Red Bull Dance Your Style, Detours Festival, Link Up - September recap

Hey everyone! This month moved us from Summer into Fall. Welcome to my recap of September.

At the beginning of the month, I published a dance video that was a gift for one of my best friend and wife’s wedding, which I talked about before. I used the song Angel by Ric Hassani and created a choreography incorporating a lot of Dancehall steps. Clara was my partner and Adam was responsible for the filming and editing. Thank you both for helping me making this possible. I’m very happy with the result! 😍

On the 7th of September, there was the Belgian preselection for Red Bull Dance Your Style in Ghent. This battle decided who will represent Belgium in the world final in Mumbai, India on the 9th of November. There were 16 guest dancers from across different styles such as Hip Hop, House, Dancehall, Locking, and so on. The DJ played popular music, as in music that random people on the street would probably know, music that they most likely would have heard on the radio. It was not the music you typically find at other battles.

Each battle consisted of 2 rounds, with the exception of the final which was 3 rounds. The stage was divided into two colours: blue and red. If a dancer was on the blue side then blue votes counted for them. If a dancer was on the red side then red votes counted for them. After the rounds, the audience decided who was the winner by putting up a piece of paper that was blue on one side and red on the other. The host decided what colour dominated and announced the winner.

My friend Coco was one of the guests, representing Dancehall! She won her top 16 battle, but unfortunately, lost in the quarter-finals. Nico Chanh eventually won in the final and will represent Belgium in India. I think it’s great to see Dancehall on this stage among the more established dance styles like Hip Hop and House. Coco was not the only one immersing the audience in Dancehall, Piccolo was also one of the guests and brought his own Dancehall flavour to the battles.

Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles was the location for the final of Detours Festival 2024 on Saturday the 14th. The dancers in this battle were the winners of the different battles that Detours Festival organised over the Summer. These battles were in different styles thus, as with Red Bull Dance Your Style, the dancers also represented different styles. This group included Coco as well because she won the Dancehall battle in July. It was my first time in that theatre and it’s an unusual place to have a dance battle compared to most of the other battles I have participated in or attended as a spectator. In my opinion, it’s a great location to have a battle: there is enough space to dance and spectators have the option to either sit next to the dance floor, on the benches 2-3 metres removed from the floor or in the bleachers. A lot of times it happens that only the first row of people closest to the dance floor are seated and that the rest are standing. As a result, the people in the third row and onwards don’t see a lot of what’s happening on the dance floor, especially when they are not tall… like me 😅

At the start, every dancer got a presentation round where they danced for the public for around 30 seconds. Next, it was time for the battles. While during the event by Red Bull the audience had the one and only vote, here the audience had one of the three votes. The other two votes were coming from the judges. After going from 16 to 8, to 4, to 2 dancers, it was B-Boy  Djibril who took the win at the end.

The last weekend of the month I participated in my first battle in Germany in 5 years! The last time was in December 2019. I drove 4 hours to Bielefeld where the 3rd edition of Link Up was taking place on the 28th. I’m going to write a separate post about the event. But I can already tell you the result was great: I won! 🏆🤩

Besides writing part 2 of my write-up of my trip to Jamaica, I worked on foundation, moves, and steps we learned in the classes at Dancehall Mecca during my training. Specifically, I focussed on the classes by Sopreme Blazzaz, Sashi Empire, Dansa Bling, and Endevarous. It was easier to review what they taught us, compared to classes at other events, because we had access to the live streams of the whole event for 3-4 weeks afterwards. I really enjoyed going through all the different elements of what they taught us at my own pace and taking my time figuring out how I can include these elements in my dance.

I want to finish this month’s recap by sharing with you my favourite Dancehall song of the month: Endless Vibes by Kranium.

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