Lil Buck and Jon Boogz Take Street Dance to the Classroom

Lil Buck and Jon Boogz Take
Street Dance to the Classroom

Arts Education Comes First and Foremost
for UCSB Arts & Lectures Residencies

By Leslie Dinaberg | Photos by Ingrid Bostrom
November 21, 2024

The gawky, colt-like teenage limbs fall into focused concentration as Emmy-winning director, movement artist, and choreographer Jon Boogz teaches the finer points of popping to the 9th graders in Beth Goldman’s Beginning Dance Troop class at Santa Barbara High School (SBHS). This is soon followed by the bouncing choreography of the world’s most famous Memphis Jooker, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, as he shows the class how to do some of the signature moves that have graced the stage alongside artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Madonna, Alicia Keys, and Janelle Monáe, and brands like Apple, Nike, Gap, and Louis Vuitton.

The typical teenage mix of self-consciousness and surliness in the gym is no match for Boogz’s and Buck’s creative energy and inherent empathy. “I was the surliest kid with the biggest attitude you can imagine,” said Buck. “I get it.”

Together, they use a mix of dance technique and the history of dance as a powerful tool for communication, representation, and elevation to reel the students into their wavelength as the class progresses. They share anecdotes about dance being the way they raised themselves out of difficult childhoods and challenging circumstances alongside tips on how to do some Boogaloo and a Twist-o-Flex. History and pop culture are in the mix as well: “It’s like a Rubik’s Cube,” explains Boogz of the twist-up leg moves developed by a man named Rickey Darnell McDowell, who was “straight outta Fresno.” 

“Memphis Jookin’ is real street dance,” says Buck, as he effortlessly demonstrates a few impossible-seeming balance moves, as he explains that the dance style was born from underground rap music in the late ’80s, and early ’90s. He takes the students through what he calls “Bounce School,” emphasizing the differences between counts and also that these are the fundamental techniques of jookin’. “Try to remember that the bounces, and the pops like Boogz taught you, are tools for you to be able to train. I train from each movement, each technique — even as a professional, you’ve got to do it over and over ’til you don’t even have to think about it anymore.”

Adds Boogz, “When you learn how to pop, you can just put your own rhythms and grooves underneath the techniques. Because, a lot of times, I’m using those same bounces he’s doing, but I’m doing pops and they’re taking over. So we start to merge our styles.” 

Throughout this class and the ones afterward, both men emphasize the hard work and discipline involved in their art. “When I was a kid and I first saw jookin’, I remember being like, ‘How does a human move their body in that way?’ I couldn’t register,” shares Buck. “And then I just went mad. I was like, ‘I’m gonna practice, like, 10 hours a day.’ You go crazy, and then you start to go, ‘Oh.’ And then when it clicks, it clicks. There’s, like, a moment in your life where it’ll click in your life — it’s like Neo seeing all the codes in The Matrix or something. I understand now.”

That gets some nods. The students end the class with an impressive piece of choreography for such a short time period, and a quick photo. 

“They were a little shy, but they got into it,” says Buck. 

“UCSB Arts & Lectures is great; they send us these professional dancers and companies. It is just amazing that I get to have this, that my students get to experience it, and that’s so wonderful,” says Goldman, who is in her 19th year of teaching dance at SBHS.

“What I enjoy about teaching is like any style of movement, sometimes people think we make it look easy, and then when they actually start to learn that there’s levels to it,” says Boogz. “With popping, it’s so much body isolation and so much control that it’s like, it’s niche. It’s very niche. And sometimes it’s the opposite, like, when I taught overseas, they have so much technique, but their rhythm and groove is like tier one. So, they can pop really hard, but there’s nothing underneath it that gives it personality. So, I’m teaching backward. There, all you guys know how to do the technical stuff. I need to tap into how you would move to the music if you were just dancing with your mom or partying. I need that energy underneath, because that’s who you are. That’s you. Yeah, it’s your identity. There’s some reason they study America, and they’re just copying what they like. They don’t really have their own personality, but their technique is supreme.”

He continues, “And then here in the States, you get people who have personality; they just need the technique. So it’s actually backward, but that’s because in China and Japan, universities do it; it’s taught everywhere, which makes me so mad and sad, because this dancing comes from here — why is it bigger there than here?”

As much as we’d like to dig into the state of dance around the world, there’s not much time for reflection, as Buck and Boogz are on their way back to do a master class in Dance 51: Improvisation at UCSB, before meeting for a Q&A conversation with students at the Office of Black Student Development on Campus.

It’s all in a day’s work for these busy visiting artists, who will also meet with John Arnhold, who is Arts & Lectures’ (A&L) major dance sponsor, together with his wife, Jody Arnhold, who founded the Dance Education Laboratory in New York almost three decades ago and is renowned as one of dance education’s most tenacious champions, according to The New York Times. 

Buck and Boogz spend the next day back at UCSB teaching master classes for two different Modern Dance sections — it’s fascinating to watch the more experienced dancers pick up the moves and start to make them their own, given similar building-block instructions as the 9th graders got. The more advanced students learn more moves (the bump jump, the gangsta walk). 

“It’s Buck’s Bounce School and Boogz’s Pop School,” says Boogz. “I’ve been nerding out on this dance style for 25 years,” he tells the smiling students, who ask a slew of career-oriented questions.

Boogz got his first professional gig at about 17 years old and moved to Los Angeles at age 21. Buck was flown out to L.A. when he was about 19, “when Myspace was a thing,” and worked on music videos as well as street dance performances, which is how the two met. 

The university dance classes are followed by a theater arts class in Movement for the Stage. That night, film students and others from the campus community join them at the Pollock Theatre for a viewing of their Netflix documentary series Move, followed by a post-screening discussion with UCSB English and Black Studies Professor Stephanie Batiste.

Working with UCSB students, Jon Boogz (left) and Lil Buck stress the importance of learning dance skills to then be able to make the moves your very own. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

This busy two-day residency all takes place prior to their impressive third-day stage presentation, “An Evening with Lil Buck and Jon Boogz,” which includes the performance of an original dance piece created especially for UCSB Arts & Lectures, along with screenings of their award-winning work and an in-depth conversation and Q&A with the audience.

I was fortunate to tag along for most of these classes, Q&As, and performances, and in each case, their passion for their art and their connection to young people is palpable. Both spoke eloquently and at length about dance as being a way to raise themselves out of difficult childhoods and challenging circumstances. 

As someone who funds a number of different artists, I asked John Arnhold if this is a common thread he has heard from artists who do educational outreach. “Both Lil Buck and Jon Boogz have used their remarkable talents as dancers, but also as humanitarians and educators, to relate their personal experiences,” says Arnhold. “We have always felt that artists have a role as ‘citizens’ to be engaged in educational outreach.”

Buck and Boogz also see that education outreach component as an important part of their partnership and their ambitions. They see infinite possibilities of exploring storytelling through dance combined with other art forms and media, and they’re working on a feature film exploring their processes. 

Without giving too much away at this early stage, Boogz shares, “I can’t explain the what yet, but I can explain the why. We’ve always wanted to have that Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly moment, and I feel like for our vernacular — and this is no knock to any of the greatest movies that have ever come out — but if you look at it, the narrative, it’s always about the battle, or, and I’m not knocking it, because all those movies have provided jobs for dancers, all the Step Ups, all that stuff. So, I’ll never knock those films. But when I was growing up, Schindler’s List was a powerful movie to me, The Color Purple…. How come we don’t have a film with that type of depth and substance with our movement pushing the narrative.”

With the short films they’ve made so far (many of which can be viewed at lilbuck.com and serialpictures.com/directors/jon-boogz), “it’s like us saying there is no boundary to the story you can tell,” Boogz continues. “And hopefully we can create a new standard for street dance and film, and it doesn’t have to be stuck in the place … it’s almost been the same formula for like, 40 years. And it’s like, can we change it? Can we not try something different? And I think we’re like, ‘Well, if they’re not going to believe in it, we’ve just got to do it ourselves.’ ”

Lil Buck (left) and Jon Boogz | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

Asked by an audience member, “So what do you say to a young person who sees your performance and says, ‘I have to do that’?” Boogz responds, “Go for it. It’s like from the backgrounds we came from — if we can make it out, anybody can. It’s just, you got to have that deep belief in yourself. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. There’s talent everywhere in the world: Every city, every place, there’s somebody who’s gifted at something. And I think you just gotta go for your dreams. I think whatever you want to do, you go for it, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Some people, you know, reach out to people who are greater than you at that thing, or are already where you want to be and pick their brain. You know, when I was just getting into directing, I reached out to a lot of directors who had already directed films and commercials, and I’d be like, ‘Look at my work. Tell me what you think. Tell me what’s bad about it. Tell me what’s great about it. Tell me what you know.’ And that’s how you keep growing. So, I think, like, just go for it, and don’t be afraid to reach out to people who are maybe, like, a little bit further along in the journey of that craft than you, because that can also help you speed up the process of getting better, and just once again, getting in the room with people greater than you.”

“And if it’s something that that kid sees and feels so strongly and passionate about that they can’t stop thinking about it the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. You know, if it sticks with them and it just won’t leave them alone, then I’ll say, ‘Hold on to that feeling and hold on to that passion as long as you possibly can,’ ” says Buck. “And you know … if that passion becomes a dream that you always think, yeah, go for it. Like we said, try to make that a reality.”

Next A&L Residencies: Dorrance Dance 

When Dorrance Dance taps its way to town next month, it won’t just be for the December 5 performance of The Nutcracker Suite. Company Founder Michelle Dorrance and her creative team have a mission to engage with audiences on a musical and emotional level, and to share the complex history and powerful legacy of this Black American art form through performance and education. 

As lead sponsor John Arnhold says, “Dance has been embedded in every culture since the dawn of time. Dance tells stories and as an art form, it develops creativity, fosters community, encourages collaboration, problem-solving, and conflict resolution.”

Like Lil Buck and Jon Boogz, the Dorrance Dance artists have a busy week ahead of them, with a flurry of educational outreach programs and classes planned. 

They’ll be on the UCSB campus on December 3 for a Lunch & Learn Discussion with Michelle Dorrance and the Theatre/Dance Department followed by a workshop that evening with Santa Barbara Dance Arts students. The next day (Dec. 4), they’ll be back at UCSB to make a presentation to the history and appreciation of dance class and do workshops with two modern dance classes, and a ballet class, as well as a workshop/assembly at Santa Barbara High School that afternoon. 

December 5 is the performance at the Arlington — a fresh, high-energy jazz and tap dance take on Tchaikovsky’s holiday classic that transforms the Sugar Plum Fairy into a slinky Sugar Rum Cherry, while the “March of the Toy Soldiers” becomes a swinging “Peanut Brittle Brigade” — followed by an educational talkback on stage. 

Then, on December 7, they do a class with Dance Network Goleta, and finally, on December 8, is a free Community Dance Workshop with Michelle Dorrance from 1-2 p.m. at the Carrillo Recreation Center. This is a beginning class with no experience required and no tap shoes allowed. While the class is free, registration is recommended. Visit bit.ly/40MCXyQ to register in advance.