R16 KOREA 2013 World Masters Championship Review

To be honest, I wasn't very interested in attending R16 events, as I didn't know much about the BBoy culture. It was only after another fellow Korean Performance Supporter told me about how exciting the R16 performances were that I decided to go. As I was allowed to bring my friends along, I was actually quite excited about it initially.

I went for the World Masters Championship help on 14th July, as I wanted to go for the Seaforest performance on the 13th. The event was supposed to start at 6pm, but my friends and I wanted good seats so we decided to go early. However, as it was our first time attending, we had a hard time finding the Olympic Hall. The map provided by KTO was not very useful and we got lost and walked around for around 45 minutes before finding the venue.

By the time we collected our tickets, it was 4.30pm. I really disappointed when I received A class tickets, as I thought Korean Performance Supporters were supposed to get either VIP or R seats. And S seats were for foreigners not in the programme. And A tickets were even worse than S seats. I'm not sure if I was given such bad seats because I brought 3 companions along, or because we were there 30 minutes after 4pm. Regardless, I was expecting at least an S class seat, so the tickets spoilt my mood from the beginning. I felt that KTO should have stated that the seats may not be good, so that my friends and I wouldn't have had such high expectations.

So, my friends and I queued outside the performance venue until we were allowed to go in. We waited until the event began. I'm glad that at least one of the MCs spoke English so that we could understand what was going on. As our seats were so far from the stage, we couldn't really see what was happening very clearly. It was a good thing that there was a video that enlarged what was happening on stage so that we could see better.
















The performances by the various groups were very interesting to watch. I personally liked the performance by Russia very much. The performance by Korea's Bboys (Morning of Owl) was unique, and by listening to how much the crowd was cheering for them, I guess they were probably the most popular group. I took some short videos of Morning of Owl performing. They are unique as their moves are very soft and graceful, which is what people don't expect from breakdance performances.

 

After the group performances, there was the performance by the guest performers. I especially enjoyed the performance by Khan and Moon. I think that was the best performance of the night.

Next, was the crew battle.































I felt that this part was draggy, and quite boring. It was boring because the competitors were no longer performing for us (the audience), but for the judges. Even so, I can't complain as this is a necessary component of the competition. However, as my friends and I lost interest at this point, we decided to leave the event after watching 2 crew battles.

All in all, this was an eye-opening experience as I didn't know anything about Bboys before this. However, the experience could have been much better if we had better seats, and if the crew battle was more interesting.