Dancers gather at the 2022 Cypher Summit | Photo by Hannah Doerr

The sisterhood-themed Cypher Summit — presented by the USC Kaufman School of Dance and USC Visions and Voices — will mark Women’s History Month with dance performances and a party.

When hip-hop/street dancer Tiffany Bong was first learning to pop, lock and whack in California as a teenager in the 1980s, she often found herself the only girl in freestyle dance circles — known in the hip-hop world as cyphers — that she frequented.

“The hip-hop dance scene was definitely male-dominated,” says Bong, assistant professor of practice at the USC Kaufman School of Dance. “I feel like I danced like a man because I was taught by men.”

As Bong racked up championship titles — including Hip Hop International’s world locking champion, R-16’s North American locking champion and Los Angeles’ international waackpunk/pose champion — uplifting women in hip-hop became part of her career journey.

Read more from Trojan Family Magazine.