Passion and Precarity

Three floors up in an old building on Donald Street, Salomón Peña, 24, is conducting his second rehearsal for a hip hop piece set to be filmed as a concept video in just under two weeks. The 14 dancers sporadically enter the studio and begin warming up, chatting over the blasting speakers through jumping jacks and lunges. 

The dancers, ranging from late teens to early thirties, come from their day jobs or school days. The pressure is on. They only have four more rehearsals to learn the two-minute piece and prepare for filming.

Peña’s smile lights up the room as he paces around the studio and begins teaching. He demonstrates an eight-count sequence with light footwork and intricate upper body motions. This specific hip hop choreography is a partner piece, where each dancer can be seen weaving in and out of each other to the song “CRUISE CONTROL” by FRVRFRIDAY.

Dressed in baggy sweats, hoodies, and sneakers, the dancers spread out underneath the white studio lights to mimic Peña’s movements, counting “five, six, seven, eight” under their breath. 

“I’m kind of trying to show how false confidence has led me where I am,” says Peña, as he explains the meaning behind the choreography. 

Peña’s life looked quite different seven years ago. Originally from Cúcuta, Colombia, Peña grew up playing soccer, guitar, and the saxophone. He lived with his parents, both teachers, in a middle-class house near the Venezuelan border. 

It wasn’t until 2017, right before he moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, that he started showing an interest in dance after watching a few classes in his town. 

“When I got here, I didn’t know anyone,” says Peña.

Shortly after settling into Winnipeg, he started looking online for classes to attend to further his training and get a taste of the city’s dance scene. He remembers watching videos of choreographer Jerome Esplana, who heavily influenced him to start dancing. 

Now, Peña works from his two-bedroom apartment in downtown Winnipeg. He answers calls for non-profit organizations during the day and choreographs, teaches, and trains at night. 

He’s a textbook example of someone with a portfolio career, taking on many roles related to dance. Working multiple jobs is a sacrifice he — and many other dancers — make to gain exposure and experience, while still doing what they love. This lifestyle is common for artists in the dance industry, who spend long hours choreographing, editing their own music, and directing shows and concept videos. 

Peña’s concept video is a perfect example of this — the side project is an emotional piece exploring his self-identity through his choreography. Once filmed and edited, Peña hopes to share it online with other artists and market himself for more gigs and chances to collaborate with other dancers in the city. 

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Once a year, hip hop dancers in Winnipeg team up for The Function, an intimate showcase performed in a club-like setting at The Park Theatre. Different choreographers recruit dancers are in the city, then put together a piece in their distinct style.  

For the couple months leading up to the show, dancers spend hours in rehearsals, practising in studios, people’s garages, and old basements. The hip hop community eagerly awaits the day of the show, with dancers posting teasers on Instagram with snippets of their choreography.

Backstage at The Function, you’ll find dancers shoulder to shoulder in the tiny graffiti-covered green room, rehearsing their steps as they sing a cappella one last time before they hit the stage. The air smells like sweat and hairspray, and the tables are littered with Red Bull cans and half-eaten fruit trays. 

If you peek through the black curtain wings, you can see the restless audience peeking back, counting down the minutes until the first performers run onto the stage. Each dance crew’s camaraderie shines as they yell each other’s names in support. 

The Function is an unpaid performance and no scouts are in attendance, but preparing for this annual event is an annual highlight for Winnipeg dancers. It’s a chance for hip hop artists to show off their choreography and connect with other artists in the community.

“The energy from the audience is what makes it. It feels great knowing you are going to have a good night,” says Peña. 

While Winnipeg has a committed hip hop community, pursuing dance as a career comes with its challenges. Job opportunities fluctuate, and freelance work often comes with inconsistent pay. The highest paid cities for dancers in Canada include Toronto and Vancouver with dancers earning up to $58.57 an hour respectively, compared to $47 an hour in Manitoba, according to Indeed.

This is why many Winnipeggers who want to pursue dance professionally migrate or “grow out” of the city and train in bigger cities, where agencies are more dominant. Having an agent plays a crucial role in securing consistent work for dancers. In Winnipeg, the focus in the dance industry is more project-based and less structured around the commercial industry, making it a precarious career. 

Although Peña didn’t start dancing until he was 17 years old, he knew he had the passion and persistence to be able to make a part-time job out of it if he worked hard enough. 

For a couple years during the COVID-19 pandemic, shows like The Function couldn’t run. The buzz in the dance scene was noticeably fading. Dancers got comfortable dancing online, and some were hesitant to join in-person classes when they became available again. 

As studios slowly started re-opening, Orielle Marcus, owner of The Dance Method on Watt Street, offered Peña a chance to teach a hip hop class. This was a pivotal moment in his career — a chance to practice teaching and show the city what he had to offer. 

He taught his first hip hop class in Winnipeg in December 2022. It didn’t go as planned — a huge winter snowstorm affected enrolment. He expected 15 students, but only six showed up. 

He was disappointed, but he received positive feedback from the participants and was grateful for the chance to teach. He knew he wanted another shot at it. 

Eager to continue his training and teaching, Peña auditioned for Winnipeg’s local hip hop crew, SIKAT, (one if its meanings is “popular” in Tagalog). SIKAT was founded by Wayne Santos in 2005, and is arguably one of the city’s most known and established hip hop dance crews. 

SIKAT is best known for their intense and high-energy dance sets and their supportive culture inside the studio which makes it feel like a second family. 

After getting accepted into the crew, Peña was training six hours a week, while teaching on his own and searching for side gigs. Peña met many of his closest friends in the city on this crew. For him, SIKAT was the closest thing he had to family since leaving his own behind in Colombia. 

Last year, Peña even got a large tattoo with “SIKAT” on his upper leg — a testament to his love for and commitment to the team. 

He soon made a name for himself in the community, and it wasn’t long before he was able to accomplish what dancers in this city dream of — performing during halftime for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 2019, choreographing pieces for Salsa Sundays in 2023, and performing during halftime for the Winnipeg Sea Bears in 2024.

He was aching to teach again — So Peña began promoting free hip hop dance classes called “Community Fridays” at Salsa Explosion Dance Company. Many of his teammates from SIKAT came, eager to learn his fresh style. He says 45 people showed up to learn his choreography one time.

“The AC was leaking, that’s how packed the room was. It was insane,” Peña remembers.

His goal with Community Fridays was to create a space where artists could come together and encourage a new generation of dancers to join. At the time, there weren’t many drop-in classes due to the pandemic.

“I didn’t even like dance when I was younger. In Colombia, they make it seem like you’re gay if you dance,” says Peña, as he recalls the stereotype surrounding male dancers in Colombia. 

Certain forms of dance — particularly ballet — have been historically associated with femininity because of their gracefulness.

“When you’re young, you think, I can make a living out of this, but it wasn’t going to happen in my country,” he says. 

In a report done by the International Institute of Social Studies, Colombian dancers describe the working conditions of dance as “hard, unstable, and informal.”

Peña held his first two dance classes before he left Colombia, teaching his students a hip hop piece to Reggaeton, a popular music genre that originated in Panama in the 1980s. It’s a mix of hip hop, rap, and Caribbean rhythms. 

Like this music genre, Peña describes the style that he is most comfortably dancing as a mix of Afro, (short for African dance) R&B, and Lafro, (Latin and Afro fusion), which he says makes up for a conversational and upbeat style of dance. 

“If I could define my style of dance in one word, it would be ‘party,’” says Peña.

One of his favourite dances he taught during Community Fridays was to a song called “Damn” by Omah Lay and 6lack. The 30-second combination consisted of fluid hand and upper body movements mixed with intricate footwork, showing his dynamic range of style. 

Community Fridays is just one example of how the hip hop community in Winnipeg is a tight-knit group that feeds off each other’s success.

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Miggy Maramag, 26, is a Filipino hip hop artist who made a name for himself after years of teaching, training, and performing in the city at underground events in Winnipeg. Like Peña, he spent many years with SIKAT and collaborating with other artists in the city.  

For Maramag, dance and music is rooted in his family and was passed down through generations. 

Maramag’s godfathers’ brother and sister were on SIKAT when he was younger. He remembers growing up and watching them, which ultimately influenced him to join the team in 2013. He spent a few years on SIKAT training as a student, before joining another popular hip hop crew called Project Company in 2015. 

“The moment I joined Project Company, they saw what I had to offer and put me to work right away,” says Maramag. He was highly respected and chosen to be the team’s group leader. On top of training with Project Company, Maramag was still looking for more avenues to practice his craft. 

“Every now and then, I’ll host open sessions to share my creations as well as…teach drop-ins. I usually would never say no when the opportunity presents itself to me,” says Maramag. 

As Maramag watched several of his peers slowly move out of Winnipeg to pursue their dance careers in Vancouver and Toronto, he remained hopeful that Winnipeg’s dance community would flourish if he tried his best to keep it alive by holding space for upcoming artists in the city.

Like Peña, Maramag continued teaching and training throughout the city and teaching workshops at Encore Studios in September 2024, and at Kickit Dance Studio from 2016-2022. 

Maramag also lives a portfolio career lifestyle. His social media feeds exhibit numerous videos of him freestyling inside his kitchen — hitting sharp isolations and staccato hits to popular R&B and pop songs like “Sensational” by Chris Brown and “Paint the Town Red” by Doja Cat. 

“Frankly, Winnipeg is just not Hollywood. We lack labels and agencies to represent our artists. City gigs are quite smaller than backup dancing for Justin Bieber. Most artists here apply themselves to their craft very independently,” says Maramag.

Though Maramag has also experienced training outside of Winnipeg, he focuses on sharing his knowledge here and building off the foundations we already have. 

“Trying to sustain a dance career in Winnipeg is like eating and sharing an orange. You work towards peeling it, you digest the nutrients (knowledge), then you repeat the cycle to grow stronger, get better. It comes and goes. You may end up having a fruitful career,” says Maramag.  

And that’s exactly what he’s doing – making sure the next generation of dancers can thrive as he did. It may not be Hollywood, but for him it is home, and his drive to hold classes and his love for art is what makes him respected in the community. 

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Studio owner Orielle Marcus, 36, moved back to Winnipeg from Toronto in 2018.

After years of training in large studios like Millennium Dance Complex, which is internationally recognized for training high-profile hip hop dancers and choreographers, she saw firsthand how professional-level training works — and how it differs from what is available in Winnipeg.

“Getting people on board to understand what that is and to want to go to that and see that is a different beast than what it is when it’s like in a place like trying to New York, because they see it all the time. So, it’s part of their lifestyle. It’s part of the culture,” says Marcus. 

She also notes that dancers in bigger cities have a clearer goal of wanting to book jobs, so dancers see training differently there. In Winnipeg, we don’t have many professional drop-in classes and training options at our fingertips. 

In addition to offering consistent weekly classes, Marcus explained that the commercial dance industry is more of a lifestyle out there, (with training and attending shows) that dancers and non-dancers alike are aware of — unlike Winnipeg, where most dancers must push hard to market themselves and upcoming shows. 

In a report done by the Canada Council for the Arts, a survey showed that respondents in Manitoba/Saskatchewan say they attend 7.2 live dance performances in an average year, compared to 7.9 performances reported nationally.

In Winnipeg, the dancers are determined and make the most out of what they have — turning any available space into a studio, whether it’s a gym or a basement. They may not be the packed theatres of New York, but they’re still full of talent. 

“When you move away from Winnipeg and you’ve done your dancing here and you go somewhere else, I cannot stress enough how different of an environment it is, and what you’re up against is different. It’s bigger, it’s stronger, it’s a beast,” says Marcus.

Because Winnipeg’s entertainment industry is smaller, there are fewer large-scale productions and less commercial opportunities for dancers. 

“A lot of those companies don’t have the budget to hire entertainment dancers,” says Marcus. 

But for Peña, this lack of paid opportunities doesn’t mean he lacks work. He stays committed, pouring his time and energy into self-produced projects. After weeks of creating and planning his concept video, it’s time to film. This is the biggest solo project he has worked on, and he completed it in just under a month. 

“I’d always say that the most important thing for me is that whoever I teach to be able to find their individuality,” says Peña. 

His videographer, Rylen Besler (who is also a dancer), sets up his equipment, as Peña opens the music file and instructs the dancers to spread out. The dancers warm up, doing last minute touch ups and outfit changes before filming begins. 

As the night draws on, the dancers bring Peña’s vision to life. For him, the work never ends, much like his dedication to his dancers and community. 

The dancers grouped together are a reminder that this city’s hip hop scene thrives off their love for dance — each dancer has carved out time late at night to help him bring his vision together. 

And so, the cycle continues — create, teach, rehearse, perform. It’s what keeps the Winnipeg hip hop community moving forward, one step at a time.