Hip-hop dance goes to the community
WESTDENE – Young dancing duo hopes to inspire the youth and community by offering dance sessions for free.
WESTDENE – Leon Labuschagne and his dance partner Paul Nqambule organised a fun and energetic hip-hop dance session on 16 March at a local park.
Labuschagne started dancing informally at a skate park back in 2002. This is the first dance class the pair have hosted in the community as most of their classes are held at dance studios. “The problem we face with dance classes at the studio is that it does not reach the community as much, currently we’re trying to build a network for dancers in South Africa. We call it Dance Africa Network.
“I’ve been running the organisation for about 10 years and we have groups for every province in the country to help dancers find studios, jobs and help service untapped areas in the dance industry.”
The pair, Nqambule and Labuschagne, who live in the Westdene area said the event gathered its momentum from social media and word-of-mouth. Labuschagne explained that they hope to host these dance classes more frequently and plan on printing posters to put up around the community.
“We are pleased with the turnout of this first public event as it is a lot better than we expected, about 10 kids are participating so that is beyond amazing for us personally.”
He also spoke about the struggle he faces as a dancer, “Us dancers have a really big fight when it comes to the ground level to the top because we are still trying to fight for things like colours when we compete internationally, and with that comes the lack of sponsorships. For example, I have broken the world record for one-hand hops in breakdancing but because of lack of support and interest, my achievement didn’t get the recognition it needed.”
With this type of project, Labuschagne hopes to show studios another way of tapping into the community, “With this, we are trying to brain-child a community-driven type of a programme that we can try replicate in other areas to help other dance industries.”
Councillor Genevieve Sherman said there were no complaints from resident and that she supports all youth empowerment events, but in future, the organisers will need to go through The City to get approval for any event in the community space.
Related article:
