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Formats: Astro/Asian Battleground, Malaysia
27 July 2015
Malaysia’s Astro expanded regional street-dance contest, Asian Battleground, this year from a one-off special to a three-part regional competition involving 11 countries across Asia.
The three regional episodes will run straight on from the latest domestic Battleground series, which ran for seven episodes.
The Malaysian winner (Kidiotics), and runner-up (Death Notz) compete in the regional competition. The regional finale airs live on 7 August. The first two episodes of the three-part regional special aired on 17 and 24 July.
The regional version this year featured 80 dance groups from 11 countries, including Japan, Korea, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
Astro Battleground launched in Malaysia in 2007 with the “aim to provide a platform to discover and support talented youths who love street dance”, says Choo Chi Han, vice president of Astro’s Chinese customer business.
The format airs on Cantonese satellite/OTT (Astro on the Go) linear channel, Astro Wah Lai Toi, with an average viewership of 500,000+ Malaysian households per episode.
Seasons one to eight were scheduled in the weekend prime-time slots. Season nine (11x60 mins, bilingual) premiered on 22 May and aired on Fridays at 10.30pm.
More than 100 dance enthusiasts turned up for season nine auditions, held in April.
30 were flown to Japan for intensive, professional training and competed in battle rounds to earn individual spots for the finals.
The 18 finalists were grouped into three teams (Kidiotics, Death Notz and The BeastZ) to compete in a dance-off to clinch the ultimate spots in the group. Solo finals were held on 4 July.
The winner for this year’s solo Astro Battleground championship was Faris Azim Abd Karim from Selangor (won RM20,000/US$5,243 cash prize and a Japan workshop scholarship), who was also the youngest winner in the show’s nine-year history. The younger team Kidiotics emerged as the group champion (RM50,000/US$13,107 cash prize) and Death Notz first runner-up (RM20,000/US$5,243 cash prize)....
Malaysia’s Astro expanded regional street-dance contest, Asian Battleground, this year from a one-off special to a three-part regional competition involving 11 countries across Asia.
The three regional episodes will run straight on from the latest domestic Battleground series, which ran for seven episodes.
The Malaysian winner (Kidiotics), and runner-up (Death Notz) compete in the regional competition. The regional finale airs live on 7 August. The first two episodes of the three-part regional special aired on 17 and 24 July.
The regional version this year featured 80 dance groups from 11 countries, including Japan, Korea, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
Astro Battleground launched in Malaysia in 2007 with the “aim to provide a platform to discover and support talented youths who love street dance”, says Choo Chi Han, vice president of Astro’s Chinese customer business.
The format airs on Cantonese satellite/OTT (Astro on the Go) linear channel, Astro Wah Lai Toi, with an average viewership of 500,000+ Malaysian households per episode.
Seasons one to eight were scheduled in the weekend prime-time slots. Season nine (11x60 mins, bilingual) premiered on 22 May and aired on Fridays at 10.30pm.
More than 100 dance enthusiasts turned up for season nine auditions, held in April.
30 were flown to Japan for intensive, professional training and competed in battle rounds to earn individual spots for the finals.
The 18 finalists were grouped into three teams (Kidiotics, Death Notz and The BeastZ) to compete in a dance-off to clinch the ultimate spots in the group. Solo finals were held on 4 July.
The winner for this year’s solo Astro Battleground championship was Faris Azim Abd Karim from Selangor (won RM20,000/US$5,243 cash prize and a Japan workshop scholarship), who was also the youngest winner in the show’s nine-year history. The younger team Kidiotics emerged as the group champion (RM50,000/US$13,107 cash prize) and Death Notz first runner-up (RM20,000/US$5,243 cash prize).
Asian/Astro Battleground judges are dance gurus: Funky Lia (Korea), Taichi (Japan), Vince (Philippines), Yiu (Hong Kong) and Chun Hsiang (Taiwan).
Hosts are beauty pageant-turned-emcee Trisha Kuck and home-grown dancer Dennis Yin.
Produced by a full production crew of 30 people, the greatest challenge was the three-month deadline to train and scale up contestants’ skills, says Astro’s Choo.
“It was also not easy searching for suitable judges and trainers overseas,” Choo added.
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