A New Galaxy Awaits Dancers

Tom Nguyen and his two partners at Los Angeles-based Limelight Entertainment have wanted for a while to bring their Asian American dance club to Orange County.

They knew that a huge chunk of the crowd attending their dance nights in Los Angeles drove up from the south, and they have been itching to tap the county.

The challenge for Nguyen, Lee Ho and Calvin Lee was to find the right venue--something large and in a safe area--for the over-21 events, which draw mostly young Asian American professionals.

“L.A.’s the place to go for clubs,” Nguyen said. “There just aren’t as many nice [dance club venues] in Orange County.”

The trio settled on the 800-capacity Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana. But first they had to persuade Galaxy general manager Craig Black to give Asian Night a test run. He was wary of booking a second dance night as potentially rowdy as Club Rubber, which the Galaxy scaled back from a weekly to a monthly event.

“We like to think that the Galaxy is pretty upscale,” Black said. “We’d like to keep it that way. I mean, our carpeting in the early days of Club Rubber took a real beating with people putting their cigarettes out on the floor. I’m really excited that [Limelight] is bringing in a little bit of a higher-class crowd.”

Limelight began presenting Asian dance nights two years ago at such venues as Century City’s swanky Century Club and Savannah West. The idea was to give young Asian Americans a taste of Los Angeles’ glitzy night life.

“The thing is, Asian people don’t go out that much,” the 22-year-old Nguyen said. “They stick to their old karaoke thing and I don’t know what else. They don’t go to bars. There’s a big night life out there that a lot of them don’t know about. Most of it involves [ethnically] mixed crowds. I guess a lot of Asians don’t feel comfortable at those events. So we’re trying to give them that type of night life.”

Chinese Americans make up the most of the dance night club-goers in Los Angeles, followed by Vietnamese Americans. About 15% are non-Asians, Nguyen said.

It’s common for groups of 10 to 15 young Asian Americans to attend en masse. A biology and economics student at UCLA, Nguyen said some of his peers look at the events as choice networking opportunities.

Though Orange County has about six ballroom dance clubs that get a big turnout of older Asian Americans, it lacks a place for the younger generation to hear Western dance music, Nguyen said. “We play a lot of music that people in California haven’t really heard of that we import from Europe and New York.”

When Asian Night kicks off Friday at 9 p.m., it will feature two dance areas. The main room will emphasize cutting-edge house music, and a smaller space will present a mix of R&B; and hip-hop. “We’re also bringing in this massive laser system,” Nguyen said. “It’s like the stuff they use for amusement parks.”

If their initial venture goes well, Nguyen and his partners hope to establish a monthly Asian Night at the Galaxy.

Black said he is all for anything that brings in a new, mannerly crowd. “We certainly do have a diverse population down here in Orange County, and we’re willing to try a lot of things,” he said. “But the events have to make sense. . . . If a Latin promoter came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we want to do a Latin night there, an upscale type thing,’ it would certainly be something to talk about.”

* Asian Night takes place Friday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. $15. (714) 957- 0600.