A local dance crew has taken third place in an international hip hop dance competition.
Dance crew Rebellious (aged 16-18 years), choreographed by world-renowned choreographer Kiel Tutin and Isaiah Reid, came third in the Varsity Division at HHI’s World Hip Hop Dance Championship on Sunday.
Howick’s Red Studio managing director Kiri Whitford-Joynt said HHI didn’t run the Worlds last year due to the pandemic and in 2021 it is run virtually online with video submissions.
“With all countries in and out of lockdowns it was a great option,” she said.
“We submitted our prelims video and then NZ went into lockdown. When we qualified for finals, everyone had the opportunity to re-submit videos but we couldn’t due to our lockdown and had to wait to see who else had in order to see final results.”
There were 170 crews from around the world competing in the Worlds Preliminary round and 49 through to Finals.
Rebellious qualified second through the NZ qualifying competition with HHINZ where the top three in each division go to the Worlds.
After worlds prelims they qualified in eighth place with a deduction and the top 10 going through. After a review, the deduction was removed so their score left them in fourth moving into finals.
“We were unable to submit another video for finals due to Covid lockdown so our score stayed the same moving from prelims to finals,” Whitford-Joynt said.
“We had to wait and see if anyone else moved places after finals judging and at 5am on Sunday morning watched the finals with Varsity Division results revealing third place.”
