K-Pop: The 3rd Edition

Saturday, 26th July was a day of great excitement amongst the dance community in Abuja. It was the 3rd edition of KPop, a dance competition organised by the Korean cultural centre.
Crews came in from across the nation to compete for a spot in the finals and one of those teams were Pacific, an all-star dance crew based in Abuja, led by Eno Ekpenyong.

Kpop is a competition aimed at promoting pop culture, dance and culture exchange amongst youths in Nigeria and Korea. I had never been to any of the competitions so I was quite excited to see it first hand.
It held at the Women’s Development Centre, Abuja and was hosted by Six Foot Plus.

The program began with the recital of the Nigerian and Korean national anthems, an opening speech by the Korean ambassador and introduction of the judges and members of the high table.

The competition itself has three stages, the online entry stage in which all competing crews are to send in a video of the kpop idol they would like to be. The best crews are then drafted to compete at the final round in Nigeria, the winners of the finale then represent Nigeria at the international level in Korea.
The stakes were high, the dancers were ready and the battle was on for the title of kpop champions.

To kick off the competition, all the selected videos of the Kpop idols were played and one by one, crews took to the stage to give the performance of a life time.
In the first category was the secondary school category, made up of about 6 crews. The contestants put on quite a show, with vibrant costumes and high energy dance.
The second category was the professional category and the excitement from the crowd meant the battle had begun.
Each crew took to the stage, amongst them crews from Jos, Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos and Benin.

While the judges were compiling results,
Kpop veterans iDez and Elevators entertained the crowd with exciting performances including a group number to Psy’s ‘Gagnum style’.

The winners of the Secondary category were GSS girls gwagwalada with GSS boys gwagwalada coming in 2nd.

The winners of Professional category
In first place -C.i squad, second Pacific and Flyhigh came in third.

*phew* What a battle! It was an experience worth having and loads of fun. Keep dancing, Keep k-popping! I can’t wait for the 4th edition, can you?

• Art House