THE Indak-Indak sa Kadayawan 2019 will be the grandest, as it will be giving away almost P8 million in prizes and awards.
"As in bongga kaayo siya. Imagine sa whole Philippines, kita diria sa Davao ang naa'y pinakadako ang prize initiated (sa) street dance ma-initiate. (Imagine we have the largest prize for a street dance competition). It's more or less P 7.6 million," Subang Sinugdanan sa Kadayawan organizer Harold Quibete said on Thursday during the iSpeak media forum at the City Hall of Davao.
Quibete said this year, the Champions Circle Category will be introduced, wherein the top three winners of the open category and Davao City School Based Competition from 2016 to 2018 will have a separate competition. The grand champion of the Champions Circle will take home P1.2 million cash prize, including trophies and medals.
He also said the cash prizes will be tax-exempted.
Quibete said the competition will have 49 contingents: 20 for both open and school-based categories and nine for the Champions Circle category.
He also said organizers of this year's competition already removed the 95-percent score requirement for the winners to take home the full price.
Davao school-based defending champion Davao City National High School (DCNHS) only took home P500,000 cash prize for not reaching the mandatory 95 points to capture the P1 million reward.
"Today, even though they didn’t reach the exact 90 percent and will become the champion, they will be guaranteed to take home the one million for two categories and the champion circle is P1.2 million in cash,” Quibete said.
He also said a total of 8,333 individuals are expected to join the event, as the maximum number of participants increased to 170 from the previous year's 150.
Quibete, however, said the judge's criteria of judging would still be focused on the choreography, as he noticed some of the contestants are exerting more effort on their props.
“We need to retain the idea that Indak-Indak is not all about props but it’s all about foot work,” Quibete said.
He also reminded the public to observe the No Backpack and No Jacket Policy during the street dance competition.
Earlier, Kadayawan organizers announced that the Indak-Indak and Pamulak Kadayawan floral float parade, the two premier events will be held in two separate weekends.
Indak-Indak will now be held on August 17 while Pamulak will be on August 24.
Indak-Indak used to be held on Saturday morning followed by the Pamulak on Sunday morning.
City Tourism Operations Office head Generose Tecson, in a previous report, said they are targetting to have more than 250,000 tourists this year. (With RGL)