In college, in the early 1990s, Calvario included this uniquely American dance form in a Philippine cultural show. He formed the dance company Kaba Modern. Soon, more Asian-American dance companies began forming at universities in Southern California.

“It quickly spread to the Chinese associations, the Japanese, Vietnamese. So it was a really interesting time because, within a year, it spread so fast.”

Lorenzo Perillo is teaching a class in hip-hop dance at Cornell University this fall.

“It’s kind of like something that is seen as foreign to a particular culture and saying no, it’s not foreign, it’s actually something that we all do, we just don’t consider it; we just haven’t shifted our paradigm yet.”

African-American dancer Dineytra Lee says her ideas about urban dance shifted after she auditioned for a hip-hop dance crew.

“And I go to the audition and I see nothing but Asians and I’m like, 'What’s going on here.' But it was just literally a legitimate culture shock.”

What Asian-Americans saw in their community for years was not represented on television. Now Asian-American urban dancers are a large part of many of these dance competition shows.

“It was never so prominent as it is now. Now we’re all over. And in these dance shows we dominate.”

With social media, hip-hop dance no longer seems to belong to any particular group. It has spread globally with dancers around the world expressing themselves through this form of movement.