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Spotlight: Art and Dance students are active in their areas of study on and off campus
Alana Kennedy, Sean Dullaghan / Roundup
Tin Nguyen, 24, art and dance major walks towards the stage adjacent to the music building with his “personal funk system” red boom box over his shoulder. He walks up the stairs bends down to plug his boom box in and ‘Battle Cry’ by Nu Jabes begins to play. His body twists and lowers to the floor, spinning around and landing with his hands holding his weight in a ‘freeze’ pose.
“I wasn’t even in the U.S. when I started dancing,” said Nguyen.
Born in Vietnam, Nguyen moved to the United States at the age of 10 to pursue life in a new country and later became influenced by this country’s hip-hop inspired dance called breaking or break dancing.
“When I was a kid I always danced to Michael Jackson, and I saw breaking [break dancing] on the Internet,” said Nguyen He started break dancing at 18-years-old, while attending college at the University of California, Irvine.
“I didn’t really get a chance to break until I went away for college,” said Nguyen. “One of my dorm-mates started breaking too.”
Nguyen is currently in a B-boy club called Urban Movement that will be performing the spring concert.
“Tin Nguyen is going to be in the spring dance called the prestige this semester,” said Dance Instructor Marian Weiser.
Although Urban Movement has 20 members, a group of 4 or 5 members that were chosen by the dance instructor Marian Weiser will be performing for the spring concert. They have only two weeks to choreograph a dance routine.
“Tin is a really good hip-hop dancer,” said Helgar Birungi, fellow classmate.
Nguyen dances to different genres of music using rap and hip-hop occasionally he uses rock to challenge himself. He practices at home and uses weightlifting, eating healthy and conditioning as ways to keep himself in shape.
“Breaking is about trying to communicate to other people. In dance we have vocabulary in our movements,” said Nguyen. “That’s just how we talk with our bodies, so we can tell a story and certain things we do while dancing are like words to a story.”
Nguyen has injured himself numerous times while break dancing but refuses to ever quit.
“For dancers we really try to connect to the music, this is our story, this is our movement, its like making art but instead of it remaining permanent its like boom, its there and its impermanent but it still exists,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen has total creative control of his dances and choreography.
“It’s very natural in breaking, there’s a way when you battle somebody where you are able to talk to your opponent through you moves,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen prefers to practice his dancing until he is comfortable with his moves.
“In cyphers we share our stories, this is how I express the music, this is how I express the bass line with moving my shoulders or whatever, I’ll hit the freeze on the snares,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen also dances modern dance as well as break dancing at cyphers, which are dance circle.
“Once I got into it, it really wasn’t even a choice. ‘Am I going to go break? Am I going to go b-boy? Yes,’” said Nguyen.
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Dark tight clothing, jet black hair across his face, lip piercing and multiple demonic rings on his hands only add to the style that exudes from the art of Ryan Aleister Merrick, 25-year-old.
Merrick is in his first quarter at Pierce and is here to learn video editing and audio recording to help him on his way into the job market as a photographer and videographer.
“I’ve been an artist my whole life” say’s Merrick and plays music as well.
The artist slash musician says that he has always been attracted to the darker metaphysical world.
“I just found this folder of my preschool drawings the other day and its all monsters and demons,” said Merrick, “I’ve been pretty dark since I was a kid.”
His childhood interests grew from monsters to extraterrestrials working with pencil and ink drawings.
“I learned anatomy, learned perspective, learned how to put detail into everything that came out of my mind” said Merrick, creating a theme and style for himself as an artist.
His biggest influence he says is H.R. Giger, who is most commonly know for his work on the 1980’s film “Alien”.
After graduating from Agoura Hills Highschool, Merrick attended the Art Institute of California, Los Angeles (AIC), from 2005 to 2008.
“They have some of the best people in the industry at the art school but they cant teach” said Merrick.
Merrick has displayed his art in a couple college art galleries, which now include work with paint on canvas and sculptures, and expressed interest in getting his artwork into a gallery somewhere in Los Angeles.
Merrick has been doing work as a photographer and making video’s for a couple years he says. He has had several job offers but has not been successful in being hired on many occasions because he doesn’t have experience with Final Cut Pro, a commonly used video editing program.
The school system at AIC did not allow students to take classes outside of their major, so Merrick never had the opportunity to explore the fields of video and audio recording and editing. That’s why Merrick decided to come to Pierce.
“Here the teachers genuinely care about teaching you, they will sit down and explain it to me until I don’t have any more questions.” says Merrick.
Although the lab hours barely allow you enough time to do the work required, Merrick appreciates how much the teacher’s at Pierce genuinely care for their students he says.
