An unassuming brick building on Blake Street played host to a collection of people breaking it down on the dance floor Saturday afternoon.

The RedBull BC One, the world’s largest competition for breakdancing — or breaking, as it’s called by those in the industry — came to Denver for its National Final and Camp over the weekend, hosting workshops and dance battles on Friday and Saturday before Sunday’s main event sent the national winners to the World Final in Tokyo.

Dressed in loose, baggy clothing and comfortable sneakers, dancers from across the country and world wowed those watching in the audience with fast footwork, timely tricks and gravity-defying flips.

“I got so excited for this,” said Randi Freitas, who dances on stage by the name Rascal Randi, who judged the Salt Break City battle on Saturday before competing in the national finals on Sunday. “It’s a weekend of a lot of different styles but I love it, I love it so much.”

In the days leading up to Sunday’s main event, RedBull hosted a collection of workshops and lower-level battles, covering both breaking and house dance styles. The workshops, in particular, were aimed at helping dancers learn fundamental techniques and footwork.

Freitas, who has been breaking for about 15 years by her own estimate, said that the ability to judge a competition came about over a long period of time and a close analysis of all the small parts of an overall dance.

“I think that judging is a heavy task. I wasn’t going to say yes to it until I felt like I knew what I was looking at, Freitas said. “If you fall out of a move and don’t execute it well, that really takes some points off in the judging scheme. Even things as small as if you tap your foot in your transition from a freeze to power or in between different power moves can lose you points.”

Saturday’s Salt Break City battle, which Freitas helped judge, was an all-female battle that paired a breaking dancer with an all-styles dancer in a two-versus-two format. 

Anna Gunderson, who goes by the name Nanz while dancing, won the Salt Break City battle along with another dancer who went by the name Chachara. Gunderson is mostly a house dancer, she said, but added a few breaking elements, such as energizing the crowd, to her performance during the battle. 

“It was new for me,” Gunderson said after the pair’s victory. “(House) is less aggressive, but I found that it really fueled me today and made me want to work them little bit harder.”

In addition to energizing the crowd, some of the dancers did little things to try and get under the skin of their opponents, such as making prolonged eye contact or dancing right in front of them. The tactic, which Freitas noted looks intense during the battle, stays on the dance floor, as the competitors hugged one another after nearly every dance.

“Once the call is made, there’s hugs, there’s daps, there’s congratulations,” Freitas said. “It’s a really beautiful family. The moves and stuff are going to impress everybody, but also if you just zoom out and look at how many people this has brought together, it’s a really, really cool thing.”