Break Through Hip Hop: Ready to take the stage

Though it might not officially be hell week on USC’s campus, for one student organization, it certainly presents that way.

Break Through Hip Hop, a hip-hop dance team at USC, is preparing for its semester showcase. In the lead-up to Thursday’s performance at Bovard Auditorium, the group is dancing for up to seven hours a day, hoping to make its performance the best it can possibly be.

Despite the long hours, for members of the group like Josh Moray Grossman, a freshman majoring in popular music performance, time flies by because he is with his best friends. Grossman, a new member of the group, said he found a family in the team. 

“It’s hard to find a small-knit sense of community just naturally,” Grossman said. “Being on this team has helped me settle and feel much more at home and grounded at USC.”

Even on the other end of the experience spectrum, the same sentiment of family is shared. Gabi Feingold, a member of the team since her first semester at USC, says the team helped her through her hardest times, saying if it weren’t for the team, she “probably would’ve dropped out.”

“I am someone that struggles with a lot of mental health problems, and this team is sometimes the only thing that would get me out of bed in the day. And it’s all of my favorite people doing one of my favorite things to do in the entire world,” said Feingold, a senior majoring in theatre. “My USC experience would have been probably so much worse without this.”

While the group never loses the fun in dancing together, the members are still working hard to take the stage of the over 1,200-seat Bovard Auditorium. Prior to performing at USC’s largest venue, the group can most likely be found practicing at their “home base” — the seventh floor of the Royal Street Structure near Leavey Library. 

Levana Hoang, the co-director of Break Through Hip Hop, said that while the garage may not be the most “glamorous” place, “it adds to the character of the team.”

Still, Hoang, a junior majoring in political science, recognizes “a lack of resources” provided by the University. According to her, a studio in the Kaufman School of Dance is offered to the group for one hour a week, but with its non-“hell week” practices being 2.5 hours, the parking lot is the better option. 

Hoang said the group has particularly suffered monetarily this year, as this showcase received no funding from the Undergraduate Student Government. She says the group, which has existed on campus since 2006, always had its showcase fully or half-funded by USG in years prior.  

“We don’t really know why, I guess it’s not really our place to question just because of the minimal details they’ve given us,” Hoang said. “It’s one of those things that was really hard for us and the impacts of whatever is happening there have hit us quite hard. So, it was kind of a bummer that we didn’t get a lot of explanation. What we were told is that the funding was never guaranteed to begin with, so we shouldn’t have relied on it.” 

Through fundraisers such as bake sales and clothing sales, plus reaching out to and receiving half of the needed money — an amount in the thousands — to rent Bovard Auditorium from Visions and Voices, the team managed to pull enough money together for its Heroes v. Villains Spring ’23 Showcase. 

As the team’s “hell week” wraps up, all that’s left to do for its members is to get excited to head on stage. It is when performing for a crowd that Grossman feels most free. 

“I love performing because I’m able to express myself and bring out my true self on stage,” Grossman said. “For me, it’s like there’s no other option [other than] just to be my true self because people are already watching me, so I’m just gonna go out there and do my thing.”

Many members of the group were drawn to the fact that Break Through Hip Hop is a non-competitive dance team, which allows them to dance just for the love of it. 

“I always use dance as an emotional outlet. Because I was really shy as a kid, I had a really hard time expressing my emotions,” Feingold said. “It was always just a way for me to be able to tell a story and moving my body and being able to express emotion without using words was so refreshing. It sounds so cheesy to say, but [it was] life-changing.”

Feingold, emotionally preparing to leave the team behind physically, but never in her memories, provided some final words of advice for her dance family. 

“Don’t take any single moment of it for granted. Respect your directors. Tell and show the people on the team that you love them,” Feingold said. “Always go full out. Never mark in my honor. Never mark a single move. If you are not sweating and using your entire body and face, you’re doing it wrong.”