Meet the Team!

Directors

Ben Yau

The Innovator

He may not be able to swim, but he can dance like no one’s watching, an innovation he calls “shower dancing”, even though most of the time he dances, he is dry, and not in fact, in the bathroom. A Senior Unix System Administrator (a.k.a. a really big nerd) by day (and night), he fearlessly leads the One2Swing Jitterbugs through complex choreography that he bravely diagrams with the help of anything within reach. An award-winning lindy-hopper, his formations have also earned rave reviews from Patton, Eisenhower, and Napoleon. Among Ben’s many talents is his ability to silence entire rooms with a single joke. With his wife Sheri, he teaches, competes, and judges at events worldwide. They also are the masterminds behind One2Swing.com, the lifeforce of Third Saturday Swing, the best monthly dance event in Los Angeles. Ben and Sheri also teach weekly classes at the Dance Family Studio and private lessons. Ben is also the co-creator, developer, designer, and mastermind behind IamLindyHop.com, a site that asks, “What’s your story?”

Sheri Kang Yau

The Type A

“This one time at band camp…” might not be words you would expect to hear from this national lindy-hop champion and co-director of our team, and yet she admits (proudly, we might add) that she was a card-carrying member of the color guard and her high school marching band. Did we mention she was also Valedictorian for her Master’s program? This walking Type A makes sure all the details are taken care of; from scheduling rehearsals to booking studio spaces to planning team events, Sheri makes organizing all 26 of us look as effortless as doing the kip! (Well, as long as she is the one doing the kip. When some of us do it, it looks more like someone is hoisting a sail…) Sheri recently created IamLindyHop.com with her husband and dance partner, Ben Yau. Together they travel the world, teaching, (eating), dancing, and spreading the love of dance! You can catch them live at their weekly lessons at the Dance Family Studio, or bring them to your computer via IDance.net

The Cast

Alanna Quan

The Bombshell

Professional hair stylist by day, swing dancer and extremely talented chef by night, this in demand baker has more than just cupcakes in the oven. In other words, we here at One2Swing Jitterbugs do not only get new team members through recruiting, we also get them through ** nudge nudge wink wink say no more! ** Heh heh heh.

I must say, Alanna looks like a vintage pinup girl from the 1940’s and 1950’s in that picture on the left, meowwwwwwww!

Allen Reyes

The Clip Commander

When he’s not busy editing and uploading all of our dance clips (which he says is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week job), Allen can be found behind the camera, recording special (and potentially embarrassing) team moments. Our 2008 Co-MVP is a fun and playful dancer, and is a favorite of many follows on the dance floor. Allen can be found at the far corners of the earth, also known as Fontanta. Allen would also like to remind the ladies that he is not the only male on the team to own cats (thanks Cliff!), although he is the only one to sleep with stuffed animals.

Chris Do

The Cheerleader

Don’t let his smile fool you. Beneath that innocent facade is…well, actually, beneath the innocent facade is Mickey Mouse. Hailing all the way from Irvine, Chris was lured to our team with the promise of dancing with beautiful women, for which he happily makes the weekly Northerly trek. His enthusiasm for dance and for life is contagious! Chris is the resident DJ at Atomic Ballroom in Irvine, and can be found every Friday night in the DJ booth. On the weekends, he can be found at rehearsal, just like the rest of us. Chris would like everyone to know that deep down, he is a tough guy.

Delphine Laurens

Zee Sassy One

Et maintenant, le moment que nous attendons tous: Delphine! As you may have realized, Delphine is French. Quite French. We made her take her beret off for the camera, and you can’t tell, but she is holding a croissant in her left hand. Delphine was born and raised in Paris, France and used to hang her laundry on the Eiffel Tower (she tells us that it dries faster that way). Her background is in rock and roll and Salsa (sadly, not the tasty chip dip), but she was mesmerized by some lindy hop video clips and stumbled from discotheque to discotheque, in search of instruction. Along the way, she managed to learn from some of the top instructors and acquired a dance partner and husband Augie, who convinced her to move to Los Angeles. Delphine agreed to relocate, and is happily pursing the American Dream of becoming an accountant. Delphine competes, teaches, and most importantly, dances all over the United States and internationally.

Doris Leung

The One Armed Bandit

Doris started off her partner dancing career by taking a social dancing class at CSULB. She loved Salsa and Waltz and was an aspiring Salsa dancer but could never (in her own words) “bring sexy back”. We here at O2SJ agree she’s a bit too much of a dork for that and long story short she found Lindy to be her calling. She loves that it can be high energy and awesome or slow and smooth “like a baby’s butt” (again her own words, you think I’d choose to make that up?). Oh, and during our auditions she got in a car accident and her airbag went off against her arm, the airbag won. (And I guess effectively that means so did Doris). GO DORIS!

Jasmine Cheung

The Natural

Jasmine is a natural born performer – actually, when the doctor delivered her, she was doing a Chinese folk dance and seemed a bit annoyed that they interrupted her routine. She has a glowing smile and radiates joy, both on and off the dance floor. Our 2008 Co-MVP is always ready to perform, no matter how insanely hot or cold the weather, how bruised and battered she is, her eyes light up the minute she gets close to the stage. While at UCLA, she ran the Swing Club and Swing Dance Performance Team (it was, as she says while stroking her chin, Eggscellent.) Jasmine (better known as Jassy or Nuage) also loves to experiment with makeup and is most famous for her trademark “Smoky mermaid eye” look which has been trying to work its way into our routines for the last few years. Jasmine is a regular teacher for One2Swing at the Dance Family Studio in Pasadena, California with her partner, Sam “The Happy Face” Chan.

Jason Vaughan

The Buff Guy

Jason is a pretty simple guy. He likes Coke over Pepsi, Mcdonald’s over Burger King, Vanilla over Chocolate, and played the clarinet in middle school. He’s quite cerebral and has a thing for philosophers, innovators, explorers, and the like. Jason has quite a dance background with lots of classes and social dancing to back it up. He was a member of the nationally reknowned Super-Cali-Lindy-Liscious dance team. He also currently teaches regularly at LindyGroove, the big weekly Swing Dance venue in Pasadena, CA. Oh, and he likes to work out – which is why you would want him in a dark alley with you because if there were ever a sign of trouble he could pick you up and run pretty fast!

JP Babiera

The Panda

We actually imported JP from the Philippines. This hottie from Makati has women crawling all over him (especially during rehearsals when we are doing aerial work. Then we are literally head over heels for him!) JP, better known as “Panda”, was recently the inspiration for the hit movie about a panda who knows martial arts. The producers didn’t want to give him any money, so they changed the martial arts style from judo (which is what JP does) to Kung Fu. Being the resident Panda, he also gives fantastic bear hugs. Originally a full-fledged jock, JP traded in his soccer and roller hockey gear for his dance shoes when he found out there would be girls involved in swing dancing. He has a distinctive, yet gentle style and really takes good care of the follows.

Kennly Asato

The Ewok

Kennly is … short. Seriously short. We, the O2SJ bio writers would like to write more but really when we ask ourselves “What do we know about Kennly?” the prominent and overwhelming thought is .. “Well, she’s short!” Did you know on our team mailing list we estimate about 70% of the email traffic are short jokes about Kennly? Like this one for example: “I can’t believe Kennly got pick pocketed. Who could stoop so low?” Or: “Guess who’s doing the solo? Kennly because she is so low!”. Ha ha ha … Okay okay so besides being short, Kennly is also the team jokester and is able to silence He-Cap with a single insult. Don’t worry she makes up for it by being an awesome dancer. If you ever get the opportunity to dance with her (she leads too!) then you know she is awesomely fun to dance with. And seriously Kennly is just an awesome person. If you ever get the opportunity to spend any kind of time with her, she is really funny and always cheerful, even to those on her bad side! That’s quite awesome! Oh yeah, and check out her artificial flower hair clip business: http://bloomingvintage.com.

Masako Inoue

The Strong One

Masako is strong. Really strong. Her muscles have muscles. When Masako’s in the water, she doesn’t paddle; the waves get out of the way out of fright. You should have seen her pushup test at our team audition. Every 10 pushups she would look up and ask us if she should do more. At about 50, Chris Do a.k.a. The Cheerleader was seen whimpering off to the corner of the room.

Masako even has a dance background starting with classical Japanese dance when she was young though she didn’t stick with it because she didn’t like wearing kimonos. Dance wise, Masako brings a grace and elegance to the team. And now she can kip too! Way to go Masako!

Miki Kawamura

The Innocent One

If there was a vote for person who probably gets the fewest amount of dirty jokes told on the team, that would be Miki. Besides that, Miki is just a very sweet gal and also uber-talented on the dance floor from choreography to aerials to just looking good while dancing. She is currently dating Allen Reyes a.k.a. The Clip Commander and boy did she make him work for her hand in dating even though it was meant to be from the start. They met dancing and Miki even says how she got interested in dancing while she was out living in Riverside when she saw a flyer for a swing dancing club ..and it turns out the flyer was made by Allen. Isn’t that just enough to make you gush and want to go out and write a romantic comedy?

Pauline Yasuda

The Obscene One

Take the most dirty and obscene person you know. That person wouldn’t hold a candle to Pauline. She is so powerfully obscene. But yet ambitious at the same time. A believer in building communities, she has successfully brought the team culture and humor down to her obscene level and we thank her for that and the hours of obscene comedy she has provided us. Speaking of comedy, Pauline writes sketch comedy and performs at the famous ACME theatre (though it has recently come to light that the reason she may have spent all these years on her “comedy craft” was so that one day she could write a sketch where she could expose one of her breasts). Whether it’s joyously playing “Kip” to Jasmine’s “Rex Kwon Do” or shooting fireballs out of her butt or just lighting up the dance floor with her infectious energy, Pauline is always ready to help us all have a good time on and off the dance floor.

Peter Kertzner

The Blonde Tall One

You know how it goes. Peter is a great guy with many different interests and talents and abilities. But come on, on this team, standing 6′4″ the first thing you’re going to notice is that he’s tall. REALLY TALL. Rumor has it Ben is starting up a O2SJ Basketball team. Rumors or not, this guy can also dance and has a lot of fun doing so. Not sure what else to write until we get his bio sheet in but I need to fill in a few more sentences just for formatting sake (you see the bio should be a minimum length) so there you go. I hope that’s enough. Oh, and Woohooo Peter! (Kertzner? But I don’t even know her! ah ha ha ha!)

Quinn Nguyen

The Text Master

Quinn is Mr. Reliable. He is at practice on average 8.2 minutes early. He takes 4.3 pee breaks per hour (mostly due to his 2.3 liters of Diet Pepsi he drinks per day). He kips 4.5 girls 5.3 times per practice. We also know he loves to sew, he’s a bit of a perfectionist, he spends more time getting ready in the bathroom than most people (guys or gals), he enjoys having individual conversations with all 23,211 hairs on his head (not deep conversations but little check-in conversations just to make sure they’re all good), he has a guy-love relationship with Allen a.k.a. The Clip Commander, and deep down inside he is a very sensitive and caring little huggy bear. Oh, and if you ever want to reach him, text him. He even answers text messages faster than phone calls. At practice, we’ve found it more effective to text choreography changes to him instead of speaking with him face to face. Can you say “Textual Healing”?

Roy Samson

Roy Samson

The Smiling Buddha

Roy is awesome. Dancing with Roy is like dancing with the smiling Buddha (except that he’s Catholic). Follows who have social danced with Roy confirm that the smile is a permanent fixture on his face. While Roy has the uncanny ability to do just about everything, from aerials to fast dancing, to writing long email jokes, to being able to smile in any situation and having an infections guffawing laugh, this superhero does have just one weakness: He’s unable to keep his hat on during performances. If you’re curious, just search for his perfomance clips on YouTube and watch how he has to constantly keep his hands on his head in order to prevent his hat from falling. Though lately scientists have theorized it is not actually a weakness and more a symptom of his own “ginormous smiling” super powers – in that his huge smile is what makes his head grow bigger during performances which causes his hats to fall off. Team Director Ben has recently tried measures to counteract this “hat falling off” business from telling very bad un-laugh-worthy jokes to calling him “Ron” but Roy’s powers are too strong and the world is a happier place because of his smiling and laughing.

Samuel Chan

The Happy Face

Sam always has a big smile on his face. Although I guess that’s where the smile would be anyway, and not on his arm or something. Hailing all the way from Hong Kong, Sam started dancing at an early age. He writes in his bio sheet that his first ballet/modern dance was when he was in kindergarten and he was “wind”. We consulted his early dance teachers to find out what that meant and they gave us a knowing look, a bottle of Lactaid to give to Sam, and that’s when we understood why Sam always had a smile on his face. Besides his great happy performance smile, Sam also is a versatile dancer that continues to improve every day on every aspect of his dancing. He is also interested in photography, rock climbing, cooking, eating, reading, and ping pong … all at the same time. But “The one who shoots photos while climbing rocks to cook and eat food from a recipe book he’s reading and using as a ping pong paddle” was too long of a nickname so we’ll just leave it at Sam is also a very happy guy. (ha ha ha “Wind”)

Sharlene Choy

The Bird

Sharlene is our resident aerial specialist. We call her “Aerial Training Wheels”. Meaning guys who are new to aerials that may not know what they’re doing – those guys are paired up with Shar. No matter how badly they mess up an aerial Shar manages to land okay. Not only that but halfway through the botched aerial while adjusting her body to land safely she’ll at the same time (while in the air) tell him what he needs to correct. Amazing stuff. Shar also loves flowers and has her own flower decorating business for wedding and events. She also helps out at the family business at BBQ Express in Eagle Rock Mall (like Panda Express but better). Oh, and she can communicate with dolphins. Pretty talented gal!

Stephanie Gordon

Stephanie Gordon

The Limber One

We here at O2SJ knew pretty quickly Stephanie was going to make the team because during week two of the tryouts during our post-practice powwow Ben kept calling her “Stacey” instead of “Stephanie”. You see he often calls us all by the wrong name in practice. He says it’s a term of affection but we all know he’s just going a little bit… well, you know ..senile ain’t just a river in Egypt. Ah ha ha ha! You might be wondering why we @ O2SJ are writing about Ben so much. Well, when we get Stacey’s ..er..Stephanie’s bio sheet we’ll have more to say about her. We CAN say though that besides being a great dancer, she’s pretty athletic – at our Payke Gymnastics workout today she was rockin’ the cartwheels, roundoffs, and somersaults. WAY TO GO STEPHANIE!

Ted Stanley

Ted Stanley

The Dark Tall One

Ted is “The Dark Tall One” as he is the tall one with the dark hair (as opposed to Peter “The Blonde Tall One” Kertzner who would be the tall one with the blonde hair). Yes, we @ O2SJ really dig deep for those bio nicknames. Seeing Ted in all his 6′4″ glory, we wonder again if Ben is starting an O2SJ basketball team. Nevertheless, The Dark Tall One (like The Blonde Tall One) can also dance and also has a lot of fun doing so. That is quite awesome! And also as we need to fill in a minimum of space, I will now write multiple versions of his name: Ted, Teddy, Teduardo, Tedamame Beans, So.Cal Tedison, Ted the Head, Me-Ted, Ted-erball Pole, Ted-quan-do, Tedward Scissorhands. The list goes on. GO TED!

Vicky Chan

The Muppet Face

You need only watch Vicky shoot a fireball once to know why we call her muppet face. We’re not sure exactly how a human person can contort their face to display such a wild and varied range of antics but Vicky has this talent down pat proving she is certainly a wonder of nature. In fact, when we taped a short solo dance demo of her she managed to include all known 37 genres of dance into a 10 second clip. Who can do that? Seriously? Vicky, besides being a dancing and performing wonder, also helps run LindyGroove, LA’s (and possibly the nation’s) largest weekly venue. When she’s not doing all that, she does a lot of graphic design and event planning on the side, including designing the popular O2SJ “California Rolls” t-shirt. Yay Vicky! That’s how we roll!

Thank you to our previous and honorary members:

Anthony Winn, Augie Freeman, Barbara Yeh, Brian Abe, Catia Chen, Cliff Quan, Courtney Widger, Daniel Young, Delfa Mejia, Everest Ling, Laura Manning, Laura Shigemitsu, Mae-Lae Louie, Neil Figuracion, Sonya Choy, Tiffany Cheung, Tomoko Young