“I Love F1” The Audition

Yesterday marks the completion of the first of five auditions of the “I Love F1” crew search by the Sepang International Circuit (SIC) at the Taylors College in Subang.

The “I Love F1” project is a campaign to revive Malaysian’s passion towards motorsports and increasing awareness for this national agenda.

Part of that project is to recruit dancers to join the biggest B-Boy dancing group and to perform on the opening ceremony of the 2010 Formula 1 Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix.

“It’s going to be like synchronized swimming but it’s on the hot tarmac, being watched by millions all over the world on live telecast,” said SIC Public Relations Manager, Sarinda Ning Seh Satria.

More than 50 dancers came and tried their luck performing their own moves and a few choreographed dance moves in front of a panel of professional judges consisting of Malaysian rapper Saiful Nazwi or Poi of Phlowtron and flanked by two B-B-Boy dancers Flip (Azmi Khalib) and Lilo (Rizal Sandoso).

At the end of the day only seven were picked, Taylors College Katherine Lim and Derek Kho was among the chosen ones.

“I heard about this audition at the Dance club and decided to try my luck,” said 18-year-old local Subang girl Katherine.

“Never thought much about motorsport but we’ll see if I’ll change my mind once I get there (SIC) and watch the race after performing on race day.”

She added that it was a fun tryout and she made new friends that day that shares the same passion in dancing.

Derek on the otherhand was by chance passing the audition area and was called to join in, “and so I did and never thought I would get picked,” he said smiling.

“It’s going to be an exciting day with performing in front of thousands of people at the circuit and to be able to watch the race live and attend the concert afterwards.”

According to Poi the dancers looks promising but they will need some practice before getting it to the high performance standards that they are aiming.

“With some practice with our B-Boys we’ll be able to train these dancers to perform well on show day.”

The audition at Taylors College is one of the first of six auditions planned till next month, the next audition will be in Sunway College on the 22 February, Aswara on the 27 February, SMK(P) Sri Aman on March 1, Segi College on Marh 3 and “Kompleks Sukan” Bukit Kiara, March 6.

According  to Sarinda, apart from getting the dancers, the “I Love F1” campaign is to spread some awareness of the race.

“We realised a decline of spectators and awareness in last year's Malaysian GP so we came up with this campaign. It's simple, very straight forward and it also supports and in conjunction with the 1Malaysia values that was initiated by our Prime Minister.

Our target is basically Malaysians.

Malaysians only watch race from the Grandstand but this year we are to recruit young Malaysians to get them involved.”

She added “this is the only time we can present to the world what Malaysians are made of. For years it has been traditional dances but 2010 it will be younger, more fresh and we have the Malaysian community doing it instead of hired professionals.

This is one way Malaysian can pledge their passion towards the Malaysian GP.”

Among that will join and help the campaign are professional street dancers, Floor Fever and also and Joe Flizzow.

For more information please visit http://www.ilovef1.com.my/index.html