Mark Anthony Esau is an ex-professional dancer who started dancing at age 10. He grew up in a tough situation where his aunt tried, by all means, to keep him away from dancing.
She would give him many chores to do just to stop him from dancing. Luckily, Priscilla Myburgh from the FJT School of Dance saved his career. That and his passion and drive for success kept him going.
Esau said, “I was very hungry to go to the ballroom and during the apartheid era it was extremely hard.” At age 18 he left the ballroom and went to audition for a cabaret at the Why Not Hotel in Swaziland.
He learned a lot from Adele Blank who gave classes in a church, where she gave ballroom and contemporary classes. He switched it up when he took classes from Neil Mckay who gave jazz art classes which he described as being more funky and free and then finally perfecting all his skills with Carlo Spetto who gave classes that were more flamboyant.
He said, “I was part of the FJT School of ballroom dance which was headed by Priscilla Myburgh and Harry Job in the 80s which were when I moved to Eldorado Park. I started enjoying ballroom and started hitting my prime at age 18 after competing with Trudy Alberts, my then partner.”
He continued, “I did a couple of shows on TV which is where I was spotted and then went to work for Sun International in Sun City. I did four shows there, it was my first big show, there were 30 dancers and the show was called Bravo.”
In 1996 he approached Myburgh and told her that he would like to go abroad, he added, “I then decided to go to London, to start my career in London. After being a week in London at the Pineapple Dance Studio I got offered a job to go on a boat cruise, to help me get my equity card to work in London.”
At age 33 he decided that he had had enough of traveling and made London his base. He continued, “I decided to do my degree in dance and graduated in 2007. I then continued dancing which is when I went back to my first love which was ballroom, which is my passion.” Alberts then invited Esau to come down to South Africa to help her teach the 70 students at her school, which she described as difficult being the only professional dancer.
During his stay in Eldorado Park, he concentrated on working with the children at the Don Mateman Civic Centre doing workshops where they would on the basics of the ballroom vernacular.
He said that many of the children at the school lack discipline although they worked very hard. After the long hours of training he said, “It was very rewarding because after the first week there was a competition in Pretoria and all the students who I just worked one week with, excelled as they came in first place and second place and really showing that they can get really good results if they put the hard work in.”
He concluded, “It’s nice to see the new talent with these FJT kids as I came here to inspire the kids and hopefully I can come back and see the kids move up in the novices of the ballroom dance style.”
