0:00 [Music] welcome back to JK out of the closet today we have Ryan and he's he's remembering America's Best Dance Crew Not So You Think You Can Dance different thing DC yeah that's I think like if if people would assume like what's a life-changing thing that's probably on the list like first uh ABDC as you guys know like I'm more of a I have more of a team player personality I don't really like doing things by myself and I don't really like being the guy so if I get to be like part of a thing I like that much better I prefer that so to do ABDC it meant more to me than So You Think You Can Dance because uh because ABDC was made of uh a real like group of friends
0:50 that we had like started this thing and uh and ABDC occurred after we had started so it was like a thing where we didn't we weren't we didn't know that that was in the car but by the time that show came around uh what happened is producer on there was actually a few years before was a producer on So You Think You Can Dance samey no it wasn't Randy Jackson it was a guy named Dan sax Dan saxs called me and he knows that like I'm in the same crew as dietrix and Hawk and he's like he calls me and he's like hey I think we have the perfect show that is like right up your guys alley wow and this was a me and dietrix talked about it on the overtime but it was season one of America's Best Dance Crew so uh we weren't on season one we were on season 3 but we uh tried out for the first
1:40 season but we couldn't do it because so you think you has a non-compete but that worked in favor for you guys right it worked in favor we we made it work in favor cuz we it was really rough to miss out on the first season because when we saw what it became yeah it was like ████ it was like fomo like crazy to be like to be like first season because we we had to wait until third season so we had to watch two whole seasons of the show who won the first season won and the second season Super Crew okay but alter Universe though ultimate alternate universe what if it was Quest Crew that won season 1 and you guys had a Vegas show that's still running today like the jab us I think we could have never done a Vegas show either way cuz we did have talks about I think every crew that won ABDC got in a room with someone about a
2:31 Vegas show we would be the worst people for a Vegas show cuz we can't we have no we have no alternates like like it makes sense if you have a mask brand then you don't have to do that show every time but for us in the stuff we do like what am I going to do jump on my head every ████ like I would die eventually like it's too it's too taxing every time you do that do you forget a little bit more about final Final Fantasy I remember a little bit more about it yeah this reality so I think ABDC was like that was that was that was a big a bigger change in my life than so you think because of the fact that I was much more prouder exponentially of ABDC than I was so So You Think You Can Dance So You Think Can Dance was like you like the crew the crew element yeah because that's just I love that more like I like to I would rather win with you guys than like win by myself because to me I just I don't like being that center of
3:22 attention like that I remember we had this moment on there when uh me and drix were like chilling underneath the seats where everyone's like sitting and yelling just to like hear what they're saying and ████ and like people started chanting Quest Crew and I was like you know we could have named ourselves the butt ████ team and they would be chanting that ████ right now and we were just like it just tripped us out like to just get hear it at that level but uh for ABDC so they we get that call and it's sounded perfect we missed first season second one rolled around by the third one we were overly I feel overly prepared we had um made a giant book of like all of the sequences that we could possibly do depending on what challenge we get the show is going to go you guys are studying the show studying the ████ out of it like probably like I'm confident in saying I don't think any other team
4:13 got to prepare as much as we did WOW because we we had made it once already couldn't do it so we already kind of knew the schematic and then we watched two whole seasons of other people like that's almost unfair in a way like if you're watching it that closely yeah and do you think it was unfair uh um I think they would have deserved to win anyway oh but the wrench that got thrown in the whole thing is that uh so he went in pretty confident once we knew we're like okay the contracts are up we're going to try out again we called Dan Sach told him like Hey we can do it this time everything's like ready to go and then we find out that one of the other teams is a team called beat freaks which is the equivalent of like seeing you know like let's say that you're like a working dancer you go to auditions they're the ones in the other side of the table they're the ones that are
5:03 running the audition they're the ones you're going to work for oh so now you got to like compete against them and it's all chicks yeah oh it's the top women of the dance industry basically ████ they were Bing everything they were dancing for like G Stefani they were hiring choreographing people they were yeah people on The Velvet Rope tour like this they're people that were working when you didn't even know you could dance as a job like they're so ████ seasoned it's insane so uh they hot yeah really ████ fine I'm going to dud couple to me is all what they called Victoria's Secret Angels so we we end up having to compete against them and I think like that was the one thing that would have like completely nullified all of our all your preparation because they're so good um
5:54 and they're like not good in the way that we're like and notice uh That season 1 and season 2 two are twoo all male groups at one so from a producer's point of view too it would have been really nice for TV to see women like win this one too is also still an all guy predominantly breaking crew and season 2 is an all guy B boy crew as well that won so it it just it felt like a couple chips might have been stacked against them in that like particular equation but it wasn't lesbian woke era yet so it wouldn't they wouldn't have won and it's the fact that uh that they don't need extra help to win you know what I mean like whereas nowadays you might go ah obviously they won because they're women yeah there there's no Dei necessary for that like they are the yeah they're good they can smoke us fair and square I see and that's the thing that like we always
6:45 have to like say like dude yeah they really can't just beat us you're just looking at them they look like a ████ improv team thought they're going to be hot as ████ an improv like you know what I'm saying yeah they're like the superstars basically but they look like you know team from Bell Gardens uh there's more flattering versions okay the uh so by the time uh we're on this show it's like we're probably one of the only teams I think if not the only team that's made up of we had the most people with TV experience so even for beat freaks their industry experience is like crazy TV identity wise people don't really know them like that so they I think they still looked at us like we had an advantage because we have that brand recognition of like wow I've seen these guys on different at different times and
7:35 now they're all together so it was like we had that going for us um and then uh we went through the whole season it was really ████ difficult the whole way especially with the games that they kind of play where I still don't think shows like this are rigged half because they're not allowed to be in some aspect they have something called standards and practices which is a governing body over anything that's competition on TV that makes sure that there's a fairness involved uh and besides that it also has a clause in every contract that I've ever seen for like TV shows where it says that any point the executive producer can supersede anything that has happened and can just declare someone the winner yeah they could just say this guy won do they usually do that not really because the votes are like a survey and if you can survey your target audience and you just see who they want to win so it's very like seldom that
8:26 they'll want to go against that Jayla might do it but yeah Jayla might but um but for this they what they would do instead which is I still think this is way more um effective of a tactic is they try to plant in your heads that you and someone else are neck and neck so they would do that to us with beat freaks every single day they would be like oo we just went came from the girls room and they making something pretty good so you might want to like change that make that better so they and they would go to their room and say the same thing so then it would push a rivalry and by the end of the season you would have both done your absolute AAA game wow uh and that's what happened basically we reached the end of the season and uh the only reason that we did eventually overtake them in my opinion is because of our book in our book we had a series of things that were
9:17 Surefire this is unbeatable we have to wait until the end of the season to use this though because if we use it early it's going to be nothing but like downhill so uh what happen Super Bowl winning play yeah basically yeah so then um in that book was literally the idea of doing a a piano piece where like I play piano and diet's his headp on it like really specific ████ that ended up happening but if we get into a desperation situation where they're they put us in danger and they're like you guys are about to be kicked off you have to do you blow your load then we would have to do those things so you'll never use it just to stay on we would have to like do it that luckily never happened to us and we got to do our exact plan from the book like all the way to the end wow so when you see that final week where we did that piano piece and the uh de cathlon it today's video is brought to you by rocket money have you guys
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11:51 were their best ████ and they did it early um and ours were correlated again like I was saying to the challenges if they're like oh you're going to dance to this girly piece then we were like okay good we have some ████ that we can do with that or if you have to like look uh like you're working out you have to look like you're cooking like we just had weird scenarios that were like okay this is for that that's for this um and then afterwards was kind of the same can you know how you guys went on tick tick tour and ████ like that that's kind of every almost every ABDC Winner's experience afterwards is like instant I guess like yeah stardom in a way yeah super stardom and then you go on tour do shows do a t show so right after ABDC we had done uh literally like a year of of um a straight year of just shows all the time yeah our land is
12:44 Pittsburgh helloa okay what was it like working with Quest Crew from America's Best Dance Crew cuz they're friends with ours oh man they was the best man they was very you know threedimensional with the stuff they was doing as far as dancing they was very delightful to work with I'm happy to work with them I don't know how many like hundreds of shows we did but the part that's most life-changing in this was like honestly the feeling of having to navigate a real business in a way cuz Quest is not a good business it never was because we're basically ████ communist in the way that like we want everyone to receive the same thing from everything I'd been how big is your crew uh and it's most active for the people that were touring there's like 8 to 10 people seven seven key would be the thing how do you guys structure it like when you mean communist everyone just votes equally
13:34 it's a equal eight shares there was no leader and no matter what happens whatever money comes in gets split exactly who even if there's one that did more work and one guy was a slacker they would just like think of it this way like I had done the music for Quest Crew since the beginning I never got a single extra thing for that yeah like everyone was just expected to do a little extra and not expect anything so there's no incentive for you to like go do the extra thing go the extra mile it was it was the feeling of like at least everybody's happy and we're not fighting and there's an incentive early game when you don't have any other extra variables like a mortgage or children or like a wife at home then then if anything what you see is somebody else pulling extra weight so you feel compelled to not slack off exactly there's an idealism to it that's a culture that's a culture that's the thing where it's like if I'm going to do this extra thing for nothing
14:25 then you should do this extra thing for nothing and we kind of consciously made that decision of like all right this probably isn't going to be the best business but at the end of this we'll still be friends at least and so uh if you if you compare Quest and kingas is like exactly I think like kjas is obviously the business version of like how to do that right and then we're like the you know our shelf life is not going to be long uh and when opportunities come that take you away from it obviously we're going to be like go do it and go do it go do it and it's just going to be ████ done but it's something we're very aware of the thing that really changed everything was me kicking out uh dietr from the crew I think that's the why' you why'd you boot after about a year and a half or so of like touring uh if there's no leader how can you kick someone out cuz i' I've made
15:15 everybody vote oh it's true communism dude he's we got a dictator really though Ryan's kind of the leader right so there's like a situation where anyone who's spearheading anything is a leader there's a there was a situation where uh we had made these rules for ourselves of like okay guys like we just booked a big International tour these are all shows out of the country you cannot just do something else and pull out because the contract states that the entire crew must be present at all of these shows so what happened is dietrix got this awesome opportunity amazing opportunity to come back to so you thinking can dance they started this new formula where they're like hey we want to be a little more like dancing with the Stars where new contestants will partner up with classic ones so they offered
16:05 dietrix the opportunity to be one of the classic Allstar cast so uh like you have like twitch you know like all these people that were like big names from the Past come back really really good opportunity and very well paid um he got that opportunity in the middle of us finishing our our uh schedule for like Philippines Australia like all these like big countries and then um he's like he met met with me one night was like Hey like what do you think I should do and then I was like I honestly don't know man because like it just so happens that at the same time like Steve trata had all these movies he could have done for stunts but he chose not to like people had said no to like really big things in order to do this string of shows and I was like I don't I don't know I don't think it's fair um but to be honest I we should have just told him
16:56 do it and we'll figure it out so why do you say that because we made an emotional decision and I think I was a big part of uh were jealous orchestrating that I wasn't jealous I was just upset that that he had made other people say no to things and then when he got there he was like well I'm going to go do this you know but then like I think like the sad part is in the truth he would have turned it down if I had been like don't do this to us he he would have he's ████ crazy like that I'm I should have been like do what you have to do and we'll like recover and it's fine but instead my response was what the ████ are you thinking like and then um I think like he had dri was a different guy back then he was very like uh he liked to like push your buttons like he lik to like make you mad for fun
17:46 and so like so many different times people had like come to me and complained like d you need to tell dri to stop ████ doing the ████ like I was always being the guy in the middle and then um the leader yeah and then F chairman chairman chairman n and then him like getting that opportunity and like wanting to do it was sort of the last straw for me so then um we had a meeting and I told everybody like hey like this is what's happening and obviously it was the right thing for him to take it but we made it feel like it was the wrong thing and then I I told him like you're that that's it we can't ████ with you no more because of this because also my ████ weird master plan which doesn't make sense at least at the time it felt like it did was that if the contract states that the whole crew must be present then oh well dietrix isn't in the crew so the whole
18:36 crew is present that way we don't breach every single one of these shows that makes sense yeah first I was like this is a littleit whack go on tour and then they were fine with it we didn't lose any of those things obviously they were mad that like a ████ person wasn't there that obviously a lot of people are there to see yeah cuz people ████ love him and he's such a centerpiece and then he's not there so the only thing that would make that pass POS was to be like well he's not in the crew but it's so ████ overboard like it doesn't need to happen and that was like a big thing and you could have lied we could have done a ton of different things but I chose the worst one so I I just looked at that as like a big like it's it's like yeah it's a big um it was a big learning experience because like I lost a really good friend that was like we didn't speak for a really long time and uh it wasn't until like I want to say
19:26 like maybe like a year or two he like called me randomly like I'm I'm not talking to this guy like he called me and he's just like hey man I know we don't talk and I know we're not friends but like I just want to let you know like uh I fell in love with somebody man and I just I needed to share it with someone really close to me that knows how hard it is for me to love wowow I was like ████ bro and we were just like I miss you man because like we were like the single guys together during during Quest and so like we both knew each other's like I guess like es with like sharing and and feeling and ████ and then um and then yeah we became friends again and then uh it wasn't until World of Dance 2014 came around and this is probably one of our most like viewed videos the reason why that show was specific or special was
20:16 that I was like hey you want to do like one more request show and then just ████ be done and he's like yeah let's ████ do it so that's what that show is is our it's our supposed to be our last show and it was supposed to be our last show where like with d in it and we all came back together and then we're like peace but it was ended up being so good we ended up doing ████ years more of shows because so it was like a kickoff of like the band's back in town yeah it was like that kind of thing were dance nerds and I know they exist were they like holy ████ this is like the Beatles getting back together yeah it really was because if you think about it like drix not being in the crew also helped him excel in YouTube Okay and like one thing we talked about overtime was like I think that was the best case scenario because like with him forced to like leave this whole like thing that was so special to him and took up so much time he was able to like uh nurture
21:07 his whole ████ with ytf with Ryan hiiga like that took first place in his life and I can't imagine that he would have excelled that fast it he still represented Quest at that time too I had no idea he got kicked out yeah a lot of people really didn't yeah it was kind of like every time they announced them they were like dricks from The Quest Crew all this stuff stop announcers from like saying that and we didn't we didn't care either we're like yeah you know if people say that they say that but we didn't want them to like I guess like remove that legally cuz we're not even a ████ company that like that but um but yeah it was a thing where it ended up working out for everyone in the end but that learning experience of like hey when it's some things are just worth figuring out like it doesn't have to be we made these rules for ourselves and we have to adhere to them it's like no you ████
21:58 don't you made you're in charge yeah it's like it's from your guys' personal experience I'm sure there was like a lot of like learning or regret or M time and Stu like that from a from a dance nerd SL fan that's like you know not as like you just get to witness it's like drama compels you it's just a crazier story it's like damn fol got kicked out then you go to world to dance and it's like holy ████ and you guys reveal him you know it's not like it's not like hey guys we're performing one last time with teacher it's like the show's just happening and then out of nowhere there's like this moonwalk line where he comes back out you're like what the ████ D is on stage he just we he pops out in the middle of it and then like he solos to like me and him his favorite song that like we used to always like yeah what's your what's the favorite song it was like a old uh mamore no it's it's this old gwed McCrae song from like the
22:49 ' 80s or 70s and it it's it goes like my feelings for you always be yeah yeah yeah yeah and that was like our ████ that we would always like say and then and then uh it was very symbolic and gay but uh but yeah that changed my life to to see the result of a bad decision um and I think I'm just lucky that it didn't lead to like completely negative like there was both sides end up doing good ████ thankfully but it's like you get to see like because you're ████ alive so long you get to see like the bad decisions you made really like pan out and then you also get to learn like why they were so unnecessary like super unnecessary how long did it take you to do your hair in this era it took me like an hour dude no no lie it took me like I had to wake up an
23:39 extra hour earlier to do that ████ W wasn't drix also a judge on that one MTV show yeah so he ended up Dom ended up going back to judge ABDC and so thinky Dan wow he ended up a judge on both of those shows yeah now let's check in with a key member of Quest Crew when they became season 3 Champs you guys you guys are my biggest Inspirations in dance when it comes to my life I love you guys I miss you guys and congratulations on everything I can't wait to see the future for qu thank you D later which is like the craziest mind-blowing thing yeah well another crazy mind-blowing thing happened you got a first injury which ended up changing the trajectory of your dance career we're going to talk about that next time please click on our ads thank you so much and Asian guys are just UNH holdable on the Dance Floor come on
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