At first the plan was simple — go to school, study dance, become a dancer. Over the years, it’s become much more for Melissa “Bgirl MEL” Adao. “I got into SDSU and the dance program, and I just wanted to be a dancer. I didn’t know what that meant, but I love to dance; I wanted to be a dancer, and I wanted to make it a career,” she says. After joining the show choir in as a student at Chula Vista High School (where we attended high school together), she earned degrees in dance at San Diego State University and Cal State Long Beach, where she added to the hip hop and musical theater style of performance she already knew, with ballet, jazz, and modern dance. She later secured an agent with a dance talent agency in Los Angeles and has since worked in the entertainment industry with well-known names including the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of TLC, Andy Dick, and Nickelodeon. In her late 30s, she began her journey in breaking as a bgirl and her love for, and dedication, to her craft created opportunities to compete in battles, choreograph, and collaborate with Nike, Google, Igloo, Red Bull, Bacardi Rum, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, among others. As a dancer, choreographer, and educator for more than 20 years, she’s taught dance at San Diego Mesa College, MiraCosta College, Cal State San Marcos, Chapman University, and currently at Grossmont College. Saturday, she’ll also emcee the first SamaFest Breakin’ Battle, part of the 38th annual SamaFest Philippine cultural arts festival at Balboa Park on Saturday and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (the breakin’ battle begins at 3:30 p.m.). Adao, 46, lives in Sherman Heights with her partner, Joshua Estrada, and together they founded and run their online dance program, The Confident Dancers, that teaches adults over 30 to learn dance skills and build confidence. She took some time to talk about breaking and how it helped her heal her relationship with herself and the people around her. Q: What was it that appealed to you about dance as a form of creative expression? A: I love to perform. I started dancing when I was a kid, making up dances with my friends, my neighbors. I would also record “In Living Color” (a comedy sketch show from the 1990s that featured a group of dancers who performed popular dance styles) and all these things on MTV, so that was fun for me. I love to learn and I love to put things together to perform, whether it’s at a professional level or recreationally, like how you knew me in high school and when I was in college. I loved doing it, I loved how it made me feel, but I didn’t realize that I loved the feeling of validation and people telling me, ‘Wow, Mel, you’re so good. You’re amazing. Oh, Mel, you’re the best dancer. Wow, I want to hire you for this.’ I was getting a lot of love and external validation through what dance gave me—it made me feel seen, heard, and important, and I loved that. “Once I started breaking in my late 30s and into my 40s, I was wondering, ‘Why are all these anxieties and traumas coming up? Why am I struggling with this stuff? Why is my mind going turbulent? I’m just learning a move, but I’m making it bigger than what it is, and then I spiral into this depression, which is not what I used to be like before.’ I ended up realizing, through therapy and just me doing my own shadow work, is that I was so obsessed with being the best, with winning a trophy as a bgirl because that is what made me, in my mind, feel seen, feel important, feel loved because I never got that from my family, growing up. I never got that from my parents, and it’s not their fault because they didn’t know how to do that. They’re just taking care of me in the way they knew how to take care of a child, but that didn’t involve love, that didn’t involve saying the words, “I love you,” that didn’t involve the words saying, “I’m proud of you”-but I heard that from dance, I heard that from friends. So, in order for me to feel love, I felt like I had to keep dancing because that was the only way I could feel seen, loved, and important.” What I love about Sherman Heights… I love that the weather never gets too hot or cold. Sherman Heights is kind of next to downtown, the pier, near Chicano Park and Seaport Village, so I feel like it never gets too hot. And, I live in an area where the freeway is right next to me, so I never deal with traffic. It’s just like a really perfect area. It’s kind of on the border of Golden Hill, as well, so I get to walk and get coffee, I can walk around and feel safe. Q: Where are you with that now? Why do you keep dancing? A: I am still doing this because, when it comes to my dancing, I became a college professor at five different colleges here in Southern California and I was teaching a lot of choreo and hip hop. On a personal level, I felt like I needed something more to stretch me, and that’s why I got into breaking because I wanted to challenge myself. I started breaking at 37 and I told myself that for me to get into breaking, I need to always make sure that this is fun for me. I don’t want to experience the stress of what I did when I was involved in the choreo team; I want to have fun, so I always have to remember that. Thankfully, I set the tone in my mind that, ‘OK, I’m breaking now and, no matter what direction I take-whether it’s professional, recreational, whatever-this needs to be fun for me.’ As I was really thriving early in my career, at a later age, I was getting invited to Red Bull BC One, I was getting invites after only breaking for five years, I ended up winning my first jam after only three or four years and that’s really unheard of when you’re just starting off. This is what my journey looked like when I was younger, thriving really early. I also noticed, during that time as I was working hard to excel and be better, I was experiencing toxic self-talk. I was really, really hard on myself. I was obsessed with being a champion and I had to ask myself, ‘Why am I so obsessed with being a champion? Why do I need to win? I have everything I need-I have all the opportunities, I have all the relationships, I’m getting paid, I’m getting all these job opportunities-why do I need to win?’ I realized I needed to win because I thought that trophy was a representation of feeling love and I had a constant need for feeling love because I didn’t get that growing up. Q: Do you feel there has been anything about dance that has helped you arrive at a new place of working through that part of your need for external validation? A: I’m very grateful that breaking came into my life at 37 because it made me realize that all the trauma, the things that I needed to work on in my personal life that I’d swept under the rug, that I needed to address, I had to face them in breaking. Learning to love myself and not relying on three judges or a crowd to love me; I have to learn to love myself. I have to tell myself that I am responsible for feeling love, not for three judges to point at me and to tell me I’m good. So, for breaking to come into my life late, my relationship with myself is so much better, which, in turn, ended up healing my relationship with my mom and others. I see life differently because I’m healing and seeing myself in a healthier way, seeing life in a healthier way. Q: Have there been any instances in breaking, maybe the process of learning a particular move, that led you to some of these larger realizations that you were able to apply to parts of your life outside of dance? A: In the last two years, I’ve been consistently, almost every day, working on a power move in breaking called the windmill. The windmill is considered a foundational power move in breaking and people get it in three months, or three days. It’s like one of the ABCs of power moves, so I was determined to get this windmill. I’m not even joking, it’s so funny that you asked this question because I literally just got it within the last couple weeks, and I’ve been working really hard. Obviously, it can get better, but I finally can do a continuous windmill and it took me two years to get it. During that time of training, when I’d crash, when my body just wasn’t doing what I wanted my body to do, I would really get frustrated and I would get mad at myself. I would start crying, I would get mad at my partner, I would really bring down the energy of the space because I wasn’t getting it. It’s silly saying it out loud because, in my mind, I’m like, it’s just a freaking move. But no, this has become my identity, which I know is not healthy. It consumed me because I’m dedicating my life to breaking right now and to not even get the basic power move makes me feel like I’m not good enough. That’s where my mind starts to go, that if it’s taking me two and a half freaking years to get a basic power move, what’s wrong with me? So, the emotional healing of that is I actually started sharing my road to windmills, I like to call it. I share it on my social media and I feel like I’ve gained a lot of connections and built relationships on the internet because instead of me sharing, ‘Oh, look at my power move,’ which is what a lot of breakers do today, they share highlights; I don’t share highlights, I say that I share vulnerability. I do storytelling on my on my Instagram and it allows people to feel like, ‘Oh my god, she’s 46 and she’s learning power,’ which is unheard of in the breaking scene, by the way. Everyone who’s learning power is a kid right now, but I’m learning at 46, so through my healing, instead of saying, “What is wrong with me? Why don’t I have windmills down?” I had to really change the way I look at life and say that during every practice, I have to acknowledge my win. How did I win today? I can roll up on my back higher today, I can backspin better, I’m stronger. Every practice I have to acknowledge a mini win in order for me to keep my spiritual energy positive. I try to change my mindset into a gratitude mindset instead of a scarcity mindset. Instead of saying to myself, ‘What’s wrong with me? How come I don’t have this?’ I say, ‘Thank you, life, for allowing me to have a strong body at 46. Thank you, life, for allowing me to train power moves every day and never get injured.’ That happens a lot. When you’re training power every day, people just get injured because it’s a lot of dynamic, gravity-defying stuff. So. I have to be grateful that my body can do this at 46. Because I changed my mindset to a gratitude-based mindset, I think that’s why I was able to get my windmill. This is what I talk about on my social media, stuff like this. I don’t say, “Four tips to get a better windmill.” Everyone shares that. I’m sharing what I am experiencing, what I fell, and how I switch my mindset because I don’t think anyone’s sharing the vulnerability stuff in breaking, everyone’s just sharing highlights. Q: How would you describe what your experience has been like in the breaking community? A: I want to say it’s been very healthy. The breaking scene welcomes me with open arms. I have a lot of really healthy and positive relationships, I always feel safe where I go, and breaking provides me a space to always, constantly better myself and to be of service to the community. What the breaking scene offers me is a 10 out of 10-it’s the perfect scene to be a part of. However, for a long time, my energy toward myself in the breaking scene was like a three out of 10 because I was always judging myself. The way that I spoke to myself was so toxic, but the community never spoke to me like that. I spoke to myself so unhealthily, and I would never speak to others that way, so that was always something interesting that I noticed. All of the things I say to myself, I would never say to anyone else, so why am I allowing myself to say it to myself? I had to really figure out why that was happening. That’s all part of the healing. Q: Can you give us a brief breakdown of what breaking is? Is it the same as break dancing? A: At this point, because so much media has been involved — we had breaking in the Olympics — kind of accepted that they’re the same thing, but people in the culture will acknowledge breaking as breaking. We won’t really call it break dancing; but to someone who’s not in the scene, we will call it break dancing so that they get it. Breaking is a dance form that started in the ’70s in the Bronx by Black youth. This is a Black-rooted dance and it involves toprock, which is the upright dance of breaking; it involves footwork, which is movement on the floor where your hands, feet, and sometimes your knees, are doing very dynamic and interesting patterns with your feet; it involves freezes where it’s gravity-defying shapes, interesting shapes to express yourself; and power moves, which is what a lot of people like to see, the gravity-defying, aerial movements, things like the windmill, head spins, back spins. That’s pretty much what breaking is, in terms of the dance and the historical significance of this dance. It’s become a global phenomenon that all cultures and ages are getting involved in learning. I feel like, as a participant and educator and someone who wants to continue to preserve the culture, it’s also part of my duty to make sure that it doesn’t get exploited. That we always remember that we are guests in this dance, that this is a Black-rooted dance and that I am a guest, so I have to always make sure that it’s making sure that our Black community is respected and that’s part of the work. Q: As a bgirl, you’re the emcee of the first SamaFest Breakin’ Battle this week during SamaFest 2025. What happens at a breakin’ battle? What can people expect? A: This event is very different, this jam isn’t like a normal jam, it’s a very short segment. Normally, jams can be anywhere from four to seven hours, but this jam is only 60 minutes. We had to do a lot of readjusting of what the jam is going to look like. When people come to this jam, they’re going to see is a cipher prelim. This is open to anyone and you basically dance in a circle. There are going to be multiple circles and music is going to be playing for about 20 to 25 minutes. During this time, three judges are going to watch the ciphers and pick the top four breakers for the adult category and the top four breakers for the youth category. After that, at the 30-minute mark, we’re going to start the competition and this is where the bracket happens. The top four will battle it out, one adult against another adult, maybe two or three rounds each, and then they’ll pick a winner until we have a final winner. Q: If you were judging, what would you be looking for? A: If I was a judge, I’d look for whether they understand the dance and have some type of high-level skill for this dance. As a judge, I want to first look that they know how to top rock, they know how to do footwork, they know how to hold their freezes. If they don’t have power moves, it’s OK, but they have to understand the top rock, the footwork, the freezes, and have style. I want to see that they are really breaking and not just shuffling their feet and doing other styles. I want to make sure they understand the foundation of breaking. Then, I want to see that they know how to dance to music because it’s one thing to be a master at doing moves, but it’s another thing to dance to music. At the end of the day, this is a dance competition, right? So, I don’t want to see 20 air flares and then you don’t know how to dance. I’m not going to pick you for the top four. Q: You’re also co-founder of The Confident Dancers. Why was this something you wanted to create and do? A: I’ve been a professor of dance, teaching at Grossmont, Mesa, Cal State San Marcos, MiraCosta, Chapman University. I taught at a lot of these colleges and I was able to see my impact with these adults, specifically with beginning adults. I saw the way that I taught the community, to develop a beginner to become a professional. An example is one of my beginning students at Grossmont just performed in the Super Bowl halftime show with Kendrick Lamar. I have a lot of students like that, where they come into the beginning class with no training, and then they thrive in life, whether it’s in professional dance or just their own personal life. Seeing that I was able to do that in person, I wanted to see how I could do it online and turn it into a business. That’s what inspired me. Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever received? A: If you don’t say no, your body’s going to say no for you in the form of an injury, mental breakdown, or illness. For a long time, I was a “yes” person and I said yes to everything. Mel, can you teach this class? Yes. Mel, can you speak at this meeting? Yes. Can you come do this thing in an hour? I wouldn’t stop, I wouldn’t allow myself to take a break because I said yes to everything. I was a people pleaser, but in 2009, my body literally had a breakdown. I was trying to keep up with my lifestyle, taking energy pills, and I felt myself getting sick. My body was saying no, but I was resisting what my body was telling me. When you don’t listen, you body’s going to keep telling you in different ways to stop—it’ll make you listen. Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you? A: For anyone who doesn’t know me, it’s that I’m 46 and I’m a bgirl. Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend. A: This is going to sound boring, but my ideal weekend is doing nothing, having no schedule, and eating what I want. Really, that’s the best weekend for me, to do nothing.