Girl group BeUtiful and the dance troupes Oops Crew; The Heat and Heaven Dance Team beat 16 others to win the awards at the final night held at the Korean Cultural Centre on May 13.
From Hanoi, the four-member BeUtiful sing a mashup Don’t Recall and Oh Nana by K.A.R.D. They took the prize for the best singers.
Five-member, mixed-gender Oops Crew won the first prize with their dances to songs like OOH - AHH, La chA Ta, Lucifer and I Go Crazy Because of You. Second and third prizes went to The Heat and Heaven Dance Team.
"We just aimed to perform our best. The first prize is an unexpected; other troupes were strong contenders," said Ly Phi Long from Oops Crew. "I hope to be the Vietnamese representative attending the K-pop World Festival in Korea".
Oops Crew was set up by five members who are second-year and fourth-year students at different colleges in Hanoi. They met together two years ago and bonded over K-pop.
"I was really surprised by the performances during the final night," said Lee Dae-joong, the centre director. "The contestants were very professional to prepare props for their performances. Their performances made them look like they were K-pop stars. It is amazing".
The K-pop festival in Vietnam was held from May 10 to 13, attracting more than 300 contestants from clubs and dance troupes in Hanoi and HCM City. The top nineteen troupes competed at the final night with jurors Lee; Chung Jang-wook, chief representative of the office of Korean Tourism Organisation in Vietnam; representatives of KBS television and Korean Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese choreographer Nguyen Viet Thanh.
The festival is held annually in Vietnam as the regional preliminary. The festival organisers will set up a new band from the winners, which will be trained by Vietnamese and Korean experts before going to attend the K-Pop World Festival 2017 in the RoK in September.
It is the 5th K-pop World Festival to be held in Changwon for all those K-pop lovers around the world. Last year, Vietnamese Lotus band attended the final round in Korea.
The K-pop Festival in Vietnam also includes a K-pop exhibition showing collections and productions by Vietnamese fans from 26 K-pop clubs. The final night also saw performance by guest dancers from Korean B-boy Monkeys.
