The Sandbox Partners with DanceFight to Bring Epic Dance Battles to the Metaverse

The Sandbox, a leading decentralized gaming virtual world and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, announced today that it has partnered with DanceFight, the world’s leading dance battle app, to bring the authentic DanceFight experience to its own dedicated LAND in The Sandbox. This collaboration will bring head-to-head street dance competitions to the gaming metaverse for the first time, allowing players to fully express their dance skills.





Inclusivity and safety have always been the focus of DanceFight – competitions do not include comments, vote totals or “like” counts to mitigate social pressure – and the ethos of creating a safe space for expression and creation will carry through in the metaverse. Unlike any other social experience in the market, DanceFight is purely about head-to-head competition where the community votes for the winner. This deliberate reframing of competition, which is centered around respect for effort, courage, and honoring competitors, has been deeply embraced by the US-based street dance community and has resulted in the app appearing at the top of Apple’s App Store multiple times.

“We want to create a lively, welcoming space in The Sandbox where much like our mobile app, dancers of all ages and skill levels can do what they love in a totally inspiring community– you're always winning if you put yourself out there,” said Ryan Jordan, Co-Founder of DanceFight. “The open metaverse is the perfect platform where creativity can be rewarded not just with audience votes but the possibility for dance-to-earn and choreograph-to-earn to turn into a digital vocation.”

Dance has always been a key form of cultural expression, and it’s no different in digital culture. By transforming DanceFight battles from IRL videos to 3D dance-offs featuring player avatars, The Sandbox will foster the inclusive culture of street dancing in its open metaverse. In partnership with The Sandbox, the DanceFight team will create a dance venue in their LAND, pulsing with live dance battles, events, and music. This will be a space where dancers of all skill levels, backgrounds and countries come together to connect, collab, practice, battle, and add dimension to their craft.

Through the partnership, dance creators will now be able to monetize their personal dance moves as NFT animations players can purchase and apply to their own avatar in The Sandbox, instantly becoming a next-level dance battler. Dancers well-known to the DanceFight community, such as Slim Boogie, Arsenal, Pumpkin, Jon Gifted, Enerjae, Jesse Sykes, as well as KANG FRVR (Isaiah Sosho), the epic dancer known for creating the massive Kangsta Wok dance phenomenon, are already onboard.

“Bringing the artform of dance to The Sandbox metaverse is a huge moment. It allows dancers to receive credit, ownership, and revenue for their innovative choreography – something that's often lacking in the physical world, especially for BIPOC creators,” said Kangsta Wok creator, KANG FRVR. “It will also inspire a whole new level of creativity in dance that goes beyond real-world limitations like gravity."

DanceFight has become the mobile epicenter of the US street dance and dance battle scenes with some of the most talented dance battlers on the planet. The experience creates a place where aspiring dancers can express themselves and compete while honing their craft. Dance and music fans soon will be able to experience DanceFight in the metaverse, with 3D dancers freed from IRL physical restrictions. A launch date and other details will be announced at a later time.

“We welcome creators of every type in The Sandbox, and it’s exciting to see choreographers and dancers bringing their artistic skills to bring dance battles to life in the DanceFight LAND,” said Sebastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder of The Sandbox. “I can’t wait to try out the Kangsta Wok on the dance floor, knowing that the dance community will be behind my efforts to master the art of street dance.”

Part virtual real estate, part amusement park, The Sandbox fully embraces the idea of the metaverse as a continuous shared digital space where worlds and heroes collide to make magic. DanceFight joins over 200 existing partnerships including The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg, Adidas, Warner Music Group, Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, Richie Hawtin, The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, ZEPETO, and CryptoKitties, all following The Sandbox team’s vision of empowering players to create their own experiences using both original and well-known characters and worlds.