Two top dancers from Pakūranga College faced-off in an epic hip hop dance battle at the Blueprint schools dance competition during the holidays!
Riān Gounder’s (Mataī) fancy footwork took him all the way to a 1st place finish, with Peyton Haugh (Tōtara) finishing in the top four after a tough semi-final battle against Riān.
Riān is a dance battle veteran competing weekly, while Peyton is newer to the discipline and competes about once a month. Both were introduced to the format through their involvement in choreographed hip hop, which they continue to compete in alongside dance battles.
“For me, it’s all about dance battles,” says Riān. “That’s my strength.
“I love being in the moment. You can prepare some short sequences, perhaps practise a certain style – I like krump – but at the end of the day, you don’t know what music is going to play. You can’t truly prepare like you can with a choreographed routine.”
Dancers have up to 30 seconds to listen to the music, find the beat, and start dancing.
Peyton says, “I like that you can dance all styles in a dance battle, you don’t have to be locked into a particular hip hop style. You can go with what you like or what suits the music. It’s so free. That is one of the reasons I’ve started shifting my focus to dance battles, plus I get a lot of motivation from my coaches.
“It’s really encouraging to see that I can compete well using my existing skills, even though I’m still new to it.”
For Riān, his dance battle dreams are to go all the way to Fusion Concept in France, the pinnacle competition of the dance battle community.
“I was really proud to win the competition at Blueprint. I hope it helps me build towards even bigger competitions.”
One thing’s for certain, Pakūranga College is going to be bringing the heat to next year’s Blueprint dance battle!
