Matthew Greco, the first male on Minnesota’s dance team, found success by staying real
“The first time I watched them, my jaw dropped to the floor,” said Greco, who grew up in New Jersey. “Cocky” isn’t the right word for the U’s style, he said, searching for a better descriptor. He finally settled on one: “Untouchable.”
“You just want to hold your chest as high as they do, you want to be that confident,” Greco said. “I’ve always looked up to the way they took the stage, the presence they had. I was drawn to that.”
As a teen, Greco learned to dance from three instructors who hailed from Minnesota, including Kelley Larkin and niece Danielle, who operate Studio L in New Jersey, where Greco spent thousands of hours honing his moves. He said his tight dance community there “idolized” Minnesota, which now holds 23 national championships. He credits his mom for always showing up for her son and pushing him to keep dancing.
Long before he ever joined a studio, though, he tried every sport under the sun. “I just hated everything,” he recalled. “I was out in the baseball field playing with the sand. I was not the athletic sport kid that my dad thought I was going to be.”
That all changed when Greco took his first hip-hop dance class when he was 8. As he grew more dedicated to the discipline, squeezing in five hours in the studio every day between school and homework, he fought cultural expectations of how boys should leave their mark on the world. He learned that other kids in school were calling him homophobic slurs. The comments stung, but he never retaliated.
“High school was a hard time. Males are supposed to be in football or basketball,” he said. “But now looking back, I’m almost grateful. I was bullied, but I was able to overcome that and be true to who I was. You can think that about me, and that’s OK. I’m just gonna keep doing me.”
