Juste Debout

Sunday was the UK qualifiers for Juste Debout aka "the BIGGEST battle for standing styles," featuring top rock and 2 on 2: locking, popping, house and hip hop, and @DanceStationTW9 was there to witness and support. So we can testify that it definitely lived up to its title. 

Starting big the day kicked off with the top-rock prelims, which had more than 80 entrants, and then moved onto the locking prelims. This is where it started heating up for Dance Station with Xena, @MissEleanorOfficial and @Brookeplague to support. The action was funky fierce from all of them and @MissEleanorOfficial werked it for her first ever locking prelim, bringing some fresh style to the floor, but @Brookeplague with partner T-Wild were the ones to go onwards and upwards. 

Following this were the popping prelims, which were absolutely dominated by members of Fiyah House crew. @Brookeplague and partner Dickson were one classy act going through to the quarter-finals styling out the shirt and hat look. However, they did have some competition in the style stakes (;D) by a pair throwing out the daddy-daughter wedding dance tradition by entering as a father-son duo in some very fetching matching outfits that led @MlleGinger to claim that they were relations of mine (though obviously they weren't cool enough). 

The battles themselves were hype with each new round bringing at least one thing to elicit a response from the very excited crowd. This was a reflection of the inspiring standard of the competition as a whole, leading to some fabulous final action. Highlights have got to have been:

Hip Hop: Audience participation with the spectators acting as an impromptu safety net 
Popping: Best popping final I've ever seen - an all firehouse cracker - largely due to the musicality and originality being demonstrated by the fabulous four. The Fiyah House chants were definitely deserved.
House: 'The Roses' composed of two brothers including the absolute sickest kid, great to see the next generation coming up, ensures the progression of the scene we love and that's great! 

All of these factors led to hours of us hovering on the edges of our seats - in fact @MlleGinger was so dazzled she just had to put her sunglasses on inside, not that we're divalicious or anything at all. Major props have to go to all the dancers, even if the hardest worker of the whole day was @KleioBow's Shazzam app thanks to DJ DBO. 

The evening ended with us performing our own version of the clown car trick, with five of us squishing into the Kleio Mobile in order to get to Madame Jojos for the after party and bust some moves after being inspired all day. 

Final thoughts: YES UK!!