15th career win, 1st win in Estonia, "Belgian" DHQ competition - November recap

Hey everyone! It's already the 3rd week of December when I'm writing this. So 2024 is coming to a close. But, before I start jotting down my thoughts about the last month of the year, let’s recap the month of November. Welcome!

In my recap of October, I talked about the battle in Poland that got cancelled. That was a real bummer in itself but also because I didn’t have any other battles planned until December. This, however, changed in early November when I saw that there was a battle in Tartu, Estonia. It was the fourth battle day of the Cup Competition in Upper Street Dance & Breaking by the Estonian Streetdancers Association. I heard about their battles before but I didn’t attend any editions in the past. 

I have been to Estonia before for battles. It was every time for an event organised by It’s Like Home. My first time was in 2018 in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. In 2022 It’s Like Home also had an edition in Tartu which I attended. So I knew that travelling to that city required a 2,5-hour bus ride after touching down in Tallinn. I will be honest and say that I dreaded the trip from the airport to my hotel and back. But it actually went quite well! The fact that I didn’t get carsick probably contributed to that. 😆

As the name of the battle suggests there was not only a Dancehall battle but also others such as Hip Hop, House, Locking and Popping. Dancehall was the last category of the preselections and battles. They first did the preselection and battles of one style until the final, then the preselection and battles of the second until the final, and so on. The finals of all styles were last. For the Hip Hop battles, there were more than 100 participants for the 14-year-old and younger group and the 15-year-old and older group combined! That was crazy. For Dancehall there were less… 11 to be exact. 😅 To be fair I would be really surprised if there were 100. The only country where I see that happening at the moment is Poland. They don’t play!

From the 11 dancers, the judge, Birgit Käsper, selected 8 who advanced to the battles. I was one of those 8 dancers! During the quarter-finals and semi-finals, we danced each 1 round, but in the final, we danced 2 rounds. I made it to the final and was up against Yulia, who is one of the organisers of It’s Like Home. After our 2 rounds, Birgit decided that she needed to see another round before making her decision. In the end, I was the one who pulled through, securing my first win in Estonia and my 15th career win! 🤩

It took me almost 6 years after my first battle in Estonia in December 2018 to get my first win. During this time, I managed to make it to the final twice but going that extra stretch to secure the win never happened. So I’m super happy that it finally came to be. Not only that, but at the same time I also collected my 15th career win, before hitting the 7-years-of-battling mark in March 2025. Yeah, I still had some time left to get that 15th win, but in this business you don’t want to take any chances, haha. And also, now we can work towards the 20th win. 😎 And! Before I forget! This is also the first time that I won two battles back-to-back. This has never happened before. The least I can say is that this battle in Estonia was a special one when it came to milestones. 😄

The weekend after this battle, the Belgian Dancehall Queen competition took place for the very first time since 2019. The last edition was won by Coco. Ok, **cracks fingers** let me start off with the thing that bothered me the moment I heard about it: the competition was open to both non-Belgian and Belgian dancers. A Belgian Dancehall Queen competition that is open to non-Belgian dancers, this doesn’t make any sense to me! You will not let a foreign runner participate in a Belgian championship. You will not let a foreign tennis player represent Belgium in the Olympics. Yet, foreign dancers are allowed to participate in the Belgian Dancehall Queen competition. A reason I can think of is to increase the number of participants. You can increase this number a lot by opening up the competition to foreigners. Belgium itself is a small country with a smaller (compared to some other countries in Europe) Dancehall community. Thus, the number of dancers participating would be rather limited. But this doesn’t justify why you would allow foreign dancers to compete and if they win, claim the title “Belgian Dancehall Queen”. If organisers want to attract more participants then they should have organised a separate Dancehall Queen competition that’s open to everybody and that doesn’t carry the adjective “Belgian” in its name.

At the end of the competition, Victoria from France won, Ravage and Sosa (both from Belgium) got 2nd and 3rd place respectively. First, I personally think Ravage should have won, regardless of the fact that she is Belgian. Second, we now have a Belgian Dancehall Queen who is… French. Yeah, no. Victoria won the competition but for me she is not our Dancehall Queen. That’s Ravage. Full stop.

These types of competitions are great and give people a platform to express themselves. But the organisers and we as a community have to make sure that enough and careful thought goes into making the best decisions for these types of competitions.

I want to finish this month’s recap by sharing with you my favourite Dancehall song of the month: 1942 by Kemar Highcon.

Thanks for joining my dance journey and for your support! Talk to you next month.