Kaba Modern from America’s Next Dance Crew Eliminated: Racial Card Played?

First, the bad news – after dancing their Asian-American hearts out on a reality show, Kaba Modern was eliminated from MTV’s America’s Next Dance Crew this week. Here’s a performance of Kaba, Fysh N Chicks and JabbaWockeeZ – the eventual winner.

Phil from angryasianman brings up something that many people might be thinking:

Did Kaba and Jabba [another predominately Asian-American dance crew] fans somehow split the vote? Does it sound too bitter to suggest that the competition might’ve been rigged? Was it too much for MTV to have two Asian American-heavy crews at the top? It’s lame, but it’s a thought.

I’m bummed, obviously. As to whether the results were rigged, well, I don’t think so. The producers of the show like Kaba Modern, as evident by the fact that they used them to promote the show for a local morning news program in the LA area. If anything, it could be the curse of elimination-based talent shows on television – we live in a society where people vote for the underdog with the cool background story, with the assumption that other stronger contestants will have enough votes to remain in a competition, but get eliminated instead. (Remember the brouhaha years ago when Tamayra Gray or LaToya London were eliminated from American Idol? Like that.) That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if MTV did go a little overboard with their editing, as per one YouTube commenter:

is it true that there is a video of the episode where jabba and kaba were in the bottom 2, and people were booing and yelling recount? but mtv edited it over as if they were cheering?

Apparently? Totally true.

At the end of the day though, Kaba Modern might not have won the competition on MTV, but they came out HUGE winners overall: They have international media attention, if you count E! as such. They actually gave UC Irvine some credibility*. Traffic from their web page has gotten so high that they had to post their audition results for their 2008 crew on their MySpace page. And if I were a betting man, I’d bet you that the number of people trying out for Kaba would increase next year, with more non-Asian Amercians trying out. A surge in popularity with your dance crew? That’s a pretty awesome consolation gift.

* Oh c’mon, I’m joking. I went to UC Davis; there’s a little bit of rivalry there.