Who Are the Jabbawockeez on America's Best Dance Crew?

If you've been watching MTV, you have probably seen an episode or two of Randy Jackson's America's Best Dance Crew. The season started off with 12 teams competing to be voted as the best dancing group in America as voted by the viewers. The show has three judges- Shane Sparks (choreographer), Lil' Mama (rapper) and JC Chasez (N'Sync member)- who offer advice and criticism.

Although all 12 crews have been scraping and spinning their way to the top of America's Best Dance Crew, one team has been mesmerizing dance and non-dance fans all over the world: The Jabbawockeez.

The Jabba-who? The Jabbawockeez are a dance crew that hails from San Diego, California. They derive their name from a character created in a poem by Alice in Wonderland writer Lewis Carroll, the Jabberwocky. What has set them apart from the other teams is that they all wear white masks throughout their performances. The Jabbawockeez' signature style involves pop-locking, acrobatics and just amazing time-stopping moves with freezes at unexpected times. As each episode nears to the finale, the Jabbawockeez always appear unscathed yet they compete and throw innovative moves, meeting every challenge the competition has to offer. Yet their successful performances are only half of the story.

Their competing six Jabbawockeez team on America's Best Dance Crew are some of the total team. There are actually 11 listed on their website. Sadly, one of the Jabbawockeez- Gary Kendell- passed away a few months ago. The Jabbawockeez also represent several ethnic backgrounds to include black, white, Asian and Hispanic heritages, yet they all maintain the same skill level and appear to be interchangeable. The white masks seem to represent that the only culture they truly represent is the Jabbawockee culture.

Since they first appeared on America's Best Dance Crew during the auditions, the national popularity of the Jabbawockeez has exploded exponentially. Just check out this link of YouTube searches. There are clips of the Jabbawockeez dating back to two years ago, yet an estimated 60% of them have been submitted since America's Best Dance Crew first began. The video clips range from older competitions to local shows to excerpts of Ben Chung- one of the lead Jabbawockee- instructing one of his several dance classes he teaches at Boogiezone, an online community of dance instruction. Another interesting fact about Ben Chung is that he was once part of another competing group on America's Best Dance Crew- Kaba Modern!

The Jabbawockeez all together are not strangers to the screen- small or big. Dance movie fans may recognize them from their featured routines in Step Up 2: The Streets, an MTV-produced film that was released in early 2008. Several Jabbawockeez populated that film with their acrobatic flips and pop locking.

Also, America's Best Dance Crew isn't the first television show the Jabbawockeez have competed on. They were also on last season's America's Got Talent Season 2 and got the approval of all three judges to make it to the next round but didn't advance after that.

Although the Jabbawockeez are legends in the hip hop dance world, they look to be set to take on America with their success so far on America's Best Dance Crew. To date, they are the only team who has never been in the bottom two rankings of the contestants. Watch for them in the season finale and beyond.