A Re Bine Street Jive to cultivate dance
Chippa Legodimo | Friday June 13, 2014 14:30
Surprisingly, while our music has seen some significant growth in recent years, dance has been left behind as very few artists have dancers of note in their ensemble.
Most artists double as musicians and dancers limiting choreography skills.
Some of them dance freestyle. During major cooperate events such award ceremonies, audiences are often treated to substandard dancing though music would be of high quality.
Exotic dances like tsutsube, setapa, pantsula, kwaito and others have not been fully exploited to make them more appealing to a wider audience.
It would seem local artists do not realise the importance of well-coordinated dance sequences play in making live performances more interesting.
A local production and talent scout company, Oneline PTY is trying to close that gap.
The company has started a project that one of its aims will culminate into a festival called A Re Bine Street Jive.
This is a musical dance project designed to showcase the various cultural and modern dances found in Botswana.
Its aim is to bring change in the realm of performing arts in local communities and to help preserve and diversify culture.
Talent manager, Osego ‘Ozzy’ Maseko, says apart from providing entertainment, the project also aims to instill a sense of cultural pride amongst young Batswana and create interest in performing arts.
“Our music industry has grown a lot, but dance has been left behind. A live performance would not be interesting without dance but very few local performers are willing to invest even time on that aspect,” Maseko told Arts & Culture.
He said that while natural talent is in abundance throughout the country there is no proper nurturing of such to produce dance professionals with high standards.
Very few people are willing to invest in the development of dance talent, including the dancers themselves, Maseko said.
“You find dancers for some top bands do not even care about their image, hygiene and do not even see themselves making it as big as the person they are dancing for,” he said.
Maseko noted that A Re Bine Street Jive is a national project. Preliminary auditions have already been held in Tlokweng and Gaborone West and are due to spread to other parts of the country.
The project is set to run until the beginning of August leading up to an award ceremony in Gaborone.
About 50 dancers will be identified who will then converge in Gaborone for the final event.
The auditions will run until July 5 and the selected individuals will start rehearsals for the three-day festival, which includes workshops for the dancers.
“It is very important to have this workshop because the dancers need to be given some kind of crusher course on how to conduct themselves and how to manage their talents.
We have invited fashion designers, choreographers and other stakeholders,” he said.
The organisers believe that through such a project young Batswana, especially could be groomed into international dance stars ready to compete with the world’s best.
Maseko hinted that though they are still struggling to convince companies to invest in the initiative, they are hopeful that at the end a ‘Good Samaritan’ will come across with a sponsorship.
“We can identify good talent here, but we would be limited in teaching those individuals to (get them to) the stage where they would be a polished product.
It would be good if we could find them an opening at an arts school so they would get a chance to refine their skill,” Maseko said.