Disability doesn’t get the better of Alexandra’s Emily Mabasa
ALEXANDRA – Emily Mabasa, who uses crutches to get around, is a prolific dancer who has taken to sharpening up children dance moves.
What started off as a showcase of family dance moves has blossomed into a fully-fledged dance academy.
The academy helps Alex children sharpen up their dance skills and in the process learn a thing or two on a potential future career in the arts.
This is the story of Emily Mabasa, a person living with disability who started the dance academy during the lockdown period. “You know during the lockdown, boredom is the order of the day and night, sometimes you can hardly fall asleep.
“My niece, cousin and I started showing off our dance moves to overcome boredom and it just ignited in me that I could start a dance academy and teach all these kids that are under lock and key because of Covid-19, and things began to fall in place and Phoenix Alex Dance Club was born,” Mabasa said.
The 30-year-old freelance quality assurer started off with two family members but in no time, the number of children in the academy grew exponentially. “As we speak, I have more than 40 children on my books which has led to another problem, dance space.
“As the numbers of children wanting to take dance lessons grew rapidly, we quickly bumped into yet another problem as our dance space also quickly grew too small to accommodate the sudden swelling numbers of children,” she told Alex News in an interview at the Vusanani Arts Alive concert at the East Bank Hall, which was a fundraising initiative to help to struggle Alex artists such as herself.
Mabasa, a 2012 fashion design graduate of the University of Johannesburg, said she was currently on the lookout for a possible space they could use not far from their 15th Avenue home.
The academy is currently using a neighbour’s house as their dance space but now needs a much bigger space to accommodate all the children. Besides teaching dance classes, Mabasa also ensures that children do their homework.
“I also teach them drama, speech and English and have opened a reading club. The feedback I get from parents is so amazing and inspires me to do even more.”
Her message to other people living with disabilities was to encourage them not to allow their disabilities to get the better of them. “If there is something you are talented in, use it to the best of your ability, and if you are skilled in something, do the same. We would like to see as many disabled people as possible independently starting and doing things for themselves.”
