Renegade Rip

Issue date: 4/19/06 Section: Campus

Media Credit: Jose Vega

Bakersfield College's annual Spring Fling Dance, held April 6, was flung to the side by the majority of BC students after a weeklong deluge that canceled out a number of other Spring Fling events.

Under a ceiling lofty with yellow and black balloons in BC's gymnasium foyer, known as the "Huddle," Mauricio Aboytes, a break dancer from Redwood City, and a friend of Bakersfield rappers D-Squad and associate Mike the DJ, performed his specialty of eight years called the Robot.

Aboytes, sporting a black T-shirt with haphazard white lettering that read, "Old Skool Poping," oblivious to the mostly vacant gym floor, relentlessly demonstrated the Robot, as well as Popping.

"A lot of Robotics is Popping," Aboytes said. "They're related."

While members of BC's Student Government Association, including Activities Board representatives and party coordinators Anthony Doser and Leah Crane, stood at the ready organizing gift cards for a drawing benefiting the upcoming Relay for Life event, cooks from Delano's Kong's Dynasty restaurant prepared Chinese food for $5 a plate.

As SGA members milled around waiting for more students and trying on assorted colored party leis, Mike the DJ lined up rap songs by E-40, Kanye West, Federation, Mobbdeep and 112 while Aboytes nimbly rolled his wrists, pointed and gyrated his body doing his Robotics and Popping and also Up Rock, which, according to Aboytes, is a kind of duel or standoff between two dancers who seem to begin by staring each other down.

Up Rock, Aboytes said, entails "making fun of and attacking another person without hitting."

Vying for the dancing spotlight that evening was Louie Vhan, an 18-year-old BC student majoring in biology. With a lollipop askew in his mouth and sporting a rakish-looking green corduroy railroad porter's hat, Vhan countered Aboytes with a brand of freestyle hip-hop dancing that featured what Vhan called "The Urban." Sharing the challenge with Vhan was Vhan's SGA friend Shireana Chan, 18, a biochemistry major.

Among the BC no-shows was the winner of the Ms. Bakersfield College contest, Morgan Dixon.

For the most part, Spring Fling week was a wash this year. The week preceding Spring Break is usually filled with fun activities for students to participate in on campus, but this year many of the planned events fell through, according to SGA representatives.

"What happened? Mother Nature happened," Doser said. "We had a lot of events that were going to be held outside. But we got lucky on [April 4]," he said referring to Bakersfield Idol, a karaoke contest. Fifteen students competed in the competition, which ended in a tie between Judy Holliday and La'Joy Gentry.

Continued...

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