On August 7, the Crash Dancers will be saying goodbye to all of its former students, friends, and instructors with a farewell dance at Terry’s Kitchen, Bellevue. The music will be provided by “Justified,” a local Rhythm and Blues band.
A social dance class, Crash Dancers had a 15-year run from September 2011 to May 2026, except for a gap during the COVID-19 pandemic. First organized at the Nisei Veterans Hall, Seattle, under the leadership of Bev Kashino and Keith Yamaguchi, the veterans’ club commander in 2011, participants were mostly Asian American boomers.
As a student and volunteer with the group from 2012 to February 2020, my purpose in writing this article is to commemorate the class’s existence and surviving legacy. For throughout greater Seattle, there are always Asian Americans doing admirable things that don’t always make it into print. The Crash Dancers class is one such activity that I see as having made a positive community-wide difference.
Kashino began the class based on an idea from Katashi Oita, a Nisei who ran a senior dance class that met on Wednesday afternoons at the Nisei Veterans Hall, from the 1970s. Before he passed, Katashi had shared his vision to create a multigenerational dance class there.
The broader historical context is that in Nisei time, the veterans’ hall served as a center for many Japanese American community social events including dance parties. The reason is that after WWII, there was so much lingering prejudice against anything Japan-related that the returning Nisei U.S. Army veterans were not welcome in other veterans’ clubs. Accordingly, they had to form their own club, to which they brought their wives and families.
Fast forward to the Sansei generation, the boomer adult-children of the Nisei, who grew up without learning ballroom dancing. The activity wasn’t on their radar until the TV show “Dancing with the Stars” brought it to renewed public attention, 2005 to the present day. It helped that the show’s judges include Carrie Ann Inaba, whom many remember as the sole Asian among the original Fly Girls house dancers on “In Living Color” (1990-1992).
According to Kashino, the class’s purpose was to “teach the younger generation to ballroom dance.” A side benefit would be to bring new people to the Nisei Veterans Hall, where they could learn local Japanese American history from the many exhibits on the walls there. The class was first taught by Judy Cordova, a former Arthur Murray instructor, with her husband Damian. After the Cordovas, a long series of instructors followed, “whoever we could find.”
As the developing class found that it needed a name, it was co-organizer Curtis Luke who suggested “Crash Dancers.” It was because members had begun “crashing” local businesses to dance. It would dance to live music, when available, or plug into their sound systems. One notable such venue was Bol restaurant in the University District. Then it was owned by Mary Hoy, a fellow dance student.
The class format was a series of three weekly lessons in one dance per month, sufficient for an introduction to it. Popular forms would later be revisited. The dances included bachata, cha, Chicago Steppin’, cross-step waltz, East Coast swing, many R&B Line Dances, rueda (Cuban salsa, danced in a circle), rumba, salsa, waltz, West Coast swing, and a few others. The net effect was that regular students could pretty much dance competently wherever they went to whatever music was playing: dance parties, New Year’s parties, outdoor concerts, restaurants and weddings.
During its peak years, January 2012 – February 2020, the class regularly had 40 students on the gym floor. For popular dance types, especially the rueda classes taught by Reinier Valdez (La Clave Cubana Salsa Dance Studio), attendance ranged as high as 60. Katie and Mark Kihara (Swing It Seattle) brought in 90! The class’s email list reached over 500, until the list began being pared down out of practicality, based on individuals’ attendance.
Through that period, Luke continued to inspire and informally teach the class during after-class practice sessions and elsewhere. He had learned to dance from his mother, May Luke.
It takes a lot of effort to run a dance class, as the first group of volunteer class organizers learned. There are communications and front-desk duties (Sharon Nakamura), venue coordination and bookkeeping (Susan Uyeji), refreshments and instructors (Kashino), and sound, set-up, and clean-up (Doug Tsujii).
After the first group of organizers “retired,” in mid-2016, a second set of dance students took over, until COVID-19 arrived. Then, many of us were at a Valentine’s Day dance at Terry’s Kitchen, which had been postponed to late February due to snow. We compared notes: should we cancel the March lessons?
After the pandemic, a third group took over, but unfortunately for them, the Crash Dancers attendance never recovered. The class was brought down by lingering concerns about COVID-19 in indoor settings and the expansion of homelessness in the Chinatown International District. While in recent years, it had moved to the gym at Japanese Baptist Church, in the First Hill neighborhood, the attendance continued to fall. Many former students, now older, had pared down their group social activities. Others had moved onto more advanced classes.
What remains today of the Crash Dancers? The main thing is that it transformed many local Asian Americans from “sitters” into dancers. In doing so, it has helped all of our lives. No longer do we sit “in fear” at weddings when the music starts playing. When there are dance community events, especially outdoor ones like “Dancing Til Dusk” or “University Village Summer Concerts,” former class members attend. Throughout, we have danced in the beer garden at Seattle Bon Odori.
Beyond dance, what lasts are the many new friendships we made. Crash Dancers broadened all students’ social circles. When Wing Luke Museum sought cha-cha dancers to perform in the street to mark its opening of a new phase of its Bruce Lee exhibition in October 2015, many of the dancers came from our class. If there was a FAHNS (Filipino American National Historical Society) dance at Washington Hall or elsewhere, we went.
When there were musicians and bands that we knew (Antonio Cordova, Tess Guerzon, OBG’s, Deems Tsutakawa, etc.), we went to support their events. These musicians have liked us, because it is more interesting for them to play for dancers than seated audiences. They can see how their music is getting across.
An additional benefit has been students’ confidence. I remember Kashino mentioning how she “wanted people to be more confident.” On this topic, it can be intimidating to first walk into a dance class, especially for men. The films “Shall we Dansu” (Koji Yakusho, 1996) and its American remake, “Shall we Dance” (2004, Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez), capture this sentiment well. That confidence transfers to other life arenas.
Moreover, Crash Dancers has imparted health benefits to all participants. Throughout the class years, most were extremely active. Many studies rank dance classes highly for their positive impacts on senior mental and physical health. It works because it is both social and complex. One has to recall many people’s names and dance steps.
The bottom line is that if you see boomer Asian Americans social dancing at community events from now, it is important to know that it is not something we grew up with. Instead it is that one person led the effort to organize a class to teach her peers. As Kashino didn’t know how to organize and run a dance class at first, she found others that did to help her.
Crash Dancers is holding a retirement and reunion celebration on Friday, August 7, 2026, from 8 – 11 p.m. at Terry’s Kitchen, Bellevue. Suggested Donation: $10 at the door (cash only). No-host food and beverages available
David is a freelance writer and photographer. He believes there are many unsung heroes in the Seattle Asian American community. He previously wrote and edited at the North American Post, the Seattle Japanese community newspaper.
