JOIN USWhile street dance is a vibrant and exciting form of dance that is practiced all over the world, the key aspect being free form and spontaneity, Salsa is an upbeat and vibrant form of expression that captures the imagination of people all over the world. Street dancing is a form of dance where dancers can let go of inhibitions and interpret their various moves freely also inventing new ones on the go. That is why we held this competition to encourage dancers to create a personal style of their own, with improvisation mixed in with some amount of choreographed routines,” said Lourde Vijay, one of the organisers of the Latin and Street Dance Face offs that was held in the City recently.
Kicking off with a splendid display of skill and technique were Sneha Kapoor and Richard Tholoor (who won the European Open Salsa Masters and Australian Salsa Classic Competition), the two guest performers got the rest of the programme off to a good start. All in all there were two Salsa and eight street dancing entries with plenty of foot-tapping music, glitzy costumes and well-practiced moves and techniques to keep the competition rocking. One of the unusual entertaining acts was by a group of young kids who demonstrated ‘beatboxing’, a form of vocal percussion by which they produced drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouths, lips, tongues and vocal chords. Beatboxing is closely connected with hip hop culture although it is not limited to hip hop music and the crowd was highly appreciative of the kids’ efforts. The ten shortlisted semi-finalists, who performed that evening were chosen out of a list of 35 groups who auditioned the previous day.
The judges were Sharmila Mandre, Kannada actress Biju Kohli who has his own dance troupe called ‘Vibes’ and Lourde Vijay. The final winners were Bindu and Aatish in the Latin dance category and Mexiico in the street dance category. The competition ended with a closing act by the guest performers involving ‘adagio’ styles of dance, which had lifts and tricks of different dance techniques.
“We base our judgement on energy, co-ordination, degree of difficulty, standards of execution and of course, the X-factor that each performer puts into his act,” concluded Lourde as the winners shared a prize of Rs 25,000.