Bobby Nguyen has started a break dancing class at the North Willow Glen community center. Nguyen started the program as a San Jose after-school program at Evergreen Valley High School.

"We tried different types of activities such as basketball, but the only thing the kids came back for was break dancing," he says.

Unfortunately budget cuts left the class underfunded.

The budgets cut resulted in him relocating to another city department, but Nguyen wanted to continue the class. He says it's more of a mentoring session than a dance class.

So he started holding the class as a volunteer at the Evergreen Community Center, but Angie Alfaro, the San Jose Recreation supervisor, said the department began discussing the possibility of charging a fee for the teenage classes. Nguyen knew the teenagers who attended his class could not pay the fee and, with 35 kids attending, he could not raise all the money himself.

He asked his city supervisor, Steve Ryan, if he knew of a community center where he could hold the class. Gardner came up in the discussion.

"The center is centrally located and is close to light rail and bus services," says Ryan, a recreation program specialist for the city of San Jose.

Gardner was a good choice for the program because the community center needed more programming that would attract teenagers and young adults, Ryan says.

When the class began on Aug. 2, Nguyen thought the teenagers would not come because he had not publicized the class enough, but to his surprise, they started trickling in at 6:30 p.m.

"I did not think it would get this big," he said. 'I just started out wanting to bring teens together."

Although girls are welcome in the group, for now it's all male.

Now some of the teens confide that they would be on the streets if there wasn't a place to practice and "hang out," Nguyen says.

Andrew Mam, a 16-year-old incoming junior at Evergreen Valley High School, says he expresses himself through break dancing. He says break dancing, also known as "b-boying," allows him to "put his whole body" into the rhythm.

But it is not just the teenagers.

Juan Ramirez, a 24-year-old Evergreen Community College student, says he started break dancing when he was 13 as a way to cope with family problems. He was looking for a place to practice and stumbled onto the new class.

"I was in and out of foster homes and it was a way for me to escape," he says. "It was a way for me to stay alive and out of trouble."

Break Dancing classes are on Tuesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Gardner Community Center, 530 Virginia St. For more information, call 408.277.4761.