When did you first start breaking?
I started the summer of 2003 at my undergrad back at MIT in Boston. There was a breaking club there and they practiced in the dance studio at my dorm. I was a cheerleader at the time, and I would walk by and thought it was so cool. I dropped by out of curiosity one day and they were like, “hey there's an event, do you wanna go?” It was Spin Factor 4 B-boy Olympics and there was a b-girl battle too, I think Trinity won. When I saw what it was like, I wanted to be a part of it. I was sucked in because I'm a competitive person and I like competitions in general. so yeah, that's how I got started. That’s also how I met my first crew Florox because they went to MIT practice too. Who were your teachers and influences?
My first crew was Florox, they took me in and taught me a lot. At the time, they were all pretty much high school kids and I was in college so I was a little older but they had all been breaking for a while.
After Florox, my teacher was primarily Omen. It wasn't like he sat me down at practice and were like “do these drills and these moves!” I did that on my own, but the real guidance was in conversations where he would show me footage of Boogie Brats and Megas and we would talk about battles that we saw or I would listen to him and Step2 talk about battle strategy. Analyzing stuff is how I learned a lot about battling, creating, and how to look at shapes and put things together, which I think is a bit more difficult, because its hard to explain that to someone when you're teaching them. I was really glad that I was able to have that exposure because it shaped a lot of my influences and how I break now. Any other dancers or non dancers you saw on the scene who influenced you and your dancing?
Other than Omen, Step2, Megas, and the early Boogie Brats, in terms of how I wanted to look, there were a couple of b-girls that I really looked up to. I really liked ABgirl, JessFX, and Soulstice. ABgirl, I liked because she had power. She was strong, she had freezes and halos so that aspect I really liked and wanted to train to have those powerful elements. I really looked up to JessFX from Supernaturalz and how she moved in terms of her threads, flow, and the way she folded and made shapes. She had this specific form to her, and people saw her influence in my dance from the beginning. I was also very inspired by Soulstice from Lions of Zion with the way she used her hands. You’ll notice I have a lot of hand movements. Those 3 elements I feel like you can always triangulate in my style. I liked Ducky because of how he danced, Ghost from Lions Of Zion, and Nemesis and Crazy Smooth from Breaks Kru. It's not that I ever wanted to dance like them I just liked watching their style and energy. How did you get your B-girl name?
My official breaking name is Queen NV. I first got the idea from a character in the anime Full Metal Alchemist called Envy and also from B-boy The End, from Korea, which was one of
those unorthodox abstract names. I would look at other girls and say “I wish I had that move.” I was kind of envious of them and then Omen told me I could use a N and a V to make it look different. It would stand for No Victory, which is also kind of unorthodox and abstract. But everyone would always misunderstand and say “what? like you're always losing?” so I'd have to clarify and say that it's No Victory for my opponents, so I guess it wasn't planned out so well. The queen part came when I saw that Ken Swift was Prince Ken Swift I thought that was cool to be like royalty in a way so I thought I would use Queen.
Who are the Bgirls in your generation?
Back in Boston when I started, there was a B-girl her name was Oracle and I was hanging out with her a lot. In Boston, it was just mostly me, Oracle, and my crew mate Katya aka Bgirl Gypsy (she started a little after me in Colorado).
From what I remember in this area (New York, tristate) it was me J-LaRok and Macca. When I first moved here Nemesis brought me to a Jersey jam and Macca was there. He pointed her out to me and was like “this girl is gonna be super dope.” That was around 2005.
I moved to New York in fall of 05’ and as we were both training, I would always encounter her. Often it would be me and Macca in the finals. J-LaRok was really young at the time but I would also see her at the jams, and it was always the 3 of us bgirls making it far. I also had a battle partner named Bgirl Dscko from Maryland. She is one of my best
friends and we'd always visit each other and battle together.
What are some of your biggest accomplishments?
2014 I won the bgirl battle at Pro-Am Miami. I also won the B-girl 2v2 at Bboy Massacre twice. Once with J-LaRok and once with Katya.
I’m proud to be one of the two first female commentators for the Silverback Open in 2018 as well as the founder of Floor Beingz with Candy, where we live stream and commentate for breaking events. I also started Breaks U in 2004. I'm pretty proud of that too. At the peak of it, the jam was capacity and people were waiting outside the door trying to get in. Eventually organizing it was getting stressful and so I decided to pass the torch.
Tell me about Floor Beingz how did that happen?
I originally had the idea back in 2014. I have a lot of friends in the gaming community, and in gaming and sports, commentating is already thing, so when I saw them doing it, I thought it was something we were missing in breaking. A lot of people when they watch breaking, especially if they don't dance themselves, don't really understand whats going on. It made me start thinking that this would be a good way of growing the breaking community and making it more accessible to non-dancers. On top of that, if they're not really into breaking, they probably won't go to a jam, but at least they can get exposed to it from their own homes. Two years later, I saw that Profo Won and Ark had started commentating on the west coast and I thought that it would be nice to have a female voice and an east coast voice representing as well. As I was working on learning about it, I was thinking about who would be a good partner to have. At the time, I was living in Boston around April of 2018.
I was at Candy’s house watching the North American Red Bull B-girl finals, essentially commentating that on our own over some cheesecake, and I realized that she would be the perfect person to partner with because she was so outspoken and knowledgeable. So between Red Bull 2018 and Floor Lords Anniversary 2018 was when I started teaching myself how to set up the equipment we would need to make this happen. I'm not a tech person so that took a few months of YouTube tutorial watching. During the youth Olympics and Red Bull there was a lot of criticism towards the women who were commentating because they weren’t from the breaking community and had no knowledge of breaking. I was already getting started with my live stream so instead of asking women who weren't in the community to commentate Silverback, here we were, 2 women already doing it. The timing was just right for us. Commentating isn't as easy as it sounds. The hardest part was learning how to talk about the battles in a way that people who didn't know breaking could understand, and having to do the analyses in real-time.
How about Breaks U? You're very passionate about the college breaking scene, What was the idea behind that jam? My first jam that I ever organized was in 2004 at M.I.T. I threw three jams at M.I.T with collegiate battles, and a fourth that wasn't affiliated with the school. I like organizing and planning so when I came to New York, some of my Florox crew mates had founded the breaking club at NYU and they wanted to throw an event there. They asked me to help organize it, so that's when we started doing the intercollegiate battles under the name Breaks U.
college dancers are sort of in their own bubble. They dance for a couple of years ... but they don't get integrated into the community. They just stop dancing after they graduate, but for me, breaking changed my life.
The goal was to get the college students to experience breaking jams. It wasn't even about the competition, but meeting people and vibing out. A lot of college clubs and college dancers are sort of in their own bubble. They dance for a couple of years, and maybe do a couple of shows for their school, but they don't get integrated into the community. They just stop dancing after they graduate, but for me, breaking changed my life. I was lucky enough to be able to know the people in the community, go to jams, and just learn about our scene and our culture. That's why I was able to stick with it.
I met all types of people who grew up differently than me but our lives all intersected at this one thing we all had in common. It really shaped how I see things and shaped the person I am. I want more people to be able to experience that and I felt like putting together these jams was a way to do that.
"We have dope dancers but a lot of them lack many professional skills. If we want to help our community grow we need to have those professional skills like lawyers and business people to help represent the community."
Another reason I felt so strongly about bringing college students is that I think we need to expand the talent pool in our community. We have dope dancers but a lot of them lack many professional skills. If we want to help our community grow we need to have those professional skills like lawyers and business people to help represent the community. It's why I focus on the college kids because these guys are studying to be these professionals and for them to understand the culture and be apart of it is important for them to be able to represent it on a bigger scale.
What do you do outside of dance? I heard you got a PhD.
I have a PhD in stem cell research from Cornell. Halfway through my studies, I realized that I didn’t really enjoy the research, so I decided I wanted to go into the business side of things. After I graduated with my PhD in 2016, I went into business strategy consulting for a couple of years, and now I work for a pharma company doing business strategy for the world's first cancer cell therapy. It's amazing because I can finally have a regular schedule that I can work my practices around.
Did you ever do any other styles of dance and how did that influence your breaking?
I did cheerleading in high school and continued when I went to college. I became the youngest captain at my undergrad and started a competition team because I wasn’t interested in just cheering for the football team. A really important part of having the competition team was teaching the other cheerleaders how to cheer and stunt. We conditioned together so we could get to the point where the girls could lift each other. I was in my junior year of college when I started breaking, so at one point,
I was practicing both. Cheerleading already had me used to being on my hands because of all the tricks we had to do so I think it helped when I started breaking.