SUDC gets 3rd place in the annual Charity BIG DANCE OFF in Burgess Hill

The Big Dance off is a charity dance competition for all ages and styles of dance

Its not oftern SUDC Street Urban Dance Company gets involved with dance competitions but when it comes down to raising money for charity we endeavour to do our best to help raise funds for worthwhile causes and charities.

For the past 2 years the SUDC street dance team have taken part in the annual BIG DANCE OFF (Click here for details) in the Triangle Leisure Centre, Burgess hill where dance teams, schools, and crews from all styles of dance come together for a crowd voted dance competition which usually attracts about 300 people to watch and support

The great thing about the Big Dance Off is seeing the variety of different dance styles and the quality of work which is out there on the dance scene in the South East plus also its great meeting up with various friends and people I've done workshops for within dancing in the South East.

For me I dont usually get involved with dance competitions....WHY? Well to me I dance and perform hopefully to inspire, create, get people involved and most importantly to have fun and for me sometimes competitions can breed egos with the 'my school is better than your school thing' sad but true there is that element and yes sadly there was one street dance instructor (who I wont mention) who was b*tching about other schools even at this event...WHY? who knows. Plus also you know if a competition is based on a crowd vote the dance company with 40 kids with their parents voting you they are going to always going to win. But SUDC we take part each year for the charity side of things plus just for the fun and give my 4 guys and one lady the opportunity of going out and performing!

The event run by BIG DANCE OFF run by Claire Joanne Heffernan was well organised and ran to schedule and brought toegther some great dancing talent from some of the youth across south east....even though when we first got there I was thinking 'My goodness I feel positively old against everyone else who were performing! Still it it was good to catch up with people Ive connected with across the scene such as the amazing Europhic Dance Co (Lindsay Carr and Melody Sparkle) who are always such friendly people , plus Kim Wright from JK Theatre arts who id performed with before about 4 years back (whos amazing talented in acting, sniging and dancing) and Sayful Islam and his new crew (Sussex Street Crew) who is just an amazing body popper.

For me personally the dance highlights based on dance choreo and quality of dancing abiltiy from the first half only (Sadly i messed the second half since our team was waiting to go on) I loved the Ballet (Louise Ryrie Dance school, Choreo by: Louise Ryrie Dance) and the Lion King choreo (Interact Theatre Arts, Choreo by: Clare Fenton) was also cool. Impressive also was the large group of kids from Senior Spoonys (Spoonys , Choreo: Jo hatt) who I thought were pretty sharp with their choreo. It was a shame that I missed the second half to see the other acts but across the board you have to respect everyone who took part for just getting up on stage in front of a crowd of 300 plus people and doing their thing, trust me performing can be quite nerve racking.

All in all it was a great event to take part in and hey even with SUDC 7 supporters the SUDC street dance team (Chris Pordum, Gareth Orpen, Andy Moore, Sam Bloom, Charlie Whiston) managed to get 3rd place which was a great result for the team and surprise when seeing some of the talented artists on the day. Mind you after dancing and practicing for 5hrs on the day the legs are aching big time but hopefully alot of money was made for the charity.

Roll on for BIG DANCE OFF for 2013 and well done Clare for putting on such a great event.


Andy Moore
Instructor/ Performer/ Choreographer
Street Urban Dance co /Salsa Latina UK