Music and dance at health extravaganza

Music and dance at health extravaganza

SINGAPORE - Visitorship to the Health & You Exhibition, the largest and longest running health and wellness fair in Singapore, once again reached more than 100,000 last weekend at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

This is the ninth year that the exhibition has been held.

Some of the people attending were repeat visitors, saying they liked browsing the many stalls for deals on health-care products, including clean water systems, vitamins, fruit, healthy drinks and wellness products.

This year, there was something new in store for visitors - a K-pop competition which gave the proceedings an energetic boost with music and dancing.

There were 26 teams who signed up for the competition and hundreds of their supporters were present to cheer them on.

The heats were held on Saturday and the final on Sunday. Twenty teams turned up for the heats and 10 made it to the final.

The eventual winner was a seven-person team called A-ero, meaning "to fly high".

Team leader Muhammad Hakim said the team found out about the competition from The Straits Times and wanted to join as a last hurrah as some of the men in the group were going off to do NS.

"It would be the last time we would be in a competition together for a while," he said.

The group of four men and three women have been dancing together for more than a year and have entered three K-pop competitions. Their first competition was in September last year at the Teenage K-pop Dance Battle in which they also won first prize.

"We have been listening to K-pop since secondary school and we love to dance, so we came together to form this group," said Mr Muhammad, who is 21 and serving NS. The rest of his team members are mostly aged 20 and are all studying in polytechnics.

The group won the top prize of $1,500, which will be split evenly among them.

Mr Danny Yeo, the assistant vice-president of branding and promotions for Singapore Press Holdings, said new ideas are thought of every year to attract the young.

K-pop was chosen for this year as it is in vogue and very popular with the young.

"We hit the right note seeing how many people signed up for it," said Mr Yeo.

The exhibition was jointly organised by The Straits Times' Mind Your Body and Lohas, the health section of Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao.

AIA Singapore was the event's presenting sponsor and it exhibited its wellness programme called AIA Vitality. The programme provides customers with tools to help them develop a healthier lifestyle.


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