What a weekend. Nordic Moves was as awesome as ever. The weekend was full of emotions. From bitter disappointments to extreme happiness. Here’s a recap:

Saturday – Juste Debout Finland

Finnish dancers were in the house. All the familiar faces were competing in their respective categories and a lot of new faces were taking their first steps as well. All of the pandas except Wille (who’s in Amsterdam) took part on the qualifications in Locking. Akim also took part on Hip Hop 2vs2 with Rosa. Sami and Jontte represented with true color in full body Panda suits (made by Alexandra). They were hot as hell in more ways than one.

Pretty sweet right?

All of us went through to battles which was nice. Akim & Jeff had to battle Teemu & Kai in the first round and they won continuing to semis. Jontte & Sami battled Linda & Sami Pajari and lost due to some mediocre dancing and all around dumbassery on their own part. :D

In the semifinals the juniors were up against the mighty Funky Foot Clan. Patrick and Freestaylor came out guns blazing and it was a great battle. Especially the interaction between Jeff and Patrick was a joy to watch. Great stuff! Finally the victory went to Akim & Jeff.

In the finals they faced Alex & Ice. The battle itself was pretty awesome but the DJ (DJ Doc) who was flipping some weird shit all night didn’t do a very good job. Songs were mixed poorly and the choice of songs was also somewhat questionable. Not something to get hyped up about. But what can ya do? In the end the judges declared Alex & Ice the winners (P.Lock voted for Akim & Jeff). Wackness.

Sunday – Dance Delight Finland vol. 1

A bright day dawned on sunday and this was also the day to vote for the new president of Finland. The venue was the Savoy theater and it was a new place to all of us. No worries. The stage was spacious and the lights were great so no problem. We did our normal warm up routines and last check ups on all the details of the choreography. Then we just had to wait.

There were three qualifications groups and we were in the last one and second to last performance. So we had a lot of time on our hands. We got to see the other groups perform as well as the guest groups that were doing their showcases. One of the most exiting was the Pro Phenomenon -group. A french powerhouse that had some really great dancers. The choreography was just simply amazing. The dynamic and power and precision was absolutely fantastic to watch.

Finally it was our turn to do our thing. And that we did. The energy was high and the audience were pumping us up even more with their applause. There were minor mess ups here and there but all in all we did a good job. The release of pressure was immense and it felt really good so we were pretty confident that we’d get to the final round.

In the end there were six crews: iVogueU, T8, Voguenon, JJ-Street, FarFor, and us. All awesome. Our second run went ok too but still there were the occcasional hiccup. Nothing perfect. After all of the crews had performed it was time to announce the winner. When it dawned on us that we were in the top 3 the excitement got to a whole new level. Then it was just us and FarFor competing for the gold. And when finally Jouni announced that this years Silver goes to….Far For. Time stood still.

It took a good few seconds to really hit home. Did we just win? What? KABOOM! We were all over the place. Hats were flying and Akim was doing flips and people were yelling. Pure pandamonium! We are going to Japan! Awesome! It felt like all the work we had done all these years payed off big time in the right moment. The atmosphere was unreal. We did a small interview for Yle and also the organizer of the whole Dance Delight mr. Machine.

We will put up videos and pics to Media section soon. You can also watch great recaps in TV! YLE2 was in the house both days and you can watch the Juste Debout recap on 11.2. saturday 16:25 and Dance Delight recap on 12.2. sunday 16:15.

All in all big big props to all the dancers from Finland and abroad. It was a major weekend and thank you all for being part of this thing we call dance community. Thank you also to Jouni and his people for organizing this event. It’s time to go back to kisahalli and practice practice practice. See you in the Street Championships!

And dear Juste Debout people: don’t hire Dj Doc next year please.
Sincerely, all the dancers ;)