Battle For The North: Breaking crews get some respect at Panamania competition

While the Pan Am Games in Toronto showcases the best athletes in the Americas, an inaugural Pan Am-sponsored dance competition will serve to highlight the best street dancers in Canada.

Battle For The North (BFTN), features established and emerging dancers in an intense round-robin elimination tournament to determine who's the best in Canada.

• Watch Eli Glasner's story on the Battle for the North in the video above

According to organizer Corrie Daniels a.k.a. Benzo — himself a revered Canadian break-dancer with more than two decades of experience with celebrated local crew Bag of Trix — three promoters, Making Moves, Universal B-Boy League (UBL) and Bag of Trix, came up with the idea together to address the glaring lack of a national street dance competition.

BTFN will feature talented artists and crews selected from each province, including Ground Illusionz (Ontario), Dangerous Goods (Manitoba), Fresh Format (Quebec) and Filthee Feet (British Columbia). Each dance crew WILL have seven minutes per battle, with judges making the final decision to see who will advance the next round of the BFTN competition.

How did pitching BFTN come about?

In our industry, Canadians are somewhat left out. We took this opportunity to grab all of the crews, all the way from the Yukon, Vancouver, Quebec City, and have them come into Toronto to battle at the Pan Am Games.

The purpose of the battle is not just to have a battle, but to have Canadian-specific battle.

How has the Canadian breakdancing and street dance scene evolved?

The scene is getting more recognition. I think this is the first time since the 1980s that breakers have been involved in an event like this.

Most of the time you don't get a fully choreographed piece from breakers. I feel that we have made our mark in the dance community; in the past, breaking wasn't considered a real form of dance. We are getting recognized as dancers.

What should people know about this culture?

What they should know is that these dancers are full-time artists and they should be treated as artists and not just street dancers. It's been almost 40 years deep with this [as an art form]. It's gone in and out of phases where people have called it a fad, but it's still here. People should know that it is a real dance and it's being taught all over the world. It's broken a lot of stereotypes and cultural barriers.

How significant is the fact this event will be taking place during the Pan Am Games?

This is the first time that we've ever done this in Canada, where we've had a representative from each province come to battle. So this is huge. Normally the big corporations in Canada don't fund stuff like this, so to get the backing of Pan Am to make this happen is amazing.

I brought in all the top judges and all the top crews. What they're going to see is a high-end and intense round robin elimination-style competition. [Under the] judging system, we need to see execution, performance, originality, all those categories.

The crowd is going to be blown away — these are new kids doing new moves. People are going to see a lot of things that they haven't seen before.

This conversation has been condensed and edited.

Battle for the North at Panamania, as part of the Pan Am Games, takes place July 21-23 at Young Centre for the Performing Arts at The Distillery District, 50 Tank House Lane, Toronto. Tickets via www.toronto2015.org.