Week-long festival celebrating urban arts to take place at *Scape

If you're interested in dance, music and street culture, the rest of this week is going to be an exciting one for you. From Mar 17 till 22, various urban art events will take place at *SCAPE that offers local and regional urban arts practitioners the opportunities to excel in their art-forms through world-class training, education and networking.

During the week-long festival, internationally renowned and pioneering break dancing crew, RadikalForze, will celebrate its 17th anniversary with RadikalForze Jam 2015 X *SCAPEdance.

This is the third time RadikalForze Jam is held at *SCAPE, since starting working together in 2010. This partnership is underscored by *SCAPE's dance programming pillar, *SCAPEdance, which aims to curate and congregate dance competitions that will put Singapore dancers in the international dance arena.

Among the key highlights, RadikalForze Jam 2015 X *SCAPEdance is joining forces with European energy drink company, Red Bull, to bring one of the world's most prestigious one-on-one B-Boy World Championships, Red Bull BC One, back to Singapore for the fourth year running.

To be held on Mar 20, the RedBull BC One Singapore Cypher will see the best 16 B-Boys from Singapore competing head-to-head to impress a panel of internationally renowned B-Boys, including Red Bull BC One All Star Taisuke Nonaka from Japan, Bounce from the US and TRue ColoR$ from Singapore.

The winner will represent the nation in advancing to the Asia-Pacific Finals, for a shot at making it into the World Finals stage in Rome, Italy later this year.

Also featuring during the week is Summer Jam Dance Camp, the biggest dance convention in the Asia-Pacific, where dancers from around the globe gather together to experience world-class training from an all-star line up of choreographers and dance mentors.

This year's line-up includes Keone & Mariel Madrid and Lyle Beniga, both from the US, who have appeared on The Ellen Show and choreographed for Korea's pop acts such as BigBang and 2NE1.

Taisuke will also conduct a B-Boying workshop on Mar 19, sharing his skills and knowledge with the local B-Boy community.

A graffiti competition, Graffight Singapore, will also be introduced at to pit local graffiti artists against each other based on the theme "Heritage", in recognition of Singapore's 50th birthday this year - allowing Singaporean grafifiti artists to express their love and gratitude in a creative and artful way.

The top three winners will be selected to showcase alongside international graffiti artists at Graffight World X 2015.

"I envisage Singapore to be an internationally acclaimed hub for the arts, and Radikal Forze Jam 2015 X *SCAPEdance is one of the platforms where our local talents are showcased and raise international awareness of the emerging urban art scene in Singapore, creating a high level of exchange in the art-forms, creating industry, and at the same time grooming youths who want to take an alternate career path, and be urban arts practitioners and entrepreneurs," says Mr Felix Huang, Director of Recognize Studios and leader of Radikal Forze.

For more information and ticketing options, go to http://www.radikalforzejam.com.

spanaech@sph.com.sg