About OC Shufflers
Discover Our Mission
OC Shufflers is a public community of shufflers located in Orange County, CA. What started as a commitment between three women to show up and dedicate a space to freestyle and dance practice, quickly grew into a community of like minded dancers looking for a safe space, community, break from reality, and just a fun night of music and dancing every week.
Meet the Team
These are the three women that started OC Shufflers. Belle, Emmi, and Priscilla made plans to just throw on some music and dance. Time went on and word spread, the group grew larger and the meetups continued. A promise to themselves to put time aside each week to practice quickly turned into an entire community of people that wanted to share the same space.
Thus, OC Shufflers was born.
Co-Founder
Belle Kolik
Belle is a heels dancer turned shuffler since 2023. While she still loves other dance styles, once discovering shuffling, she realized shuffling will forever be the favorite.
Belle started with shapes and choreography, but has become an all over fusion shuffler. She loves both freestyle and choreo for different spaces, and she loves knowing that no matter how much you know, this dance style always has new moves and styles to learn.
OC Shufflers has been such a pivotal moment in Belle's shuffle journey. The weekly meetups started with a personal goal to feel comfortable and confident in her freestyle. Past that, she found her way as a teacher, discovered so many shuffle styles and fusions, and met so many amazing people. She is so happy to be apart of OC Shufflers and cannot wait to see how it continues to evolve and grow just like it's members.
Co-Founder
Emmi Ortego
Emmi (Emily) has been apart of the rave and EDM scene since 2016. EDC UK was the first festival she attended while studying abroad in Cambridge, UK. She discovered so many different genres of EDM which ignited her love for drum and bass, house, techno and UK garage. She also met some UK shufflers who tore up the dance floor and deeply inspired her.
Emmi’s love for EDM continued well into the 2020’s where she saw shuffling go viral again over social media. In mid 2023 she was inspired by modern day shufflers and thought back about where her love for EDM started. She remembered how amazing the UK shufflers she met were, and how effortlessly they connected to the music. At that point, with no dance experience, she signed up for a shuffle retreat and started taking shuffle classes in San Diego. After that, just like with raving, she was hooked.
By the beginning of 2024, Emmi fully immersed herself into the shuffling scene; she took many classes, she studied many legends online and really pushed herself in her beloved hobby. 2024 was a year of classroom and studio learning where she did lots of shuffle choreography and started attending local meetups in San Diego and LA. By the beginning of 2025, she discovered her freestyle flow and really tapped into her creative energy. Freestyle was exactly what Emmi was looking for in the dance, where she could connect her body to the music she loved so much. It circled her back to the moment where she witnessed the UK shufflers at EDC UK tear up the dance floor.
Along the way, she met incredible people who mentored her, encouraged her, and became life long friends with. After attending many LA, San Diego and Orange County meetups, as well as taking many shuffle classes in LA, she united with Belle, Priscilla and Fern to form the OC shufflers. What started as 4 friends dancing together at the beach in the rain, a huge community of creatives was formed. Emmi was able to help build to a shuffle community centered around self expression, growth, acceptance and love. The OC Shuffler community was her greatest blessing in her EDM career.
Co-Founder
Priscilla Butaya
Growing up as a musician and singer, music has always been a constant in Priscilla's life. Because rhythm and movement go hand in hand, she naturally fell in love with dancing. During her college senior year, a friend introduced her to the salsa and bachata community. She quickly discovered how healing and fun movement could be. From there, she dabbled in hip-hop, Zumba, pole and heels classes.
Priscilla had known about shuffling since 2011 and was enamored watching others shuffle at her first rave in 2018. By 2022, the obsession grew stronger as she watched YouTube and Instagram videos. She then took a one-on-one class and has been hooked ever since. Her first year shuffling was spent alone which taught her to be in tune with her body and find her own flow. Eventually, she took a group class in LA where the connections made there inspired her to start sharing her own journey so someone else might find the same joy and healing in it.
Along the way, she found her community which led to her friendships with Belle and Emmi. Priscilla started shuffling in her early 30s and she'll be the first to tell you it’s never too late to learn something new and do what you love. OC Shufflers grew out of that — her passion project, and her way of giving back to the dance that gave her so much more than she could have asked for.