Girl group BeUtiful and the dance troupes OopsCrew; The Heat and Heaven Dance Team beat 16 others to win the awards at thefinal night held at the Korean Cultural Centre on May 13.
From Hanoi, the four-member BeUtiful sing amashup Don’t Recall and Oh Nana by K.A.R.D. They took the prize for the bestsingers.
Five-member, mixed-gender Oops Crew won thefirst prize with their dances to songs like OOH - AHH, La chA Ta, Lucifer and IGo Crazy Because of You. Second and third prizes went to The Heat andHeaven Dance Team.
"We just aimed to perform our best. Thefirst prize is an unexpected; other troupes were strong contenders," said LyPhi Long from Oops Crew. "I hope to be the Vietnamese representativeattending the K-pop World Festival in Korea".
Oops Crew was set up by five members who aresecond-year and fourth-year students at different colleges in Hanoi. They mettogether two years ago and bonded over K-pop.
"I was really surprised by the performancesduring the final night," said Lee Dae-joong, the centre director."The contestants were very professional to prepare props for theirperformances. Their performances made them look like they were K-pop stars. Itis amazing".
The K-pop festival in Vietnam was held from May10 to 13, attracting more than 300 contestants from clubs and dancetroupes in Hanoi and HCM City. The top nineteen troupes competed at the finalnight with jurors Lee; Chung Jang-wook, chief representative of the officeof Korean Tourism Organisation in Vietnam; representatives of KBS televisionand Korean Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese choreographer Nguyen Viet Thanh.
The festival is held annually in Vietnam as theregional preliminary. The festival organisers will set up a new band from thewinners, which will be trained by Vietnamese and Korean experts before going toattend the K-Pop World Festival 2017 in the RoK in September.
It is the 5th K-pop World Festival to be held inChangwon for all those K-pop lovers around the world. Last year, VietnameseLotus band attended the final round in Korea.
The K-pop Festival in Vietnam also includes aK-pop exhibition showing collections and productions by Vietnamese fans from 26K-pop clubs. The final night also saw performance by guest dancers from KoreanB-boy Monkeys.-VNA