Kenichi Ebina, dancer and performer, is the winner of the eighth season of the reality television series “America’s Got Talent”. Ebina is known for his unique dance style that incorporates martial arts, video game-like visuals, acting, and miming which he calls “dance-ish” performance. Ebina is the first performer to win on “America’s got talent” with a dance act, second out of the eight to win with a non-singing performance, and the first person to win from an Asian origin. Ebina will be performing next Saturday and Sunday, here at El Camino college.

Ebina was a college student in America from Japan when he first decided to be a professional dancer. His original purpose was to study English abroad for a couple of years. “Then I realized how fun it was so I naturally went with the flow and stayed even after I graduated.”

Ebina started his professional dancer/performer career in America after graduating college. Ebina now has a permanent residency in the United States, which allows him to go back in forth to his home, Japan.

Ebina recalled his experiences as a student in America and explained it as something “entirely different” than in Japan. “Everything is in a bigger scale and you have a lot more liberty and academic choices.”

Ebina says that winning in “America’s Got Talent” has positively changed a lot of him and his career. He explains that his victory is responsible for the recent gain in “recognition and offers,” but claims the biggest change was “getting paid more,” as he laughs. Ebina also said that “the fame and recognition now allows me to make my performance more flexible in terms of artistic diversity and do things that I was not able to do before.”

Ebina says that his performance at El Camino will be a standard performance, inspiried by the moves and acts which made him a million dollar act. He emphasized to not expect anything complicated and simply be entertained by his performance. “I want to tell my audiences not to think too hard and just watch, as my “dance-ish” performance is not a thing to take too seriously.”

Kenichi Ebina will perform at El Camino College’s Marcee Auditorium on Sept. 20th and Sept. 21st, Saturday 20th at 7 p.m., and Sunday 21st at 4 p.m.