Red Bull Dance Your Style Colombia: Dance as a message, root and revolution

Participants pose for a portrait during the national final of Red Bull Dance Your Style 2025 in Medellín, Colombia, on August 2, 2025.

Foto: Kevin Molano / Red Bull Content Pool

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In Colombia We dance since we have memory. From before speaking we already move to the rhythm of a drum, a joint, a marimba, a güira or a box. We dance at home, in the street, at parties, in the corners and even at traffic lights. We dance to fall in love, to heal, to resist, to release. The movement is in our mestizo blood.

Our music tells stories of love and war, corner and jungle, city and mountain. It has African, indigenous, Andean, Caribbean, peasant and urban heritage. And every time a rhythm sounds, something turns inside us. Be salsa, vallenato, reggaeton, rap, pop, rock or any musical style, we always want to dance.

Therefore, when I knew that Red Bull Dance Your Style I came to Colombia for the first time, I understood that this was not going to be just an event. It was going to be an encounter. A party. A space where the talent that has been invisible for years was going to shine without asking permission.

After the qualifiers of Barranquilla, Bogotá and MedellínI traveled to the capital of Antioquia for the big day: Saturday 2 August. Before the track turned on, I went out with the Mayor's Office of Medellín To travel a piece of the city that gave life to this celebration and that, without a doubt, was part of the Flow, of an original style.

And when the event started, Everything click. Music, body and history crossed the same place. And the dance floor was pure fire.

¡BAILLO!

Provence was filled with people that I wanted to see, listen, feel. Some climbed to tables, others to platforms, others simply raised their hand with a blue or red card. Because here there were no traditional judges: The public decided who won. But they did not vote for sympathy: they voted for what made their body move. So I told them something real.

From the qualifiers it was already known that the level was very high. But one thing is to see it on video and another feel it live. There they were Valefica, Picolas, Lucy Coba, Swagga, Orange, María Camila Salazar, Fly Ba, Erre Caserío And more. Everyone with their school, their history, their root.

I remember that there was something in the presence of Lucy Coba that imposed: style, strength, and that magnetism that does not disguise. Shone on the stage with his locking From the first step.

Swagga arrived with great power, picolas with art, presence and creativity in waacking, Orange with pure hip hop, voucher with charisma, ingenuity and popular talentand so, one by one, they were demonstrating what it is to dance with the entire body, with the story on top.

Each duel was a movie, a theater: sharp steps, messages with the body, attitudes that did not ask for permission. It was not only a technique: it was identity. To tell a story without words. Give meaning to the rhythm, to the song, to the minute that could decide if you were still alive in this battle or you went to the house.

The event was a musical trip without rules: since Rodolfo Aicardi to Kendrick Lamarfrom The gold binomial to Alcolirykoz, from Julio Jaramillo to Ryan Castro. The track requested reaction, street, listening, soul. And that was what they gave.

A before and after

This event marked a before and after. Not only for what was seen on the track, but for what it meant for a community that has been dancing in small spaces for years, in events of 80 or 100 people. Red Bull Dance Your Style was a giant platform, a megaphone, a catapult.

“Doors have been opened and our art has been given visibility from other areas that did not know us so much. Everything has been superbon,” he told me Valeficwho comes from an artistic family and stopped studying music to bet on dance.

Picolaswinner of the Regional of Bogotá, he clearly explained to me what this represented for his scene: “Red Bull Dance Your Style arrives at the moment when the urban dance community needed more visibility and that the styles are recognized as well as niches. These battles encourage more people to know that dancing urban dance goes beyond hip hop or breaking. That there is also a world of tools, styles and genres that we can interpret. “

“This platform is an opportunity to show that we are not doing this a year ago, but that we have been more than ten years and we have represented Colombia, outside and inside. Red Bull gave us the treatment of high -level artists and that makes me feel that something is finally happening in Colombia to restructure the entertainment industry, ”he added.

Lucy CobaLocking specialist for 15 years and with more than a decade of battles on top, he also felt it as a key moment: “This event is a very large opportunity and window. There is no bad record here, today Colombia wins and the one who wins is the one who will go to represent us. ”

She told me that I already had the radar on for a while: “We all followed the event and in Latin America it passed in other countries. I was part of the previous ones for entrepreneurs, to sell the product, then we already had a previous one that this was going to happen and we wanted to tell Colombia: prepare because it came the time. This is a quantum leap for us. We all expect something that catapulte us somehow and this opens borders because our events are sometimes eighty or one hundred people, but this is something very massive. This year we shine and the other year they will be more people and more dancers.”

Lucy has history in this: “I grew up in San Mateo, everything was very neighborhood. I participated in the first urban dance battles in Bogotá And it was very small, but I wanted to see what was happening. And it started to do very well, I started staying and then I was already a reference. Then I competed internationally, I left the country. This is to give yourself as life itself to what we do not know what happens. This is like making a jump to vacuum with your trust, with what you have trained and everything you are”.

The champion: Erre Caserío, Pure Barrio, Puro Arte

The title took it Santiago Ramos Sánchezbetter known as Burn Caseríoborn and raised in the neighborhood Paris de Bello, Antioquia. Dancer more than a decade, founder of Neighborhood Crewand champion in battles of Open Style, All Style y Hip Hop Freestyleboth in Colombia and outside.

His path was solid, he looked like a champion: he beat Heich in eighthsa Mmuss in roomsa Valefica in semis already Swagga in the Grand Finalmaking clear why he was the one to represent Colombia in Los Angelesin the world final of Red Bull Dance Your Style.

“I met the dance ten years ago. If I hadn't known it, I don't know what my story would have been. Thanks to him I have been able to share, teach; I am a professor and, through Hip Hop Freestyle, many people from different neighborhoods have been saved, just as it has saved me. I want to keep playing hearts to spread art and dance”Said Erre Caserío.

His style, based on the Hip Hop Freestyleconnected perfect with the essence of the event: Improvisation, listening, message and fire. Nothing more to say.

Definitely, Red Bull Dance Your Style It wasn't just a competition. It was a statement. A proof that in Colombia there is a living culture that deserves lights, platform, respect.

Seeing so many dancers to let go with the soul, see the public connecting with each step, listen to those who have been holding this scene from the neighborhood for more than ten years, from the effort, from passion … That doesn't forget. That transforms.

This event was a catapult to many dancers, and what they said with the body rumbled. He reminded us that Dance is not just show: It is language, it is root, it is future. It is revolution, also heal.

As Valefica told me: “The dance is and is already.”