8Questions with the Poreotics

By Keesa Ocampo

The Poreotics are MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew Season 5 winners, an Asian American all-male dance crew from Westminster, California. The crew was formed in 2007 and specializes in popping, choreography, and robotics, hence the name po-reo-tics. They are known for their shaded, dark glasses, which they wear for all of their performances and will be featured in the first ever K-Pop dance convention, K-Pop TaKeover by MYX TV. Here are 8Questions with Lawrence, Matt aka Dumbo, Can, Chad and Charles!

Describe yourself in four words.

Lawrence: Teenage mutant ninja turtles
Dumbo: We like to tic
Can: Why you do man?
Chad: Stay hungry stay foolish
Charles: I wear big glasses

What’s your comfort food?

Lawrence: Funyuns
Dumbo: Pho! Lots of Vietnamese food, Thai food and Korean BBQ.
Can: Pho, ramen, chachiang mein, NOODELS! And rice.
Chad: Everything… mainly Asian food and chips.
Charles: Korean all you can eat BBQ.

Tell us about your dream vacation.

Lawrence: 3 weeks in Dubai with family would be da buziness.
Dumbo: On an island, waterfalls, lakes, trees, jungles, animals.
Can: My dream vacation is to relax in Hawai’I or Boracay for a week.
Chad: Hawaii… to Vegas… to Boracay
Charles: To travel the world!

What’s the story behind those famous shades and what are your top picks for the season?

Lawrence: Using sunglasses allows us to present our character as more of a robotic image. It also allows the audience to focus more on the dancing and to appreciate the interpretation of the music. My favorite glasses throughout the entire season had to be the hip-hop nation sunglasses.
Dumbo: To hide our emotions and be robotic. Our favorite ones are our poreotics sunglasses.
Can: I wear shades when I dance because it makes me feel confident because no one can see my nervousness. My favorite shades from the show are the Week 1 shades.
Chad: They make us look more robotic and make us look a little more mysterious. Lady Gaga week because when you break the glasses apart, it becomes a comb!
Charles: The shades give us a robotic look.

They say that dance tells a story. What’s yours?

Lawrence: My story is based on my interpretation of the song I am dancing to. My passion for dance allows me to create a physical representation of the sounds, the lyrics and the beat.
Dumbo: We bring the story to life.
Can: When I dance, my story lies within the moves that I do. It’s not like a sad or happy story or a maple story. It’s something you can only understand by watching.
Chad: I didn’t plan on dancing at all. I accompanied a friend to an audition for the collegiate team PAC Modern, auditioned, failed horribly, but got picked up by the team because they said I had potential. I met the rest of the Poreotics a year later when they joined PAC Modern and now, I am one of them.
Charles: My dance is my own art and creativity put in movements. It shows how I interpret music through body.

Asian Pacific Americans have been rocking the dance scene, thanks to artists like yourselves. What advice can you give young dancers that want to follow in your footsteps?

Lawrence: Keep growing in dance. No matter where you are or what you do with dance, there is always room for growth and learning. And always have fun with it all.
Dumbo: Be original and be yourself. Don’t limit your creativity.
Can: It’s not just Asians that are rocking the dance scene. Every ethnicity out there is killing it right now. It just hasn’t been shown on TV yet. I think that if you want to reach any goal (not just dancing), you just have to never give up and have the determination.
Chad: Be yourselves. Don’t try to follow the current *in* thing in dancing. Be creative and come up with stuff no one has ever seen before.
Charles: My advice to all the young dancers is to always have your own creativity and not to be afraid to be yourself.

What are your top 2 favorite dance scenes or music videos of all time?

Lawrence: I like the dance scenes in Step Up 3D. You Got Served was pretty tight too.
Can: My favorite dance scenes are all from Michael Jacksons old music videos.
Chad: MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit” and Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time.”
Charles:You Got Served‘s ending battle dance scene and Brown Eyed Girls’ “Abracadabra” music video.

You will be featured in the first ever K-Pop dance convention, K-Pop TaKeover by MYX TV. Tell us a bit about that project.

Lawrence: I am thankful and excited to be a part of this first ever K-Pop convention alongside Movement Lifestyle and I’m really looking forward to building a great relationship with the amazing batch of international and industry choreographers that will be there. It’s gonna be so fun!
Dumbo: It is definitely an honor to be featured in the first ever K-Pop dance convention with Movement Lifestyle choreographers. It makes us want to work so much harder because we’re going to be around the top choreographers in the K-Pop scene.
Can: I think that this K-Pop convention will be a new experience for everyone who’s into K-Pop and dancing. It’s like combining a popular music genre with one of the most well-known dancers. It’s going to be a blast, that’s all I can really say.
Chad: The K-Pop dance convention is going to be an amazing event! You’ve got a genre of music that is starting to blow up in the States, mixed with some of the best choreographers of movement Lifestyle along with us. It’s going to be an event that people aren’t going to want to miss.
Charles: This convention is the first ever to have workshops from the infamous Movement Lifestyle and us, the Poreotics! It’s a great opportunity to learn great dance routines to awesome K-Pop hit songs.

Learn more about K-Pop TaKeover and check out the latest news on the Poreotics!