Cultural Activity ＼ Dance Competition

Dance Competition
Every summer, information of “Metro Street Dance Competition” are spotted on the train carriages or at the stations. In addition to offering high reward to attract dance lovers, the organizers also invite renowned artists as spokespersons or performers in the festival. We surely do not want to miss such an exciting event. We searched for the news and reports about the Metro Street Dance Festival on the Internet and then we discussed the people and the questions we were going to interview during visiting. We also contacted the staff from Taipei Metro, hoping they could share some of their experience with us. The following is our interview on-site.

Metro Street Dance Competition on Facebook
Source: Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation

【 Mr. Huang, the Director of marketing in Planning Office from Taipei Metro 】   【 Q & A 】   【 Reflections 】

Q & A ─ Interviewing the participating teams
Team name：HRC BEAST CREW（the first place winning team in Division A-aged 12-18）
They learned about the 2019 Metro Street Dance Competition from the participating dance group. They love dancing so much that they signed up for the competition and chose HRC BEAST CREW as their team name. They held a contest to pick the final 8 members from junior high and senior high school students. They have prepared for the Metro Street Dance Competition for about half a year. They took their teachers’ clothing advice and dressed in black shirts with a little processing. They felt they were doing fine in the preliminary round and after many times of practice, they had confidence in winning the championship.

Team name：HiZam（the third place winning team in Division B - aged 19 years and above）
They learned about the 2019 Metro Street Dance Competition from the advertisements on the Internet and the MRT. They are professional dancers and they are willing to let everyone know them from the competition. They are from two groups, Hiteck and Shazam, and they combined the two names of the groups and made Hizam as their team name. The team members come from Taipei, New Taipei City and Taichung, and the range of their age is from 18 to 30. They knew each other in the same dancing classroom. They had practiced for the competition for a week but they didn’t have confidence in their performance in the preliminary round. They practiced for another week before the final but still they didn’t think they nailed it because their dance was a long one. They tried their best and they hoped everyone to enjoy their performance. As for the results, it all depended on the judges.

Interviewing the dancer of HiZam	Interviewing the dancer of HiZam
Interviewing the dancer from Zhongshan Girls High School	Interviewing the dancer of Atayal Sisters

Q & A ─ Audience
Interviewee 1 - a mother of the student
She learned about the dance competition from her daughter. She was impressed with HRC BEAST CREW from Division A and HiZam’s performance from Division B. She enjoyed all the performance and she would watch the dance competition again next year. She liked the venue for the dance competition for the space is big and there is a stage for performers. If the audience could sit on the ground as soon as they entered the venue, the people watching in the back could have enjoyed the performance more.

Interviewee 2 - a junior high school teacher（the school that won the second place in Division A）
He was here to cheer for the students. They have been participating the Metro Dance Competition for ten years. Because the kids must be twelve years old to participate in the competition, they have prepared for the competition since childhood. He was impressed with his students’ team, Dong Shou Dong Jiao because they had participated in the competition for many years and they did a great job. The team has different members now and they all are high school students. He is their teacher and he is responsible for taking pictures and helping them with come chores. There are other teachers mentoring their performance.
He thought that every competition has different focus. The Metro Street Dance Competition includes artists and reporters and it is more entertaining. HRC BEAST CREW in Division A was more likely to win the championship while HiZam would be the winning team in Division B. Hizam just returned to Taiwan with winning the six place in the World Cup. It was not easy to win a place in the World Cup. The audience could feel the vibe from their dance and their dance skills were excellent. The most importantly, the whole structure of their dance could resonate with the audience.
He also thought Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation is more rigorous with the Street Dance Competition in comparison to other events because there is age limit and certain regulations. People highly value the competition. This is the most important dance competition besides NTU Cup. The cash award is high and they offer subsides for joining international dance contests so it is viewed as a great and well-organized competition .

Interviewee 3 — scholars and students from Jakarta, Indonesia
They have stayed in Taiwan for almost a year. They have learned Mandarin in Indonesia and they came to Taiwan to study and research. They learned about the Metro Street Dance Competition from the posters on the MRT and the train stations. They came here to visit the competition. They expected to see great performance for it was the final competition. They thought the event was great and they wanted to come again.
They also expressed how they felt about the MRT in Taipei. They thought the MRT makes transportation easy and convenient. The MRT in Jakarta is operated in May, 2019 and there is only one line . They haven’t taken the MRT in Jakarta and they hope it can be as cozy and easy as Taipei Metro.

Interviewee 4 — the backpacker from Australia
He had been traveling in Taiwan for two weeks and was about to leave the next day. He saw the advertisement of the Metro Street Dance Competition on the MRT a week ago. He thought it is a great activity because such dance competition is not popular in Australia.
Comparing the MRT in Australia and in Taipei, he likes the MRT in Taipei better because it is always on time.

【 Mr. Huang, the Director of marketing in Planning Office from Taipei Metro 】   【 Q & A 】   【 Reflections 】