Jamaica, Bomboclat Festival - August recap

Hey everyone! Welcome to my update for the month of August. 

The biggest thing that happened this month was my trip to Jamaica! In short, it was an amazing experience, a lot better than I expected it to be before going. I’m working on a dedicated post about the trip and it should come online during the second part of September. 😀

The first weekend I was back home there was the Bomboclat Festival in Belgium. It’s a yearly festival that takes place on the beach of Zeebrugge. It mainly focuses on the music genres of Afrobeats and Dancehall. Since 2022 they have also included dance battles in their lineup. I’ve participated in all editions of them. The first one, in 2022, included an Afro/Dancehall battle, the second and the third one a purely Dancehall battle. 2022 and 2023 resulted in second place for me, so this year I was definitely looking to finally get that win.

This year’s judge was Lady K, Belgium’s Dancehall Queen of 2018. The battle was split over the two days of the festival: all battles until the final were on Saturday the 24th and the final was on Sunday the 25th. There were not a lot of people for the battle, four to be exact. So it was straight to the semi-finals, where every dancer got two rounds each. There I battled against Diamond. I don’t recall the songs we danced to, but at least one of them I never heard before. Lady K decided that I won this battle, so that meant that I would be dancing on the main stage the next day! So at least a third second place was guaranteed, but could I turn that into a win instead?

The final was against Elo and consisted of three rounds. I felt restricted in my dance because of the conditions imposed by the stage: I had to be careful to not hit the DJ booth when extending my arms on one side, falling off the staging by veering too much to the other side, and losing my balance because of the slipperiness caused by the sand. This resulted in me not doing my best rounds. I’ll be the first one to tell you that. 

After three rounds it was Elo who took the win. We will never know what would have happened if the aforementioned issues were not there. But I can tell you that dancing on such a stage is just not any fun for me, regardless of winning or losing. It’s not fun at all. It’s not the type of challenge I’m looking for when doing battles. A bit of a bummer to end this month with, but hey, these things are also part of the journey. On to the next battle!

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