14,000 chacha dancers join Kidapawan’s attempt to set world record

KIDAPAWAN CITY – Some 14,000 dancers on Tuesday participated in Kidapawan City's attempt to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest cha-cha-cha dance.

Leading the dancers were City Mayor Joseph Evangelista and Cotabato Governor Lala Mendoza.

Most of the cha-cha-cha dancers were elementary pupils and high school students from more than 150 private and public schools in the city. Senior citizens also took part in the performance.

The event organizers had to close two kilometers of the city’s main highway for the five-minute dance.

Joey Recemilla, city tourism and investment promotions officer, said at least three professional dancers, one of them a British national, witnessed the presentation, which happened at exactly 9 a.m.

Witnesses were Julie Plummer, a Latin and standard professional from England who has been living in the Philippines since 2011; Lowell Basa Tan of the United Kingdom Alliance (UKA) Professional Teachers of Dancing; and Crisaldo Rendon, head coach and principal teacher of the Dancesport Team in Cebu City and fellow Latin American and modern standard professional from the UKA.

The city’s attempt to set a world record was aimed at changing a negative image which was created after the bloody dispersal of farmers who held a picket along the national highway when El Niño hit the country in April this year. The dispersal killed two individuals, one of them a farmer from a hinterland town in Cotabato.

“We already achieved our goal. We already have changed the landscape of our city,” said Recemilla.

Diodilito Laniton, also known by his radio name as ‘Idol Manoy, said he presented the idea to the local government unit in August last year. But due to lack of funds, the LGU scheduled it in February 2016. It was reset in time for the city’s fruit fests in August.

Laniton, disc jock of Happy FM of the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation, is a member of the Kidapawan City Dance Sport Team.

Evangelista, overwhelmed by the huge support of his constituents, wants another record next year.

“We will again try to break our own record in 2017,” he said.

Since 2011, Singapore holds the record for the world’s largest cha-cha-cha, with 3,379 participants.

For this year's attempt, Kidapawan City gathered 14,127 cha-cha-cha dancers, based on the records from the city’s tourism and investment promotions office.

The participants started doing the practice three months before the event. —With Joseph Tristan Roxas/KG, GMA News