The temperature in Las Vegas will hover around the 40ºC mark next week.
And for a hip hop dance crew from Aldergrove, the heat will be on in more ways than one when they compete in the World Hip Hop Championships in the place known as Sin City.
Aldergrove’s Street Kings Academy of Dance is sending its elite all-girls team Dominuss to the elite event.
Dominuss was chosen as one of the top three-ranked teams in the country to compete, shared choreographer Paul Otterbein, owner of Street Kings Academy of Dance.
“It’s quite the honour for a small local town hip hop team to be representing our amazing country of Canada against the best of the best in the world,” Otterbein said.
The crew qualified for the national finals in the preliminary round in Vancouver March 20 and then flew to Montreal to compete against the best in the country in early June.
From that competition, Dominuss earned one of the three spots to represent Canada in Vegas.
The dancers come from Aldergrove, Langley, Chilliwack, Coquitlam, Vancouver, and New Westminster, with Otterbein coming from Abbotsford. Local dancers with the crew include captain Jasmyne Gabert, Sydney DeGianni, and Shelan Humphrey.
The Dominuss crew leaves for Las Vegas Saturday, Aug. 6 and will compete for the world championship gold medal.
Dominuss trains roughly 10 to 15 hours each week, working on a routine that is two minutes long but is, Otterbein said, “very action packed and includes about five different styles of hip hop.”
The team dances to a variety of songs which include hip hop styles such as New Skool, Waacking, Krump, Old Skool and Popping.
Otterbein said being selected as one of three crews from the national championship, and representing Canada at the world competition is a massive achievement.
“This was our dream ever since we opened the studio three years ago,” Otterbein said. “Most teams try to make it for years but never do. You have to be ranked among the top three in the country to qualify. It has not been an easy road to get there but we finally reached our goal in making it.”
Otterbein said the goal is to be the world champions.
“We are going in focused on bringing home that gold medal,” he said. “Of course we want to have fun and give it our all, but I believe this team could win it all.”
Otterbein said it might take a few years to win that gold medal but “that will always be our goal.”
“We are going against 70 other countries, all whom have sent their top three teams,” he said. “It will be an honour to be competing and sharing the stage with the best of the best in the world.”
This team has had a storybook year and have captured many titles here in Canada and U.S.
Just recently they were voted and won Video of the year for the national U.S. competition “KAR”.
There were over 20,000 videos and Dominuss took the prize over the entire U.S.
Hip hop dance has swept across North America, Otterbein said: “I would say 75 per cent of the industry jobs are now Hip hop.”
“This dance has evolved and become the biggest and most popular style of dance at every studio and TV show for the past five years and will continue to get even bigger,” he predicted.
