A woman from Pitesti teaches young people Street-Dance and K-pop. Simona Din’s students qualified for the World Dance Championship in the Netherlands

He founded a school of Street Dance and Korean dances (K-pop) in Pitesti where around 50 students are active. Simona Din is from Pitesti and helps children and young people from Argeș to express themselves through dance and to love movement at any age, and five of her students will even participate, this summer, in a world championship in Holland.

For five years, Simona Din founded the Dance School “Straja hojam” in Pitesti. You can find the hall in the Craiovei complex, on the first floor. There are about 50 kids now, generally more girls, divided by age group and training group. Children as young as six and even adults are welcomed with open arms. Smaller groups have classes during the week and those over 10 years of age train at weekends. The students learn street dance, and on Fridays – K-pop (Korean popular music). In the past, Simona Din was a coordinator at a Romanian-Korean association, and one of her goals is to establish such an association here as well, “I feel it’s something we need in our area, to get a little contact with the Asian mentality”, the interlocutor motivated us.

Simona Din graduated with a Master of Sports Performance

Now 40 years old, Simona Din started dancing 15 years ago. “My story with dance starts in 2009. It started as a result of losing my father. I needed to externalize the emotions I was feeling then and I found dance as a way of expression, which I later turned into my job. I also did a master’s degree in Sports Performance at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports in Pitesti. Since then, since 2009, I have been active in the world of dance, growing little by little until this point, in 2024, when I finally managed to qualify a team to a world championship, which is a great pride for me”.

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Two teams from Pitesti, the only ones from the country at the World Dance Championship in Holland

The competition they qualified for is called “Global Dance”. The final takes place at the beginning of July this year, in Apeldoorn, Holland, about an hour’s drive from the capital Amsterdam. From “Straja hojam”, the “Racatiai” team participates in the Street Dance category. They are five hard-working and advanced children, aged between 11 and 18, and some of them have been dancing for at least three years. For this championship it was a virtual qualification. The people of Pitesti filmed a video of the moment, which they will also present in the Netherlands. All the videos entered in the contest were broadcast in a virtual event, scored live by the jurors, “and we managed to get more than the 75 points needed to qualify”, the dance school manager pointed out. Now they are preparing to go further, “only we have an impediment, being of a financial nature. Not all children have the financial possibility to pay the costs for this trip”, Simona Din also told us. Prices also increased significantly during that period, and in the context of the world championship.
It should be noted that this team also includes a young man with promising results, Andrei Zîmbroianu, the high school student who won the Mr. Brătianu title in the fall of 2023. “We basically made the moment with which he won the ball. The event was highly publicized and the moment was really cool. I’m really proud and it really brings pleasure to those who see it.” said the children’s coordinator happily. On their Facebook, Instagram and Tik-Tok pages you can also find videos of student performances.
It is also impressive that, from Romania, the only teams participating in this world championship are from Pitesti. Practically, the Romanian delegation includes only two teams, the one from Simone Din’s school and another team from ACS Athletic Club, which participates in the AcroDance category, with almost 40 children.

Young people are in love with K-pop!

In Romania, more and more young people are attracted to the K-pop style, and there is also a trend in Pitesti. Simona Din told us that she also fell in love with these dances, which she now passes on to her students. “I have a special K-pop class where we learn Korean choreography. I also have periods when we learn traditional Korean dances, I also teach. For two years we have been participating in Asia Fest, in Bucharest, representing Pitești in this category of dances”. The kids from “Straja hojam” have also been participating in other competitions, including K-pop cover competitions, since their first edition.

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