The quest to find the nation’s best street dancer is on as the Red Bull Dance Your Style competition series has officially begun!

Last Thursday (April 7), the premiere one-on-one street dance competition made its first stop at the House of Blues in Boston and the energy inside the iconic venue was unmatched.

Sixteen dancers gave it their all in the bracket-style tournament to show off their best moves in hip-hop, house, waacking, turfing, krumping, popping, and everything in between, as they hoped to “wow” the crowd to win their vote and move onto the next round.

“I don’t really get nervous until the moment right before — that’s when I start to feel the nerves a little bit — but its adrenaline and it usually helps,” Princess Lockeroo tells Celeb Secrets reporter Juliet Schroder exclusively backstage before the big competition.

Each dancer had to test their freestyle and musicality skills through unpredictable mainstream tracks ranging from recent global hits to classic beats, which can sometimes be a challenge for dancers when a lot is on the line.

“My style is waacking and it’s typically done to disco music. I know I’m not necessarily going to get the genre of music that I typically dance to, so it’s really all about following the music and just tapping into that vibe,” Princess Lockeroo reveals.

Fellow competitor StiggityStackz echoed by saying, “I just go. I’m just in the moment and whatever I feel is what y’all are going to get. When it comes to preparation, there’s a lot of things that you can do like watching footage or studying, but I’m at this point in my dance career where I can just show up and show out.”

After multiple rounds of dancing, a final battle ensued between Providence, Rhode Island native Nano and Sadboy Shakur hailing from Hartford, CT. Both Nano and Sadboy Shakur ~delivered~ when it came to their freestyle routines, however, it was Nano who won over the roaring crowd with his intricate moves, out-of-the-box creativity and technical musicality.

“The energy was lovely. It was just what I needed,” Nano told Schroder backstage moments after being crowned the winner. “Everybody was putting out all of that positive energy and it was amazing.”

When asked about his winning strategy, Nano says he sticks to one rule his mentor taught him, and that’s to simply have fun. “I always go by having fun. My mentor has told me many times to just have fun and put your heart out there,” he said.

“So I usually don’t like to have like any combos because I feel like it limits my style,” he added. “I feel like I’m put in a box [when I have a routine], so I take whatever is in the moment and I use it to my advantage on the dance floor.”

As to where he’s putting his trophy? Somewhere he can admire it of course, but out of his nine month old daughter’s reach.

“[My trophy is going] somewhere high so my baby don’t get to it,” he jokingly said. “She’ll put her mouth all over it. She’s nine months, so I have to put it [somewhere high].”

Red Bull Dance Your Style heads to Tampa tonight (April 16) before making its way to Chicago (April 24), Washington D.C. (April 30), Oakland (May 6) and Atlanta (May 13). The two-day national final is set to take place in New Orleans on May 21 and 22, 2022, in which Nano will compete in for a chance to represent the United States in the competition’s World Finals in New York City later this year.

You can watch our videos with some of the competitors below and keep it locked to Celeb Secrets for more on Red Bull Dance Your Style this season.

Quotes have been edited for clarity. 

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