Dante Basco: My take on life…

Here’s a poem I wrote to honor my dancing days…

I started out as a dancer and I’ll always be a dancer in my heart. Since the 80’s, me and my brothers and sister have been dancing. First as breakdancers in contests and on  the streets of San Francisco. Later at the San Francisco Ballet Company, then ultimately we moved to Los Angeles and we all got into acting and it would seem that we moved on from dance. But for anyone who was around the LA club scene in the last 20 years, you probably seen me getting down on my share of dance floors. And when I got the chance to do “Take the Lead”, I finally got to dance on the big screen. It seriously was a dream come true. Something about dancing… communicating and connecting without the use of words. Freestylin’, groovin’. battling over some dope track on the dance floor, feeling like a jazz musician running exquisite riffs with everyone watching… I still love dancing. Sometimes I get sad that I don’t get out to dance that much anymore.

Last week, I thoroughly  enjoyed my self watching the world premiere of the new musical, “Krunk Fu Battle Battle”, at East West Players. It was great to see the new upcoming Asian American talent onstage singing and dancing. Great direction by Tim Dang. I believed he developed this project from jumpstreet, it’s a great idea, sort of a Hip Hop “Karate Kid”. Tim really brought it together and pulled it off excellently. There are some great songs, my friend Beau Sia, wrote the lyrics. He’s just an amazing poet and kills it on this whole project. Changing up styles from old school to new. The Brooklyn song and the duet “It’s Got to Begin Somewhere”‘ were me favorites. Shout out to the writer, Qui Nuguyen, and a big shout out to Blas Lorenzo playing Sir Master Cert, keeper of the old school flame. It’s great to see him back onstage. We come from the same hometown of Pittsburg, CA and coming from a small hometown, we all grew up as cousins. I put a clip of him in this poem. Back in the day he was a hometown celebrity, the badest dancer in town, “Baby Blas.”

Check out the play… I’m definitely cosigning on this one… Much love and congrats to the whole cast and crew.