“My origin story, I was born Canadian to two Vietnamese immigrants. And I grew up in Chinatown, and was nurtured by Italians and then raised by Hip-hop.
I first grew up in a place where there’s a lot of immigrants. I was so much of a dreamer that I learned about breakdancing in the ninth grade in the streets.
Learned I wanted to do that.
I became this person that I wanted to be, which is a dancer.
Soon enough in university, I graduated in business commerce.
I decided to let go and forgo doing the finance major because I decided to dance as a career.
So I then take on Escapade Music Festival, We Day, Free the Children, dance in front of stadiums, work with LA choreographers, traveled to Montreal, became an adjudicator for Team Canada for Hip Hop International and start dancing for celebrities and artists because I traveled so much in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, which landed me over to LA and New York often, but more so LA.
Then LA, I made my network.
I started to really start filming there because everyone there learns that business and art needs to meet together, which later went back to my hometown in Ottawa.
When COVID happened, I was already deep in my media and YouTube journey. And because of that, I became UGC and I built my media production agencies during that time frame. And because I’d built a UGC media agency out of that timeframe, I moved to Toronto for more opportunities because my team was getting a little bored. And from there on, I started establishing myself as a media production agency. Over time, I found myself a little lost and just decided to dance again because I fell in love with it.
I was dancing 12 years before I went to a media agency. When I got back to dance again, I started to find that I was very good at what I did in the many years.
People in Toronto did not know what I did.
So I started taking on roles that I used to do at a very high level, which ended up being the Grown Ass Pizza Party.
I said, I have traveled the world.
I have seen a lot of things.
I’ve connected with all my industry people from around the world, learned all the tricks and trade.
And now I decided to take things into my own hands, because instead of complaining, I started actioning and that’s where Grown Ass Pizza Party has birthed. And I decided to take up that role because I feel as millennials, we’re no longer spectators.
We’re now the activator of this culture.
So that’s a little bit of a brief origin story.
Where do I want to go with it?
Now, this is going to be an unusual answer.
I say to the end until it’s no longer fun and makes an impact during the journey.
Where do I come up with this creative energy?
If I’m assuming you’re thinking about how to come up with these concepts that produce this, the answer to that question is pure imagination and dreaming of an idea by using the word what if.
What if we could?
What if this?
And then I find answers.
The funny thing is that being at 40 years old is that you find answers when you seek it, but not in the places that you expect.
I found it through traveling.
I found it through dancing.
I found it through my work.
I found it through a conversation with strangers at the bar.
I find with all these different experiences in my life and I compile them all and amalgamate them and then find a solution to my what ifs.
So whenever someone says, what if we have a party?
And I’m like, well, funny enough, I have lots of parties that I have discovered over in Prague, London or Portugal, maybe out in Venezuela or even Colombia, whatever the places have brought me, it has given me the idea that anything is possible.
And more importantly, the friends that I have, because the friends that I have in the circles that I built through my dance career have led me to see the impossible happen, creating stages, multiples, concepts, and production and acting and systems that I’ve never seen before now has become my norm.
So that’s where I got all this creative energy.”
Brian Tong
Dancer – Creative – Community Leader
@itsbeyondbtong
@grown.ass.pizza.party
Photos by @_finn
