Photo by Tim Arafiles
THE UAAP Cheerdance Competition is where the cheerleaders get cheered for, aside from their usual halftime concerts in regular season games.
This is where nightmares of team logistics, the months spent training since summer, the trickle of sweat and blood and the voice of the Sixth Man converge in a condensed six minutes of athletics and showmanship.
The Ateneo Blue Babble Battalion came prepared with a Bollywood theme of its own, gracing the floors of the Smart-Araneta Coliseum in front of a sell-out crowd numbering more than 21,000.
Dancing to tunes such as A.R. Rahman’s Jai Ho and Punjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke, the Ateneo contingent danced and pirouetted in front of a crowd waiting to see and scrutinize.
After all was said and done, the school farther down the avenue earned their spurs and swiped the crown for the second time in two years.
With their flaxed hair and sassier-than-usual outfits, the UP Pep Squad kept it together with firmness and finesse, electrifying the crowd and turning pundits into their own fans. The Madonna motif, no matter how outlandish, struck gold in what has been UP’s tradition of cheerdance domination.
The UP Pep Squad won first prize, followed by the De La Salle University’s Animo Squad and the Far Easter University Pep Squad bagging first runner-up and second runner-up respectively.
The Animo Squad adopted their own Green Archer theme, sporting scimitars and wooden shields while the FEU Pep Squad had their own rendition of Bollywood.
It is worth noting that the Blue Babble Battalion plotted their theme since summer. It was not, in any way, designed to emulate any other similar themes.
The UP Pep Squad took home P340,000 in cash prizes, while the Animo Squad and the FEU Pep Squad took home P200,000 and P140,000 respectively, in addition to their trophies.
The panel drew from both a local and international pool of judges: Paul Alexander Morales, Ai Hasegawa, Damien Ng, Javier Baren and Michelle Tang. The UAAP decided not to divulge the scores. The UST Salinggawi Dance Troupe placed fourth, followed by the Adamson Pep Squad, the National University Pep Squad, the Blue Babble Battalion and the University of the East Pep Squad.
The UAAP also pioneered the Group Stunts Competition, where select schools’ pep squads’ send a group to perform stunts in a limited amount of time. UP’s delegation also took the top prize, followed by FEU and NU respectively.
UP’s Nesza Salvador also took home the Samsung Stunner Award, edging out representatives from three other schools. Representing Ateneo was Babble’s own Kim Guzman.
By the middle of the basketball season, the UP squad had accumulated a couple of wins, a travesty at this day and age. But for all the UAAP’s cheerleading corps, more baffling were the blonde locks that the defending cheerdance champs sported in halftime presentations.
As weeks before the festive ordeal unravelled, the change in hair color was revealed to be an allusion to the Queen of Pop. The theme had been decided since summer, and UP Coach Lalaine Perena had schemed it all along, right after taking the crown back from FEU last year.
The first and last time that Ateneo placed in the Cheerdance Competition was in 2009, when the team paid homage to deceased King of Pop Michael Jackson. It was also the year that UP slid to third while the Salinggawi Dance Troupe, the University of Santo Tomas’ official cheerleading squad and perennial contender, dropped out of the picture.
It is also worth noting that most of Ateneo’s seats were either vacated or occupied by students from other schools. Audibility or the clarity of cheers affect a good five points of the overall score.
