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Dancing in the Super Bowl Turned into a Dreamlike Experience for JabaWockeeZ Choreographer

Bruno Mars and Phil Tayag at Super Bowl 50
Bruno Mars and Phil Tayag at Super Bowl 50

By Ed Diokno

Remember all the smooth dance moves Bruno Mars and his Hooligans performed in the video for Uptown Funk? The choreography was created by Phil Tayag, the Sacramento-based dancer who gained fame as a member of Asian American dance crew JabbaWockeeZ, the season1 winners of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew.

Remember him? The guy with a mask? Oh, right, they all wore masks. It was part of their trademark look and they never showed their faces.

RELATED: Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk”

Tayag was the dancer known as Swaggerboy, aka “S.B.” In an exclusive interview in Billboard,  the Filipino American explains how he and Mars teamed up to create the video for Uptown Funk and how the Filipino American entertainer asked the NorCal guy to join the Hooligans dance crew for Super Bowl 50’s epic half-time show with Beyonce and Cold Play.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” said Tayag. “This particular performance was a very significant one for me because the name that was kind of given to me coming up — I dance and I do music, rap, produce — was ‘Swagger Boy’ a long time ago, like maybe in ‘05, and it turned into “S.B.” I’m from Sacramento so I came up in Northern California, and the Bay Area was pretty much like our stomping grounds. This is where I was groomed. Where we stayed in the Bay is where I used to perform when I was 16 years old. Behind where we stayed was this Johnny Rockets where I had my first date. So it was a very big deal to be out here.

“Coming up (as) this struggling artist, street dancer, garage kid, coming up and, you know, things kind of popped off for myself and my crew Jabbawockeez in 2008. We were on MTV, won America’s Best Dance Crew. After that, that was where everything kind of took off. When we went on tour, I was really only listening to two artists at the time: Coldplay and Beyonce.​”

Read the entire interview here.

The JabaWockeeZ is currently performing in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand. Check here for dates and times.

JabaWockeeZ
The white masks became a trademark look in the beginning for the JabaWockeeZ dance crew.

 

(Ed Diokno writes a blog :Views From The Edge: news and analysis from an Asian American perspective.)
 
(AsAmNews is an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter and sharing our stories.)

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