Dance competition «IT'S OKAY dance competition»

   No battles, no call-outs — just routines a crew has drilled for months, performed once. The final of this showcase competition is a rare chance in Hai Phong to watch local crews present a finished piece rather than thirty seconds of improvisation.

   What runs on this day is Phase 2, the closing stage of the competition's first season: ten crews, ten showcases in the race for the title. Each crew has a maximum of four and a half minutes on stage; line-ups may change from the qualifying round, but a crew still needs at least five members and no dancer may appear with two different crews.

   The qualifier ran online and closed in mid-July: each crew submitted one video of no more than two minutes, filmed in a single fixed shot with no cuts or editing, and the judges picked the ten best entries. There was no limit on age or home city, and the entries the organisers published include crews from Hai Phong and from Hanoi.

   Four judges score the final:

• — Dương Anh Mỹ, leader of S4 crew, who judged the online qualifier and picked the ten finalists;
• — Tường Milo of JustMove crew, one of the few young dancers equally strong in choreography and in hip-hop battles;
• — Hoàng Đại of SUD crew, with more than ten years as a choreographer, teacher and competition judge;
• — Lê Vinh of SPACEX Dance Group, a choreographer regularly seen on television shows and on large live stages.

   The champions take 10,000,000 VND in cash plus the winner's cup and a certificate; second and third prizes have not been announced yet.

   The contest was founded and is run by Silent Crew, a Hai Phong dance group that has spent fifteen years building the city's dance community. For a visitor this is the quickest way to see where the port city's dance scene currently stands; for young dancers it is a place to measure themselves against other crews.

   Audience places are sold by the slot: 220,000 VND for one person, or 600,000 VND for three people coming together. You book through the audience registration form, while the full rules and the latest announcements are posted on the IT’S OKAY Dance Competition page.

   If you are in the city that Sunday, this is the kind of afternoon that shows you a scene rather than a show.