Fourth in the world! PNG’s Wan Squad performs at the 2023 World Hip Hop Dance Champonship in Phoenix, Arizona, in August before (below left) coming in fourth
“They were not ready for the change of training to be elite and professionals, so that’s where we came up with Wan Squad.” It is early December 2023 and we are sitting in a circle in Wan Squad’s Gordons dance studio, a large shed built earlier in the year towards the back of Pyan’s family trucking business, Nings Agencies in Gordons. Our seats are the black exercise step boxes used by the squad on workout days as they train for the gravity- defying (up to 4m high!) lifts, backflips and other athletic dance moves they are known for. The squad’s highly synchronised and original routines each take about four months to create and follow an open- style choreography consisting of ‘feminine’ – also called ‘waacking’ (heavy on arm movements and
Accomplished dancers themselves and with similar heritage – both David and Pyan are PNG Chinese – it was a natural progression for the pair to join forces to create PNG’s first professional dance collective after an earlier attempt by David on his own stalled. “Before Wan Squad, I had a crew called Buck Souljas,” says David, explaining the lineup as slightly different in that
it included one female dancer and six males. “We tried to use my old team but it didn’t work out because there didn’t have the same vision we had. They would come late for practice or not turn up at all. There was no commitment. We was no motivation, and they probably changed the name to Wan Squad and worked with the people
we had – to travel overseas and compete internationally, to be professional, take dance seriously and treat it like a sport.” Only David’s then 16-year-old cousin Joel Vene (now 21) and Fred Mathew (then 24, now 29) made the jump across to the new group. “I think I may have pushed them a bit too
hard,” admits Pyan of his involvement with Buck Souljas.
who had the same goal and mindset
VOLUME 38 2024
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