Interesting People

NICK MATALONE, freshman undeclared

Matalone stands in the midst of a crowd surrounding a visiting preacher, although evidently unconnected to the proceedings, dancing on his own as though in a trance.  The CT asks him to tell us a little about it.

NM Popping is this dance form that developed in California. There’s a lot of different moves you can go through. It’s based on these things called “hits,” which is where you get the name “popping” – it’s a spasm of the muscle. I started about nine months ago with this club here called the Poppers of VCU, have you heard that name?

CT I’ve heard it around.

NM We teach people, and that’s how I got started.  The president is a really good friend of mine now – it’s a great family.

CT Would you say you’re fairly widespread?

NM It’s a really underground thing; there’s a bunch of competitions involved with it, and it’s a lot bigger in California right now –right now on the east coast, it’s more about break dancing and housing, which is kind of like break dancing, but you don’t get on the ground.

But popping is not too old, about 30, 40 years. It developed out of something called “bopping,” which is a lot like popping but using your chest instead … And “popping” is like an umbrella term sort of, there’s also “locking,” or “tutting.”

It’s kind of like a secret martial arts of dancing. It’s not something many people can learn because only a few people can do it, but they don’t really teach anyone how to do it. The only people who I know do it — I don’t know them personally but I know them as dancers — is Mad Chad, who’s in the LXD, who does those Step it Up movies, always doing the Robot. His mentor is Boppin’ Andre, who developed bopping.

CT Hence the name.

NM Yeah. He’s kind of one of the founders of popping too, because everything was kind of based off of that.

CT Do you yourself have any trademark moves, or say, specialties?

NM My specialty’s probably the Robot. Or like, the Wave. (performs both) My outfit is usually this hat, sunglasses and the wife-beater. People who usually get noticed, when they get started, it’s by what they dress as, you know, and then later the dance style.

CT Do you get to perform outside of a Compass setting?

NM We do a few performances every year, in the second semester usually. We do talent shows, you know, VCU’s Got Talent, sometimes STRUT. But individually, it’s all about jams, which are these underground dance competitions. There’s one I just went to this week called Soul Society, like this huge jam; all the best in the east coast come to it.

CT Do these events cease to be underground if they’re printed in the paper?

NM Oh no, you can. It’s not like it wants to be underground.

CT How often do you get new people coming and wanting to learn from you?

NM Yeah, we want to get more people into it ’cause it’s not really that hard to learn. It takes a while, and like everything it takes a lot of practice, but it’s something you can do in your spare time. There’s tons of different days that we’re out here.

CT Last thing – this is your chance to say one thing to the entire CT readership.

NM Just that we practice every Friday at 5 o’ clock, and we have a Facebook page. If people wanna come on down, we’re willing to accept everyone. We don’t care if you’re new to the dance or not.