Red Bull Dance Your Style India
(Left) Afro dancer Iamonlang Kharjana from Shillong in Meghalaya and locking dancer Sandeep Sharma from Nirjuli in Arunachal Pradesh.

Locking dancer Sandeep Sharma from Nirjuli in Arunachal Pradesh and Afro dancer Iamonlang Kharjana from Shillong in Meghalaya are among the Top 16 finalists selected for the Red Bull Dance Your Style India final.

The top 16 – coming from nine cities around the country – will compete at the Red Bull Dance Your Style India Final on October 16 for a chance to be crowned as the first-ever national champion and represent the country at the World Final in Johannesburg on December 4.

Red Bull Dance Your Style, a global street dance event series with a unique format, comes to India for the first time ever this year.

“With over 90 events held in 30 countries around the world, Red Bull Dance Your Style is a truly global event with a unique twist – the crowd is the judge,” said a press statement.

“Dancers from various street dance styles compete in one-on-one battles to unpredictable mainstream tracks ranging from recent global hits to classic beats, and the crowd decides who will emerge winner through a unique voting mechanism,” it added.

After an all-digital qualifying round in which over 1,500 dancers from around the country participated, the top 16 finalists for the first-ever Red Bull Dance Your Style India edition were selected by a panel of international judges comprising hip-hop dancer Diablo, popper Kite, and dancer and choreographer Antoinette Gomis.

The top 16 finalists are: Popper Yuganshu Aggarwal from New Delhi, Hip-hop dancer Sandeep Dhanai from Dehradun, Hip-hop dancer Deepak Shahi from Haldwani in Uttarakhand, Popper Himanshi Gurheriya from Haryana, Popper Raj Kumar Ram from Kolkata and Popper Manish Yadav from New Delhi.

Locking dancer Sandeep Sharma from Nirjuli in Arunachal Pradesh, Waacker Srilakshmi Muralidharan from Ahmedabad, Afro Dancer Iamonlang Kharjana from Shillong in Meghalaya, Popper Roshan Banerjee from Kolkata, House dancer Elvis Mascarenhas from Mumbai and Locking dancer Saurabh Verma from New Delhi.

Popper Jyoti Gusai from New Delhi, Hip hop dancer Deep Das from Thane, Mumbai, Waacker Daliya Chaudhary from Kolkata and Krumper Karan Nath from New Delhi are in the list of Top 16 finalists.

In 2019, at the historic Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris, France hosted the first-ever Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final with over 4000 attendees and over 3.8 million viewers around the world seeing Dutch dancer Shinshan best 39 dancers to ultimately become the first World Champion, the statement said.

Last year, Red Bull Dance Your Style went digital, with the first global street dance competition to be held entirely on TikTok as Briton Kieran Lai triumphed over 1,500 dancers from 47 countries in a six-week event.