Jumping Jewels / Rope Skipping Singapore

Skip'a'Dance competition, 11th/12th July 2009

This Skip'a'Dance competition is organised by Singapore Press Holdings as part of their annual 'Health and You' expo. Last year the Jumping Jewels where hired to perform at the opening ceremony of 'Health and You' with guest of honor Dr Balaji. We also competed and crashed out of the Skip'a'Dance' competition but our friends in the Heartbeat team came in 3rd.

This year we had a real fun fusion choreography that we put together in a few days for the rehearsal on 11th July. It was supposed to be the semi's but the organizers decided that all 10 entries would compete only on Sundays at the grand finals. So there where no judges and the teams just practiced there routines as the emcee introduced them to the spectators. We put up 5 skippers for this dry run.

The next day for the actual competition all 8 skippers competed which is the way we registered for the competition. It was a high energetic dance and skipping combo that made us stand out. When the emcee announce the 2nd winner we where just so thrilled because we where the only team left not called out.

Our outfit we wore was a mix and match to get the righr colors and look. No one had dresses so we looked everywhere for dresses we can skip and dance in. Wearing colorful tights with short dresses may start a skipping fashion trend. The flavour of the moment for us were the rainbow knee high socks.

Snapshot of Skip'a'Dance

The 11th Oct rehearsal day.

The 12th Oct grand finals day. About to be called on stage. In the forground was the debutant Rulang Sch primary 2 team and behind them the Creative company childcare team. There were all sorts of ages between the 10 competing teams.

Started off with a foot tapping line dance routine to Jackie Wilson's Reet Petite.

Just as the two girls did their cartwheel someone with a big flash or maybe all the pro cameramen together took flash photos. Looked like a scene from ET. The girls were wearing bright colored Benetton tights.

Our own cameraman Larry Haydn took the next two photos capturing the energy of the long rope traveller. This is Aidah's specialty.

Even the hair was specially styled to perform. It cost $160 to style the team's hair at the salon that day. Rachel looks like Astroboy, Ariel looks like Betty Boop, Aidah and Pei Shi has their medusa look and the rest have Sailormoon looks.

This is part of our Asian Rope Skipping Championship routine. Going to the Hong Kong next week for that competition. We where in 3 competitions in 2 weeks. Won 2 and 3rd for the Asian so it was a really packed and exiciting time for the Jumping Jewels.