‘F1-meets-America’s Best Dance Group’ competition coming to the University of B.C. with award-winning Brotherhood among the competitors.
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Humuza Bazira started dancing when he was 13 years old. He auditioned for the Brotherhood varsity dance team a year later, in Grade 8, but didn’t make it.
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In Grade 9, he did.
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This week, the 23-year-old will be one of the 20 Brotherhood adult team dancers competing as a group against Los Angeles-based GRV in an International Dance League (IDL) sanctioned competition at the University of B.C. It’s the first event held here by the professional dance network.
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In preparation, Bazira and his teammates have been hitting the studio seven days a week for several hours per session, rehearsing the two routines they’ll debut at the big event.
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“There is a level of natural ability to being a dancer, but 99 per cent of it is continuous, hard practise,” said Bazira. “Besides the team practices, every single day four-to-five hours each, you are also putting in more hours at home on your own to be fully prepared for those rehearsals. I probably put in six to eight hours daily, which is pretty normal at this level.”
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This kind of training is key to being in the IDL.
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A pro-level dance league with six pro teams representing Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea and the U.S., the IDL hosts five series on four continents to attain global standings leading up to the Sept. 20 IDL Championships in Los Angeles.
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Unlike showcases or talent contests, the IDL is a collection of elite teams that prepare open-style choreographed routines to take on one another in a two-round format.
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The Vancouver Series is the second round of the season.
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“What IDL is really trying to do is make dance a sport and make what we do become an actual career path for dancers who are often confined to one major competition a year in other organizations,” said Brotherhood founder Scott Forsyth, 34. “IDL is trying for a format that I like to compare to F1-meets-America’s Best Dance Group, with something like Olympic standings, where you rack up points through the season leading up to the eventual scoring for the championship. Unlike Olympic breaking, IDL is open so there is a lot of street dance styles like hip-hop, breaking, locking, popping, K-pop and much more.”
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Where many other international-level dance competitions will have different rules and requirements, IDL events are standardized. Forsyth says the two most distinctive elements to the 10 judging categories that make IDL more like pro sports are stylistic athleticism and stamina.
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Since forming Brotherhood in 2011 in Surrey, Forsyth and a close-knit group of local dancers and choreographers grew Brotherhood into a global force in the international competition circuit.
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Earning back-to-back gold medals at the 2013 and 2014 World Hip Hop Internationals, they just kept winning, eventually appearing on Season 2 of NBC’s World of Dance in 2018.
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At the same time, the team was expanding its profile. Forsyth was building the affiliated Studio North in Vancouver, Burnaby and Toronto. Studio North was founded so Brotherhood and a female team called Style and Grace had a place to practise. It has since expanded considerably, gaining greater profile with wins such as the recent one in New York.
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Offering all levels of classes to all ages, the Studio North program is a proven incubator for future Brotherhood talent, as well as a key revenue stream.
