Minutes before senior Patrick Huynh took the stage for his last Homecoming Quad day with fellow seniors Tim Chau, Jonathan Huie and James Freeman, he could the beat of his heart above the bass of the music.

After three minutes of performing moves such as jackhammers and doing pretzel-like stances, Huynh was stunned to hear the deafening roar of the crowd.

Learning how to dance at this level, however, was something he had to work hard to learn. He started break dancing in sixth grade after watching professional dance crews, such as Super Cr3w, on America's Best Dance Crew. Huynh tried to replicate the crew’s moves himself, but found it was difficult to learn from videos.

“Learning from YouTube was hard because there was no real instructor teaching,” Huynh said. “It was all learning from a video so no one ever told me what I was doing wrong or how to fix my mistakes.”

For two years, Huynh practiced breakdancing from these videos, but in order to improve his dancing skills, he joined a local dance class in Cupertino called Dance Academy USA.

Huynh said his favorite moves are power moves. These are performed in a circle with transitions linking each one to make it seem as fluid as possible. His absolute favorite move, however, is the jackhammer: a one handed body lift and spin.

While Hyun has danced in a couple of breakdancing competitions like the Cypher Cup Cupertino Edition and the Cypher Cup Santa Clara edition, he hasn’t been able  to make it past the preliminaries. Huynh plans to participate in even more competitions and join a dance crew when he goes to college. 

“I like how breakdancing gives me a sense of accomplishment when I finally [learn] a move,” Huynh said. “It teaches me how determination can eventually lead to success after long hours of practice. The sense of accomplishment is basically my motivator to want to keep dancing.”