Finchley boys get on the Goodfoot

Four London street dancers who specialise in "locking, popping and breaking" have beaten flamenco dancers and classical ballerinas to be named one of the best groups in the world.

Finchley-based Goodfoot have made the shortlist of an international dance contest run by Sadler's Wells.

Hundreds of traditional and contemporary dancers from around the world entered the online competition. Goodfoot will now compete against nine other groups from the US, South Africa, South Korea, Israel and Taiwan, and another from the UK, to win public votes.

Sadler's Wells launched the free competition - open to anyone over the age of 18 anywhere in the world - in March.

Entrants had to choreograph, perform and film an original piece of dance and upload it on to YouTube.

Goodfoot, who teach street dance at boxing centre My Gym in Finchley and in schools, filmed their performance on the South Bank.

Dancer Arthur Sempebwa, 22, from High Barnet, said Goodfoot aimed to "inspire kids to take up dance". He added: "We are not a usual street dance crew...we are about selling our personalities. We are very theatrical and use a lot of humour."

Sempebwa, whose dance name is Uncle A, formed the group with Sepehr Dashtipour, known as Silk, 22, from West Hampstead. They are joined by Marko "Logic" Rodic, 21, from East Barnet, and Shakeel "Shak" Meetooa, 22, from Archway. Shak said being a finalist would "expose them to worlds that may not normally see their kind of dance".

He said: "What we do is locking, popping and breaking. There are 50 different styles of popping." Finalists also include Bad Taste Cru, a B-boy group from Omagh and Tank Man Tang, a dance from Australia based on the Tiananmen Square protest.

They were selected by judges, chaired by Sadler's Wells artistic director Alistair Spalding and including Arlene Phillips. a former judge on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing. The winners, announced on 18 November, will get £2,000 and perform in Sadler's Wells show Sampled throughout the year.

The breaks....

Locking
Originally danced to funk, it relies on fast and distinct arm and hand movements combined with more relaxed hips and legs. It involves freezing from a fast movement and locking in a certain position.

Popping
Popping is based on the technique of quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause a jerk in the dancer's body.

Breaking
Also known as B-boying, this evolved out of the hip hop culture in Seventies New York. It involves acrobatics and complicated contortions including freezes where the dancer can suspend himself off the group using upper-body strength.