Charlie and Maddie Represent NZ on World Hip Hop Stage

Charlie and Maddie Kerrison Jones of Pirinoa Primary aren’t your average year 7 and 8 students. Local Wellington dance champions and now national representatives, they’re part of a nine-member junior urban street dance crew (hip hop). Each week they travel between three and five times to the far side of Wellington city (Kilbirnie) to join their crew in rehearsing and finely tuning carefully choreographed routines.

Dancing since they could walk, Charlie and Maddie are highly accomplished in a number of different dance styles, and are a real focus of their highly successful junior hip hop crew, Recruits. 

Locking in a world competition qualifying spot at NZ’s premier national hip hop event in Auckland in April, Charlie and Maddie Kerrison Jones of Wellington based dance studio The Company NZ (TCNZ) will join their crew, Recruits, in representing NZ at the World Hip Hop Dance Championship (WHHDC) in Phoenix, Arizona, August 2018.

The World Championship competition in Arizona plays host to 45 countries and more than 5000 competitors. TCNZ dance studio are well versed in the fierce energy that international crews bring to the ‘Olympics’ of world competition. ‘It’s another level up. Tough and exacting, we’re like all crews going there; we plan to bring home medals,’ says dance studio Executive Director, Liston Peilua. 

With August fast approaching, the cost to travel to the international competition is not without its challenges. The studio, the Kerrison Jones family and the girls are working their very hardest to fundraise to get themselves to the World Champs in USA. 

The girls are hard workers and no job is too small. Along with their hectic rehearsal schedule, Charlie and Maddie have been bagging pony poo and selling firewood. Every little bit helps and the support is so greatly appreciated. 

World Hip Hop Dance Championship 2018 will be staged in Phoenix, Arizona from 5 – 11 August.