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Background Performances Competitions Create and Teaches Contact Assignment 2 Assignment 3 Assignment 4 Assignment 5
My name is Zachariah Abueg (he/him), and Fresh Off the Beat is the beloved
dance team that I danced with for two years!
Fresh Off the Beat, or FOB, is an amateur dance team that stems from the
Filipino Student Association at the University of Central Florida.
We perform, compete, and host dance workshops at UCF and throughout
the Florida dance community. Every semester, the team holds auditions
and welcomes a new group of people to dance and bond together. By semester's
end, we're as tight-knight a family as anyone of them could have ever
dreamed of.
From Fall 2017 to Spring 2019, I performed and competed with FOB. But it was
more than just dance, bigger than just dance. I met so many beautiful souls
throughout my seasons on the team, all containing multitudes. Some of the
funniest, most compassionate, most talented people I know, I met on this team.
The friends I've made from it are invaluable to me and I'm so grateful to have
been a part of this experience.
In my second year on FOB, I was given the opportunity to lead this team
alongside one of my best, most talented friends, Kylha DelosReyes, with the help
of another two of my best, most talented friends, Kelly Mac and Jonathan Dioneda.
It was the craziest, most difficult thing I've ever had to do. Yet, with everyone
I danced with, laughed with, sung with, was fools with, "ooh ooh ooh ooh"d with -
it was also the funnest, dearest, most special thing I've ever done, all because
of the funnest, dearest, most special people I've ever been with. We danced our
asses off and ended up winning 3rd place at Def Talent Jam and 1st place at
PhilFest. It was a perfect culmination of our time growing and bonding together.
Dancing with FOB is a cornerstone of my college experience. Spending two months
with the same group of people sweating your life off in practice together is quite the
way to bond together. I wouldn't have changed anything about it. There's a
particularly grueling time of the FOB season we call Hell Week, which is when we
have practices that are much later nights than usual in preparation for the
upcoming competition of the season. It really takes a toll on everyone and
the very late nights make many of us take a backseat in either sleep or
academic performance. It's pretty tough. Yet, throughout that week and after it,
we take care of each other and become the closest we've been the entire season.
Come competition time, we bleed our souls out and leave everything we've got on
the floor.
Going through the season of intense practices together and getting
through the hell that is Hell Week really bonds us and brings us together in a
way I've never bonded with anyone before. It's perhaps the most special thing
about FOB to me, the thing that I hold dearest to my heart. I had the time of
my life dancing with FOB, and it's all thanks to the beautiful souls I've been
with on this team.
FOB Forever!
Every semester - fall, spring, and summer - Fresh Off the Beat has practices
leading up to one or more performances at the very end. Here is a list of
FOB's performances the year I
co-coordinated the team with Kylha:
The FOB season culminates in a competition every fall and spring semester.
Every fall, UF's Filipino Student Association hosts a competition called Def Talent Jam, or DTJ, welcoming dance teams of Filipino student associations from all over Florida and Georgia. Every year, there is a different theme for DTJ and each team is tasked with a challenge. During my year of leading the team with Kylha, DTJ's theme was "Ako Ay", or "I Am" in Tagalog, and the challenge was to incorporate at least one Filipino cultural dance in a fusion piece. Our set's theme was "Ako Ay Sinta", or "I Am Love": sinta is an old-fashioned Tagalog word for love, and calling someone your "sinta" has the same charm as calling them your "beloved" or "darling". In our set, we followed a story of friendship, heartbreak, and love. Additionally, we chose to incorporate Sayaw sa Bangko, which is Tagalog for "dance on a bench", a folk dance from the Pangasinan province of the Philippines.
Every spring, Philippine Cultural Foundation, Inc. from Tampa hosts a competition called PhilFest Revolution, welcoming dance teams from all over Florida. Every year, each team is tasked with the challenge of incorporating a Filipino cultural dance given to them. During my year of leading the team with Kylha, FOB was tasked with incorporating Banga, a folk dance from the Kalinga villages of the Philippines inspired by Kalinga women's daily routine of fetching water with bangas, or pots. Since there was no theme to abide by and thus no need to follow a story, we chose to create a set of the songs we wanted to choreograph to, just experimenting and having fun!
After the fall and spring FOB seasons, FOB hosts dance workshops that we call Create
and Teaches, where anyone who's been on the team for at least one semester - past or
present - can create their own choreography and... you guessed it,
teach it! It gives our members a chance to experiment, find themselves in
the art, and just have fun!
Here's one of my own:
If you're interested in joining Fresh Off the Beat or want to reach out to them, here are their social media links!
| FSA at UCF's Fresh Off the Beat | |
| @fob_ucf | |
| freshoffthebeat@gmail.com |