstream SoCal dance community and global popularity with Franklin Yu. This helped put our community in the spotlight and there was more turnout at UCLA events. Since ACA was placing and beating the UCLA dance community impressively, we were so proud of their accomplishments that we began to classify them more of a sister team than another competitive team.

Currently, the UCLA community is struggling to find a place for everyone. There are so many projects and spaces to dance on, our main problem isn't competition anymore, but finding a home for all the dancers.”

Although finding a home was previously a problem, with the help of samahang moderns own alumni, Leo Albea was able to pave the way for a dance space. In 2017-2019, Leo Albea had a town hall addressing the problems of parking lots for dancers and showed how unsafe and how unhealthy dancing in the parking lots from 8pm - 4am was detrimental to our body. His push, drive, and passion for dance ultimately led dance teams to be able to practice at wooden instead of the parking lots.

Samahang Modern and Samahang Pilipino:

Although originating from Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night, Samahang Modern soon grew divided from their roots within the early 2000’s and strayed towards a competitive aspect. The interview with CJ Varias however clarified and portrayed how the relationship with Samahang Pilipino grew exponentially.

“Our relationship with SP was close to nil when I first joined. Even our integration with SPCN was controversial. My Lship during my first year didn't make too much of an effort to include ourselves at run-thrus or to educate the dancers on why it was important to attend SP events. There also wasn't many SP-integrated dancers on the team. Ever since then, we worked pretty hard on mending that disconnect.

We made a position in 2011 solely dedicated in keeping our ties together with SP. Originally called SPCN coord, we changed it to SPCN Rep to avoid the confusion with the actual SPCN coord. Before 2008, we used to perform 2 sets at SPCN. It changed to 1 due to time constrictions and now it was back to 2 this year (although might go back to 1 depending on how things rollout).

By my 4th year (2013), the SPCN coord at the time (who was also my friend since 1st year), wanted to finally close the door on our controversial relationship between the orgs. He offered Modern a 2nd set to perform at SPCN IF we had 100% attendance at run-thrus. Unfortunately that was not possible for us but it really opened the door for a better relationship.

Currently, we now have more members integrated into different SP spaces. I think relative to how it was my 1st, the relationship with SP has improved tenfold.”

Since then, Samahang Pilipino has now, in the 2018-2020 has become more inclusive and more family oriented, focusing on connections with others rather than the competitive aspect. With the integration of individuals from other Samahang Pilipino Spaces such as Samahang Pilipino Advancing Community Empowerment (SPACE), Samahang Pilipino Education and Retention (SPEAR) , and SPCN, Samahang Modern has grown to be a space where familial roots and cultural ties are the main facets of the dance team.

Conclusion:

Samahang Modern has not only grown in size and in talent, but has ultimately grown as a space for dancers college wide to grow and cultivate success, passion, and talent.

Bibliography:

Coats, Daniel. “Arnel Calvario, Founder of Dance Troupe Kaba Modern and Kinjaz Member, Builds Community Engagement Through the Power of Dance.” Mihaylo News, 8 Sept. 2018, business.fullerton.edu/news/2018/09/10/arnel-calvario-founder-of-dance-troupe-kaba-modern-and-kinjaz-member-builds-community-engagement-through-the-power-of-dance/.

Yu, Joshua, et al. “The Evolution Of Our Global Dance Community.” STEEZY, 22 Nov. 2017, blog.steezy.co/evolution-of-our-dance-community/.