Takotna, Alaska, is not a city. It is a village of roughly 50 people, tucked into the interior where winter temperatures plunge past –20°F and darkness stretches to nineteen hours a day. For decades, entertainment here meant basketball in the school gym, bingo nights, or the wait for spring thaw. Now, on many winter evenings, the same gym echoes with the slap of cardboard and the beat of hip-hop.
The Alaskan Aces, a breakdancing crew founded in 2019, have become an improbable fixture of Takotna's social life. What began as three teenagers spinning on gym mats has grown into a structured collective with statewide recognition, a youth outreach program, and performances that draw audiences from neighboring villages along the Kuskokwim River.
From Gym Sessions to Staged Stories
The crew's founder is Marcus Moses, 24, a Takotna native who learned breakdancing through YouTube tutorials during high school in Anchorage. When he returned home after graduation, he brought a boombox and a stack of cardboard boxes salvaged from the village store.
"Out here, you make do with what you have," Moses said. "At first people thought it was weird—breakdancing in snow boots. But once they saw we were serious, they started showing up."
The Aces now number seven core members, ranging in age from 17 to 28. Their day jobs include subistence fishing, working at the Takotna School, and employment with the local tribal council. Rehearsals happen in the community center, often after 10 p.m. when shifts end and heating oil deliveries are finished for the day.
Their most performed piece, Breakup—named for the spring river thaw—illustrates how the crew has woven local identity into an art form born in the Bronx. The work opens with a Yup'ik-style storyknife gesture taught to Moses by Eva Alexie, 71, an elder from the Takotna Village Council. The gesture, traditionally used to narrate tales in the dirt or snow, traces the path of ice cracking on the Kuskokwim River. From there, the piece accelerates into power moves performed on a stage floor painted to resemble shifting ice floes.
"Marcus came to me and asked properly," Alexie said. "He didn't just take. That matters. What they're doing is new, but the respect is old."
Numbers and Reach
The Aces' influence is measurable in ways that matter in a village this size. Their weekly youth workshop, launched in 2021, has served roughly 40 children over four years—nearly the entire school-age population of Takotna and nearby villages. Participation is free. The crew fundraises through salmon donations and small grants from the Alaska State Council on the Arts.
In 2022, the Aces placed third in the Alaska Hip-Hop Festival in Anchorage, their first competition outside the region. That appearance led to a 2023 collaboration with Juneau-based contemporary dance troupe Perseverance Theatre, and a featured slot at the 2024 Indigenous Peoples' Forum in Fairbanks, where they performed Breakup for an audience of roughly 300.
They are not "making waves on the national stage"—not yet. But in Alaska, where "rural arts" often means isolation and underfunding, the Aces have become a case study for what sustained local effort can build without institutional backing.
The Politics of Fusion
The crew's incorporation of indigenous movement has not gone unquestioned. In 2023, a social media post showing a clip from Breakup drew criticism from a dance educator in Bethel who argued that hip-hop and Yup'ik tradition should remain separate forms. The Aces responded by inviting the critic to a workshop. She declined, but the exchange prompted Moses to formalize the crew's protocol: no indigenous element is used without direct instruction from a named cultural bearer, and elders review new work before it is performed publicly.
"We're not trying to be native breakdancers," said Jenna Charley, 22, the crew's co-director, who is Dena'ina and Koyukon Athabascan. "We're breakdancers who are from here. Those are different things. The land and the people shaped us before we ever touched a cardboard box."
What Comes Next
The Aces face practical constraints that urban troupes do not. Travel to Anchorage requires a charter flight from Takotna to McGrath, then a commercial flight—cost and logistics that can consume a month's planning. There is no dedicated rehearsal space with mirrors or sprung floors. Two members left in 2024 for job opportunities in Fairbanks, and the crew has not ruled out a future base in Anchorage if funding allows.
Still, Moses says the core
