Jacob Lyons aka Kujo

Kujo was born and raised in Los Angeles, and still lives in Burbank, located in the San Fernando Valley area. He was born with 100% sensorineural deafness in his right ear, and suffered several instances of conductive hearing loss in his left ear. These ranged from severe ear infections in early childhood, to concussions sustained in adolescence - some directly from accidents made while practicing or even battling! This mixed hearing loss left him largely unable to communicate verbally, and he endured major speech impediments, including an awful stutter, throughout most of his childhood. The inability to pronounce certain simple sounds was overcome through years of speech therapy. The stutter, on the other hand, was entirely overcome through the confidence Kujo gained while learning to dance.

Kujo started dancing at the age of 15, and had tremendous difficulties hearing the music. This forced him to (over)compensate by focusing more on strength and power moves, as opposed to the musicality of toprock and footwork. Kujo instantly became recognizable due to his wild personality (and the hair) and his incredibly dangerous and difficult moves. He and his crew, Soul Control, quickly became famous as power move innovators, first in California and soon, worldwide. They were primarily known for introducing an obscure move called the air flare to the entire world, as well as almost every conceivable air flare variation and combination. Air flares are now an integral part of almost every bboy’s vocabulary.

Roughly 10 years into Kujo’s bboy career, as he began teaching and judging more, and competing less, he tasked himself with becoming a more complete bboy. But this involved confronting his difficulties in hearing the music, and he found a number of ways to get around this. These included feeling vibrations through the floor, watching the other dancers clap their hands or bob their heads to the beat, and even memorizing the music in private (while playing it quite loudly), which helps tremendously with choreography. In addition to sustaining a long career as a professional bboy, Kujo is now an award-winning choreographer, the founder and artistic director of Lux Aeterna Dance Company, and a freelance circus acrobat/aerialist. He also serves as the head choreographer for ILL-Abilities.