Battles in Belgium and Italy, wedding gift - July recap

Hey everyone! Welcome to my recap of July. Let's dive right into it.

When June came to an end it was looking to be a busy start of the new month because I had three battles planned in a span of seven days: Dancehall Vybz Spirit Camp in France, Detours Festival at home, and Clash Fyah in Italy. The first one was already going to be a special one because it was the first time I was invited outside of Belgium to be a guest at a battle! So that was super awesome. Eight dancers in total were invited, including two other Belgian dancers: Coco and Piccolo. We would be participating in a 7-to-smoke clash.

The whole camp was going to be four days, from the 4th of July till the 7th, in Toulouse. I have been in that city before for another event by the same organisers: Dancehall Vybz Spirit (yes the same without "Camp"). That was back in November 2022. Then I participated in both battles they organised: a normal 1 vs 1 and a 7 to smoke. During the latter, I managed to get second place.

Unfortunately, the camp got cancelled due to issues with some of the teachers. So my first battle of July was off the books. It was a real bummer, especially considering I was a guest.

Detours Festival was the next one on my agenda, the 10th of July. It took place at Place de la Bourse in Brussels. It was outside and we were very lucky with the weather! This together with the fact that people could watch for free resulted in quite a big audience. Not only that, the audience consisted mostly of non-dancers, while for most battles that is not the case. I think in total 16 people participated. Who our opponents were depended on members of the audience who randomly selected dancers’ names out of a hat.

In the first round, I ended up going against Coco. We got to do two rounds. The first one was old school and the second one was new school. Unfortunately, I lost that battle. Although the judges’ decision resulted in a tie: Ravage voted for Coco and Piccolo voted for me, the audience also had a vote. And they voted for Coco. Eventually, Coco went on to win the whole battle. Congratulations to her!

After that, I had only one full day before my next battle in Italy! You can read more about how that went in this dedicated post.

The last thing for this month was the recording of a dance video that is a gift for one of my best friends’ wedding. Well, the wedding already happened last month but I still wanted to give him and his wife this. I was very excited about it but it also gave me enough stress. The biggest driver for that was the location, including the process of finding one. I had to take into account not only the aesthetics and how it fit the story I wanted to tell but also if there was enough space for the videographer to move around. Together with the availability and the prices of some locations, it did result in some nights with reduced sleep. Eventually, we found a great location and it looks promising. I can’t wait to see the result and the reaction of my friend and his wife!

Update: the video is available online. I’m so happy with it! 😍

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