FEU guns its way to Street Dance title, UST takes high school plum

Far Eastern University channeled the spirit of Al Capone and outgunned the competition in the UAAP Season 80 Street Dance Competition Sunday at Mall of Asia Arena.

The Street Alliance broke the duopoly of the competition joining De La Salle and University of the Philippines, both of which won three titles apiece, as the top mobs of the competition.

FEU scored a total of 85.75 points, more than six points to De La Salle’s score of 79.50, to win the title and the P70,000 cash prize for the champions.

Randell San Gregorio, the head coach of both the Street Alliance and the FEU Cheering Squad, said they had less than three months to prepare for the competition since they completed their lineup just in January.

“It feels so surreal… and we wanted to show something new from FEU,” said San Gregorio who had to hold auditions for FEU students who wanted to join his team.

And with such a new group in his hands, the title wasn’t even in their best of expectations.

“We just wanted to put on a good show, although on the backs of our minds we wanted to win. We just weren’t expecting that we would win because you can’t expect something that big if the other teams are good performers as well.”

San Gregorio said he had to stick with the gangster theme since all he had were mere weeks to prepare for the competition and he couldn’t afford to overhaul his program.

The Street Alliance danced to the tune of an instrumental song that resembled the anime Lupin III’s opening theme and ended it with new school hop-hop music.

University of the Philippines rounded out the top three with 78.60 points to take home P30,000 while the La Salle Dance Company won P40,000.

University of Santo Tomas won the inaugural high school street dance competition and took the title by a country mile.

The Galvanize owned every aspect of the competition winning in all of the four judges’ scorecards for a total of 82.30 points, 10.80 points more than silver finishers FEU Baby Tamaraws Dance Company.

UST head coach Matthew Almodovar said the routine wasn’t his input alone as he allowed his dancers to pitch in their ideas.

“It worked out for me because I wanted to know what my students wanted in the choreography so we settled for what we can do best,” said Almodovar in Filipino. “I don’t mind putting their ideas because I wanted them to enjoy the routine.”

The Galvanize won P70,000 while the Baby Tamaraws Dance Company had P40,000 while third-placer University of the East got P30,000.