Hey everyone! In case you missed the announcement on our podcast yesterday, the full results of our first ever DDR Cyber Cypher are here! Following the excitement and hype of our first Freestyle Takeover tourney in January, we wanted to give you a platform to compete and show off your moves if you couldn’t make it to the Bay Area.
And boy howdy, did all y’all blow our expectations out of the water! Players from across the Pacific in Japan to the United States proved freestyle is alive and well. You can watch all the entries via our YouTube playlist. Additionally, the judges’ scorecards have been posted.
Without further ado, here are the top three routines from Cyber Cypher #1!
FIRST PLACE:
RIRI / @ugogon
Nagoya, Japan
Try 2 Luv U
SECOND PLACE:
Applefrog
San Francisco, CA
Try 2 Luv U
THIRD PLACE:
Zio
Tokyo, Japan
Dance Celebration
If you missed out, fret not. We’ll be running this back soon!
We here at Freestyle Takeover thank each and every one of you for stepping up, getting down, and recording your routines at your local arcade, bedroom, garage, etc. All while using the hashtag #DDRFreestyle on social media. We’re eager to see what you’ve got in store for us next time!
We’re hosting a tournament on Friday night at Fanimecon! While the gaming hall has always been a perfect spot for DDR freestyle, it’s been way too long since we’ve seen dancers throw down in a competition. With the release of DDR Ace sparking a renewed energy around dance games and freestyle again in 2018, it is our DUTY to bring you an official tournament at the grandest anime stage of them all!
WHERE: Fanime Gaming Hall @ San Jose Convention Center
WHEN: May 25th, 7:30PM
MIX: DDR Extreme
ENTRY: Free w/ badge
The tournament will consist of two rounds:
ROUND 1 – IMPROV
Competitors will randomly draw a card from a curated set of songs and freestyle to it to the best of their ability. Singles/doubles and all modifiers / difficulties are allowed. Judges will select the top 8 dancers from this pool to move onto the next round.
ROUND 2 – ROUTINE
Bring your A game on a song of your choice!
PRIZES
– 1st place will receive a SURPRISE GIFT~ and a gift pack from the wonderful artist emu (check out her work at http://concon.tictail.com/)
– 2nd & 3rd place will receive emu gift packs as well!
We’re excited to announce Cyber Cypher #1, an online DDR freestyle tournament! We wanted to reach out to freestylers outside of California and a remote event sounded like the perfect way to showcase talent from all across the world.
To enter, choose from one of the following three songs and record a performance to it between now and May 5th!
Big announcements today! We knew we didn’t want January’s tournament to be the end of DDR freestyle in 2018, so we’ve launched Takeover as a Brand ™ with the intent to celebrate and foster freestyle in the DDR community and bring you more content & events throughout the year.
First item of business is the launch of our podcast! Tune in to hear Paolo, Mel B and James reflect on the performances from the first DDRFS tournament in NorCal in damn near a decade!
We’re also super excited to share an ongoing project with you: The DDR Freestyle Archive! James is spearheading this with the goal of creating an accessible, centralized repository of tournament performances dating all the way back to the year 2000. For anyone curious about past events or looking for inspiration for their own routines, this thing is a must-see.
We’re open to any and all feedback and want to foster engagement and participation in freestyle as best we can. Let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see and be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Facebook in the meantime! Happy weekend y’all!
We’re hoping that all y’all have sufficiently recovered from the inaugural Freestyle Takeover this past Saturday at Round1 San Jose. We here at Freestyle Takeover HQ have been overwhelmed by the response the event received. Frankly, we’re still coming down from the euphoria whirlwind!
To those who: showed up in-person to watch and support; logged onto our Twitch stream from around the WORLD (literally, we had people from Virginia to Japan to the Philippines watching), hashtagged #DDRFreestyle, competed in the event, and helped us run the event (shout out to the Round 1 San Jose staff!)… THANK YOU.
This was as much a Takeover as it was a reunion and reintroduction of what the DDR Freestyle community meant to us, your humble event organizers. Seeing the confluence of DDR OGs, technical players who are currently holding it down, and those in the rhythm-based gaming community all under one roof made our hearts full. It’s given us plenty of optimism about the heights that DDR Freestyle can reach in 2018 and beyond!
We did this for all of yall. And we cannot wait for to do this again. On to tournament business!
FULL RESULTS FROM FREESTYLE TAKEOVER
Here is the judging criteria as taken from the Freestyle Takeover rules if you’re curious about how we ranked the competitors:
After the final performance of the competition, each judge will submit their top-10 candidates using the following voting vector (14, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1), where 1st place receives 14 points, 2nd place receives 9 points and so on.
If you would like to relive all the magic of Freestyle Takeover (and frankly why wouldn’t you) here is the Youtube playlist of all competition AND exhibition routines from some DDR OGs! Also, shoutouts to co-organizers/judges James + John for their FIYAH Exhibition routines!
Captain Canada – Dadadadadadadadadada (Exhibition) (feat. Paolo and Ryan)
kay0ss – M.A.Y.U. (Exhibition)
The Twitch archive of the Stream (complete with stream chat!) lives here:
We are at the last day before Freestyle Takeover, and as far as meeting judges go, we saved the best for last!
A couple of administrative pieces of business before we go on:
Freestyle Takeover pre-registration on Eventbrite ends on TOMORROW, Saturday 1/27 at 12pm (NOON) PST. If you miss this window and still want to compete we will be having onsite registration at Round1 tomorrow starting at 3pm. Cash is preferred but we can also accept PayPal/Venmo.
Tune in to our Facebook Event page TONIGHT at 8pm PST (Friday 1/26) for a quick Facebook Live stream at Round1 from your dashing tournament organizers for a couple of SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENTS.
If you can’t make it out to San Jose tomorrow, we will be streaming all of Freestyle Takeover on Twitch at twitch.tv/gabby_jay starting at 2:30pm PST with the Freestyle Takeover pre-show!
Be sure to social media the heck out of Freestyle Takeover using #DDRFreestyle!And with that out of the way, your final two judges for Freestyle Takeover! Rounding out the the last two judging spots is dancer Michele King of The Get Down Dance Studios in San Jose, and Rob Roberts, host of the renowned Orange Lounge Radio podcast!
NAME: Michele King ALIAS: Ms. King AFFILIATION: Bay Area Waackers, DS Players, Mix’d Ingrdnts
Teaches dance to at-risk youth at several different South Bay Schools for Future Arts Now!
Teaches Tennis to youth at Kidztopros
Has 10+ years in dance and performance experience.
Avid Wrestling Fan!
BIO: Michele has been dancing for 12 years now and her main styles are Waacking, Locking, and Hip Hop.
In 2006, she met and trained under bay area dance legend and director of the DS Players, Ceech Hsu. She became a part of the DS Players dance crew in 2007. Michele was also a part of all-female dance collective based out of Oakland, CA, Mix’d Ingrdnts, founded by Jenay Anolin and Samara Atkins. Late 2008 is when Michele discovered Waacking/ Punking and instantly fell in love with it. Michele has gained knowledge from and trained with renowned waackers from all over the world, including Tiffany “Jimini” Bong, Kumari Suraj, Princess Lockerooo, Viktor Manoel, Tyrone Proctor, Angel, Dallace Zeigler, Akuma Diva, and Chrissy Chou. Her passion lies in dance, fitness, teaching, traveling, and working with the youth.
HIGHLIGHTS: Jam VII All-Styles Battle – Judges Showcase
Shake it Out 2017 You Are Magic Waacking Battle – Judges Showcase
NAME: Rob Roberts AKA: skie AFFILIATION: Orange Lounge Radio FUN FACTS: Co-founded Orange Lounge Radio, an award winning, weekly video game talk show/podcast which initially started as a music/rhythm-based gaming talk show. Active streamer on Twitch.Tv as a recognized affiliate. Regular host/emcee at the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, having hosted showings of cult cinema such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Repo: The Genetic Opera at various venues in Northern California since 1998. Briefly competed in DDR freestyle tournaments under the alias Dr. Dick.
Freestyle Takeover co-organizer John is the total DDR package of freestyle AND technical chops! And plus his fighting game skills, this makes John a triple threat, and thus the perfect judge to spotlight for Day 3 of Better Know a Freestyle Takeover Judge!
NAME: John Sydiongco AKA: kay0ss, J-Syd AFFILIATION: Step Squad, Team OMG, DS Players
FUN FACTS:
Multiple DDR Perfect Attack/Score Attack Tournament Victories and Top 3 placements, including, Fremont I, March Madness 2k4, Monterey Bay Thunder, and Hanford III.
Placed 17th US/45th Worldwide during the 7th Konami Arcade Championship Qualifer Round.
Won Freestyle competition @ Summer Madness 2008 w/ James/Captain Canada.
Dance Instructor at The Get Down Dance Studio and regular competitor in dance competitions.
FREESTYLE HIGHLIGHTS:
CVGL 1, Castro Valley Golfland 2002
Summer Madness 2k8, Milpitas Golfland 2008
EXTRA CREDIT~!:
Locking class performing at Christmas in the Park
