MIKO had the moves. But they came too late for him to hip hop. So he made it his business: Dance sport.
When Team Australia won silver at the 13th World Hip Hop Dance championships in Las Vegas last year, sure as night follows day it was Sydney pinoz Marco Andre (Miko) Selorio who orchestrated this country’s first-ever success in 13 years of the international competition.
By JAIME K PIMENTEL
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This year, Selorio put into play more than 1000 sports-dancing competitors in 100 hip hop teams from the Philippines, USA, South Africa, Taiwan, China, Guam, Indian, New Zealand and Australia for the 2015 World Supremacy Battlegrounds in Brisbane.
A crowd of more than 5,000 came to watch Team Philippines scoop the pool of gold medals.
After 11 years of developing dance sport in Australia and spreading his wings across the oceans, Selorio has established himself as a new-age entrepreneur of note.
He has made his name with dance sport, hip hop in particular. And it made him a successful businessman in his own right.
“But my passion is still basketball,” Selorio admits. “I love playing the game and watching it. Even as a child in Quezon City, Philippines, where I was born and grew up, there was nothing I wanted more than to play and watch basketball.”
He has been comfortable with entertainment, too. As a child Selorio dabbled in acting on television, playing a role in the children’s program Kulit Bulilit.
That was cut short when Selorio and his family migrated to Australia in 1989. But little did he know the experience would serve him well for things to come.
Selorio was aged 12 when I arrived in Sydney. He had gone to the University of the Philippines’ Integrated School from kindergarten to 7th grade and was promoted to 8th grade at Hoxton Park High School, graduating there.
His family then moved to Canberra, where Selorio completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the Australian National University with a major in accounting and economics.
Returning to Sydney, Selorio found employment in finance and funds management at ANZ Bank. He also continued his love affair with basketball by joining the National Basketball League’s Sydney Kings as a volunteer.
“I’d do anything for the Kings,” he said. “My task was to write and publish the team’s newsletter, Hoopdreamz.
“It was the start of my ambition to become an entrepreneur. I said to myself: ‘I can do this for myself’’.”
Why not?”
So when Selorio moved on to take flight on his own he named his first venture “Hoopdreamz’. He organised basketball tournaments, brought to Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne the crème of the Philippines’ basketball players for exhibition games.
Then one day he watched a small hip hop dance competition, and he thought: “I think I can come up with something better.”
Why not.
Indeed, hip hop became a ‘mistress’ to Selorio, so to speak. He’d always come home to basketball, but he began paying more attention to hip hop dance sport.
Expanding his horizons, Selorio formed an umbrella enterprise, MAS Presents, under which Hoopdreamz, World Supremacy Battlegrounds, and talent management would operate.
Basketball? The game remains his first love and passion. He’d do almost anything pro bono for basketball.
But hip hop is the big game in town, for Marco Andre Selorio’s money.
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PICTURE
Marco Andre Selorio, new-age entrepreneur.
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