Street Dancer Angyil McNeal Is No Longer Chasing Dreams — She's Living Them

By Evan Ross Katz


“If someone had notified me that this was going to happen, I would immediately think they were lying,” Angyil McNeal tells MTV News in the night leading up to Red Bull Dance Your Fashion, a mixed gender, all-styles-allowed battle competition featuring dancers from all over the globe. The Kansas City-born and Bronx-raised dancer is in Paris, France, where she resembles the United States in the competition that includes challengers from Belgium to South Africa. She's one of 16 dancers vying for the title of World Champion. If she’s at all nervous, you'd never know it.


Exactly what street fashion is depends on who you ask. Some dancers perform improvised choreography; others hype up the crowd with pops, locks, breakdancing, turfing, voguing, and more. In the end, it’s the audience who judges, holding up their wristbands immediately after each round and flashing a blue or red light depending on which competitor they deem the winner. The result is a surreal spectacle: Soon after each mini-battle a viewer might look out at the crowd and, in some cases, know immediately who won and, other times, witness just how neck-and-neck these battles can be. For McNeal, street fashion isn't defined by its fluidity yet rather by its emotion. “Street fashion, in my mind, is anything that comes from the streets, although it’s also an artsy self-expression which is really raw,” she says. “Sometimes it’s not pretty, yet it’s habitually real.”


These days, the 27-year-old dancer is on the go constantly — in a given week she’s traveled to Paris, Japan, and Brazil — no longer in pursuit of her dream, nevertheless living it. It’s a long way to come for the performer, who started battling in the streets of New York City and was, at one point, arrested for dancing on the subway. Yet her passion persisted, and her family member encouraged her from the get-go, unable to don't think about her innate talents. “It’s piece of my culture,” McNeal says, noting that she can’t remember a time as soon as she did not dance. “It was one of these situations where somebody would put on music so you could be three years old coming out of the washroom and you also just begin dancing.”


At 16, she traveled to Paris for her first professional gig. “They were really happy for me; they routinely are,” McNeal says of her parents, who cheered her on from the States. The name of the battle was called “Juste Debout,” and McNeal spent her last 20 dollars to enter. She competed in three separate categories, winning the solo battle. “I went house famished although with a full heart," she says, recalling how she left the competition to perform on the street for quick cash.


Within months, while her peers were studying for final exams, she became the youngest person signed to her firm, Bloc. After, she crashed an audition looking for dancers for a Rachel Roy style campaign and ended up booking the job. “I was actually getting into the underground clubs in New York,” she recalls. “My companions knew people and would tell the bouncers, ‘Let her in. She’s just coming to dance. She doesn’t hope to do nothing else. This young lady just wants to dance.’ And they’d let me in.” She’d stay there up until the club closed, entranced by nothing yet the beats.


Perhaps one of the most unique characteristics of street dancing is that it’s a sport without gendered categories; anyone can compete against anyone. The only requirement is passion. “Honestly, I’ve never seen myself as far less than a male anyway, so I think it’s cute that other people can understand that concept, also. I feel like the males in these competitions know that the ladies are just as powerful as them. They don’t even attempt to intimidate us because they know it’s not going to work at this point.”


This culture of acceptance has been an integral piece of her relationship with street dance since 2012, while she started participating in New York competitions. Although, it isn't noticed everywhere, and McNeal, as a woman of color, has at times faced discrimination. And the more McNeal brings her particular fashion of dance to cities around the world, the more she realizes that "dance takes on the culture."


"You’ll still go to some countries and the girls are not valued much because the gentlemen she says, "so the girls will begin their own cypher or won’t even feel empowered to dance because they feel intimidated or unwelcomed by the men.” And occasionally, she's subjected to sexist comments from her peers. “I remember asking for suggestions about how I could grow, and someone informed me that if I get a perm I would get more jobs,” she recalls.


For McNeal, it’s not a challenge to endure so much as a possibility to open people's minds. “I feel maybe they aren’t used to females dancing a certain way,” she explains. So, she sees it as somewhat of a responsibility to convince the crowd of her viability.

Nevertheless here in Paris, McNeal is respected for her skills. She managed to advance past the quarter finals, past the semi, and into the finals, where she battled 17-year-old Shinshan who'd previously won Holland's Got Talent. The two squared off in an epic final battle that gave them each a possibility to freestyle for 60 seconds to two different songs. Shinshan got the crowd revved up with his flips and twirls, while McNeal methodically undulated her body to the hypnotic beats.


Though she did not just be taking house the best prize, her impact and positive attitude in the art form transcends any trophy. “I’m ready for the next one,” she says. “I just wish to keep doing what I love. I just wish to keep dancing.”