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Samantha Morales Reyes: The South Bronx Battle Dancer Who Stepped Out of Her Comfort Zone — And Never Looked Back

In 2017, a young freestyle battler known as Samiam choreographed her first-ever piece at the Love is Love Showcase. Nearly a decade later, she is a Bronx dance leader building a home for the next generation.

By Dance Mogul Magazine  |  Originally featured May 2017  |  Updated and expanded 2026

Samantha Morales Reyes, known in the battle scene as Samiam | Photo: Dance Mogul Magazine Archives

Some dancers are made in studios. Others are forged on the floor — in ciphers, in battles, in the raw exchange of a crowd that decides in real time whether you have it or you don't. Samantha Morales Reyes, known throughout New York's street scene as Samiam, came up the second way. Born and raised in the South Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop culture, she learned to move in the same neighborhoods and among the same crews that shaped the art form itself.

When Dance Mogul Magazine first featured her in May 2017, Samiam had just done something that surprised almost everyone who knew her: she stepped away from the freestyle battling she was known for and choreographed her own original piece for the Love is Love Choreographer Showcase. It was, in her words, a goal checked off. Nearly a decade later, that willingness to move beyond her comfort zone reads like a preview of everything that came next. This is her story then — and where she is now.

From the South Bronx Floor: The 2017 Feature

Here is how Dance Mogul Magazine introduced Samiam in 2017, in her own community's words:

Samantha Morales Reyes, also known as Samiam, was born and raised in the South Bronx and officially started dancing at the age of fourteen with NYC's finest TBB (The Bronx Boys), Rock Steady Crew, and KR3TS with Ms. Violeta G, and also worked with Rokafella and Kwikstep. She had recently appeared on the show So You Think You Can Dance (Season 12, Team Street) and made it as a Vegas finalist, and battled on both the BattleFest League "Queen of the Streets" and Loud League street dance platforms. She had also performed with artists such as Young B and DJ Webster. At the time of the feature she was teaching children in various NYC recreation centers and training to become a signed professional dancer, all while continuing to teach and battle.

Samiam at the Love is Love Choreographer Showcase, 2017 | Dance Mogul Magazine Archives

The showcase marked a turning point, and Samiam described the night in her own words:

"I was so grateful to have this opportunity to perform at this showcase. Especially this being my first time ever performing there, and it being my piece, was super special to me. Everyone had the idea set in stone that I was going to stick to my comfort zone and come out doing what I normally do, which is me being a freestyle/battle dancer; of course — that definitely wasn't the case. That night was the moment I finally presented and choreographed a piece. A goal checked off. I was even more blessed with amazing dancers to present it with. Any night like this is a night to remember." — Samantha Morales

Samiam's Love is Love Showcase piece | Video via Dance Mogul Magazine on Facebook

Coming Up in the Home of Hip-Hop

To understand Samiam, you have to understand where she is from. The South Bronx is not just a place on a map — it is the ground where hip-hop culture, and with it the foundations of modern street dance, first took shape in the 1970s. Growing up there meant learning movement as a living tradition rather than a class on a schedule, passed hand to hand through crews, block parties, and battles.

The names in her early résumé carry real weight in that world. Rock Steady Crew, formed in the Bronx in the late 1970s, is one of the most influential breaking crews in history and helped carry New York b-boying to a global stage. TBB, The Bronx Boys, is another storied local crew rooted in that same lineage. Rokafella and Kwikstep — Ana "Rokafella" García and Gabriel "Kwikstep" Dionisio — are among the most respected hip-hop dance artists and educators to come out of New York, long known for preserving the culture's foundations while mentoring the next generation. To train and work alongside these figures as a teenager was, in effect, an apprenticeship in the real thing.

Her battle credits tell the same story of a dancer built for competition. The BattleFest League, which crowns titles such as "Queen of the Streets," and the Loud League have long served as proving grounds for New York's street dancers, where reputations are earned one round at a time in front of unforgiving crowds. That is the arena where Samiam sharpened her freestyle voice.

Then came national television. When Samiam reached the Las Vegas callbacks for So You Think You Can Dance, she stepped onto one of the biggest platforms in American dance. That twelfth season, which premiered on Fox on June 1, 2015, broke from the show's usual format entirely: instead of dividing dancers by gender, it pitted "Team Stage" against "Team Street," with Stephen "tWitch" Boss mentoring the street side. For a self-taught battler from the Bronx, earning a place in that pool was validation that the floor she came from could stand alongside any studio in the country.

Where Is Samantha "Samiam" Morales Reyes Now?

The dancer who once described choreographing a single piece as "a goal checked off" has spent the years since checking off a great deal more. According to her own social media presence, Samiam has never left the Boogie Down Bronx behind — she still proudly reps the borough — and she has moved from being a featured battler into the role of a builder and leader in her own right.

Chief among those steps is The Hubb, a Bronx dance collective she is credited as founding. It is a fitting next chapter for someone who came up inside crews and community spaces: rather than simply chase individual placements, she appears to be creating the kind of home and platform for other dancers that once shaped her. That instinct — to teach, to gather, to give back to the neighborhood — was already visible in 2017, when she was teaching children in NYC recreation centers between battles.

Her professional footprint has widened, too. Her own listed credits now include brand and event work with names like Red Bull and Puma, as well as performances connected to dancehall and reggae artists such as Koffee, Elephant Man, and Hood Celebrity — a reach that stretches well beyond the battle circuit where she started. (Because these details come from her own public profiles rather than dated press coverage, we present them as her stated body of work.) Taken together, they describe exactly the trajectory she hinted at in that first feature: a freestyle battler who refused to be boxed in, still evolving, still Bronx to the core.

Why It Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine

Samiam's journey is exactly the kind of story Dance Mogul Magazine exists to tell. She is not a household name in the mainstream sense, and that is precisely the point. The dancers who build culture from the ground up — in the ciphers, the recreation centers, the battle leagues — rarely get the documentation their impact deserves. DMM was founded to change that, especially for the Black and Brown artists who created street dance and continue to carry it forward.

Her arc also embodies the magazine's core mission of self-empowerment. Stepping out of a comfort zone, choreographing a first piece, then going on to found a collective and mentor others — that is empowerment in motion, not as a slogan but as a career. It is the same thread that runs through DMM's Exclusive Interviews with artists across every discipline: talent is only the starting line, and what a dancer builds with it is the real story.

Revisiting features like this one is part of that commitment. The adults searching today for the history of the battlers, crew members, and reality-show competitors of the 2010s deserve to find accurate, respectful records of where those artists have gone. Samiam's chapter — from South Bronx floors to a platform of her own — is one worth keeping current.

The Story Continues

In 2017, Samiam called her showcase piece "a goal checked off." It reads now like the first entry on a much longer list. The freestyle battler who surprised her whole scene by choreographing a piece has become the kind of dancer who builds spaces for others to rise — carrying the Bronx with her at every step.

Dance Mogul Magazine will keep following artists like her: the ones who come up on the floor, honor the culture that raised them, and turn their talent into something that outlasts any single battle. Because in street dance, as in life, the goal is never just to win the round — it is to build something that lasts. And Samiam is still building.

Samantha Morales Reyes Samiam South Bronx Street Dance Rock Steady Crew BattleFest League So You Think You Can Dance The Hubb Hip-Hop Culture Where Are They Now Empowerment

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