KIDAPAWAN CITY—The Guinness Book of World Records has officially confirmed the city of Kidapawan as the new title holder for the largest number of dancers dancing the cha-cha simultaneously, besting the current holder Singapore.
Joey Recimilla, Kidapawan City tourism and promotion officer, said Guinness has sent an email and even posted on its website confirming that Kidapawan has set a new record for simultaneous cha-cha dancers in August last year.
Some 14,275 participated in the dance show, composed mostly of elementary, high school and college students, government employees. and senior citizens who flooded the three-kilometer stretch of the city highway for the cha-cha dance that lasted five minutes.
The numbers, according to Recimilla, were higher by more than 10,000 to beat the current holder, Edgefield Primary School in Singapore, which had 3,379 participants.
“The long wait is over. We got the title and we owed this to the participants who sweated it out for a purpose—to bring back the good image of Kidapawan City, after the bloody rally dispersal in April 1 last year,” Recimilla said.
Mayor Joseph Evangelista thanked the support of all dancers “who made a significant contribution for the record.”
With the feat, Evangelista said the city will set a new Guinness record this year by assembling the most participants dancing boogie along the same stretch of the city highway.
Recimilla said the three professional dancers, one of them a British national sent by Guinness to witness the event, were all convinced the synchronized performance of the dancers was enough for Kidapawan to claim the new record.
Witnesses were Julie Plummer, a Latin and standard professional dancer from England who has been living in the Philippines since 2011; Lowell Basa Tan of the United Kingdom Alliance Professional Teachers of Dancing; and Crisaldo Rendon, head coach and principal teacher of the Dancesport Team in Cebu City, and a fellow Latin American and modern standard professional from the UKA.
“We already achieved our goal. We have already changed the landscape of our city,” said Recimilla.