Last clash, for now - March recap
After participating in the clash at Mad Yaard in Spain, I've decided to stop competing in clashes for now.
Hey everyone! As April is coming to an end, I’m writing my March recap. Wait, what?! Yeah… I’m a bit late with this one 😅 In any case, welcome!
On the 15th of March, I participated for the second time in the 7 to smoke clash at Mad Yaard in Madrid, Spain. The result was the same as last year 😅: I didn’t win. But how the battle turned out is not the main thing that I want to talk about here. The focus is gonna be how I feel towards clashes in general.
A quick refresher on how a clash is different from a regular battle. Instead of each dancer getting a predetermined amount of time to dance on their own without any involvement of the other dancer, the two dancers alternate dancing for 8 counts (or sometimes 16 counts). This goes on for at least 1 minute. The song doesn’t change and doesn’t get restarted. Afterwards, the same as during a regular battle, the judges decide who the winner is.
The fact that we are only allowed to dance 8 counts doesn’t really allow us to create a complete round. Every dancer is literally interrupted after 8 counts. I feel that I want to be able to build something during my round, which is something that can’t happen when I’m interrupted the whole time. I already started to notice this feeling the week before travelling to Spain, when I was specifically training for the clash. And my feeling was confirmed during the clash itself: it’s not fun. I can’t fully immerse myself in the music and consequently let my dance develop with the music when I’m only allowed to dance 8 counts at a time. Therefore, I decided that I’m not going to participate in clash battles anymore, for the time being.
This doesn't mean that I'm completely done with battles: I still want to participate in regular battles in the future. The next one is planned for the beginning of June in Czech Republic.
I want to finish this month’s short recap by sharing with you my favourite Dancehall song of the month: Life A Di Party by Bounty Killer.
Thanks for joining my dance journey and for your support! Talk to you next month.