Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final 2022
Johannesburg, South Africa
Japanese hip-hop specialist takes title in his first World Final appearance.
Japanese dancer The D Soraki has been crowned the second-only winner of the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final 2022. The 19-year-old hip-hop dancer wowed the audience with his original dance style, flow and musicality to defeat Nigerian Afro dancer King Davinci in a nail-biting tiebreaker in the final battle. Here is all you need to know:
– In an exciting and unique one-on-one battle format, where dancers are challenged with unpredictable music hits across multiple genres from punk and pop to rap and old school classics, The D Soraki won the crowd and became the first dancer from Japan to win in a sold-out event staged at the Montecasino in Johannesburg, South Africa, in his first appearance in the event’s World Final.
– “This is a big moment for me. The reason why I’m here was to win, so I’m very happy. I didn’t have a strategy going in. I just danced to how I felt in the moment and I just wanted to have fun,” said The D Soraki, who was a pre-selected wildcard for this year’s World Final.
– Red Bull Dance Your Style is a global all-styles street dance event series with a unique battle format. From hip-hop to house, to locking to popping, dancers participating in Red Bull Dance Your Style will need to wow the crowd and ultimately win their vote. Testing freestyle and musicality skills through unpredictable mainstream tracks ranging from recent global hits to classic beats, Red Bull Dance Your Style has the crowd deciding who rules the dance floor.
– Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final 2022 featured a top 16 battle bracket comprising the best dancers from all corners of the globe, including eight elite dancers who all qualified from the Pre-Finals, plus eight world class wildcards.
– The D Soraki was born and raised in Shounan, Japan. He started dancing at four-years-old, thanks to his parents, who were dancers themselves and took notice of his talents. The D Soraki trained in soul, hip-hop and a multitude of other styles. However, he admits that learning such a vast mix of dance genres was also his most significant obstacle to overcome and it became tough to maintain his own style.
– Fast forward to the present day and at 19 years of age The D Soraki impresses dancers and non-dancers alike with his original dance style and unique approach to music. His biggest passion outside of dance is music and in the future, he hopes that dancers will become the main stars and headline live performances at festivals.
– The D Soraki’s greatest influences and mentors are fellow Red Bull Dance Your Style Wild Card Yoshie and DJ XXX Large. Soraki is his birth name, and he was given ‘The D’ as a nickname and stuck with it as his dance name. When it comes to battle wins, The D Soraki has many. The most important achievement to him was making it to Summer Dance Forever, which he’d always dreamt of competing in from an early age.
– The third edition of Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final will take place in Frankfurt, Germany. in 2023.
