BC Beatz dance into the national titles

GEELONG dance school BC Beatz is hopeful border restrictions will ease enough that its students will get the chance to compete at the national level in Queensland later this month.

Seven of the school’s teams competed in the TFT Dancestar state championship, held at The Arena last month, with the BC Boss team winning gold in their category.

BC Beats co-founder Megan Blyszak said the rescheduling of the state titles, which were originally to take place in Rowville during June, may have worked to BC Beatz’ advantage.

“It was so good for us, because normally it’s on the other side of Melbourne, so for us it was amazing; it was literally in our backyard,” she said.

Blyszak said TFT Dancestar was highly competitive, with Victoria split into different regions and teams having to qualify in their region first before progressing to the state finals, and then the national championship, scheduled this year from August 19-22 on the Gold Coast.

“This is the biggest comp for our club every year,” she said. “This year we’ve had state heats and state finals in person, which has been just amazing, so fingers crossed we can actually still go to Queensland.”

Blyszak co-founded BC Beatz in 2013 with her friend Cat Yee.

The pair have been dancing together since 2002 and have competed in state and national hip hop competitions together, and started BC Beatz to be a fun and friendly dance school dedicated to hip hop for the Geelong region.

Blyszak said the lockdowns and restrictions of 2020 were disappointing for BC Beatz and its students.

“I know there’s bigger problems in the world, but in terms of our dance school, our biggest problem was that we had no comps in person, only online; minimal classes in person; and no concerts, so our recreational kids who choose not to do comps had minimal if any classes,” she said.

“Numbers have been really up and down, and some kids who were new to BC Beatz last year only experienced classes online or minimally in person, so that’s not fun, and a lot of them have moved onto different sports, which is completely fair.

“This year, we’ve got a fresh new bunch of kids, so hopefully we can maintain those numbers.”