The basement of the New Athenaeum Theatre was transformed into the battlefield for ‘‘The Yard’’ street dancing competition on Saturday.
It comprised rounds of one-v-one breakdancing, one-v-one freestyling and choreographed dance battles between two five-person crews.
Dunedin dancer Martha McAuley, who was one of three judges, said the street dance event was a celebration of freestyle dancing and ‘‘battle culture’’.
A battle could take several forms: matching moves, issuing a challenge, one-upmanship or playfully imitating your opponent’s dance moves.
‘‘One of the guys started spinning on his head and then he just kept going ... then he takes his hands off the ground and he’s just spinning on his head’’, Miss McAuley said.
‘‘And then, his opponent gets on the ground and does the same thing.
‘‘It’s that kind of energy of like, ‘oh, you can do that, yeah, I can do that too’.’’
She assessed them on criteria such as musicality, originality, technique and stage presence.
While she had known some really talented people would be competing, seeing their moves in-person was ‘‘unreal’’.
‘‘There was quite a few backflips that occurred on the floor.’’
Miss McAuley, who created the event with the founders of vintage clothing pop-up 324 Central Market, said it was the group’s debut event in Dunedin.
The event was a chance to bring dancers together from around the South, learn from one another and ‘‘experience the energy of hip-hop culture’’.
It had turned out to be everything she had hoped it would be, she said.
‘‘It was new, it was fresh — it was something different for Dunedin, and that’s kind of all we wanted to do.’’
