Ghetto festival a success
Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Tuesday June 28, 2016 15:38
The dance competition was to raise awareness, develop dance sport athletes and bringing dancers to world-class standard. The competition started later than anticipated after a lot of different dancers and clubs from across the nation registered in large numbers. The competition commenced with the ballroom dance, which was divided into three categories being Latin, standard, followed by the svoboda dance.
The standard dance had five types of dances, which are the waltz, quickstep, tango, vence waldz and footstrawt and the Latin dance included the chacha, jive, samba, rumba, tango and paso doble.
There was also a category of svoboda dance, which is a kwaito-house dance. Furthermore, the dance competition attracted youth, adults and children from the age of five years. The vice president of BODANSA, Goitseone Mosarwe told Showbiz that the dance competition was open for everyone. She noted that the dance sport festival objectives were also to develop youngsters in the field of dance and identifying potential athletes to be selected for the national team.
Mosarwe said that the judges for the competition had an accredited certificate by the dance sport federation.
“Since BODANSA is a member of the dance sport federation, the association is the one which accredited adjudicators after training them,” she said. She noted that the dance was divided into different sections and the dancers were expected to have followed the dance syllabus for them to excel. The syllabus covers the routine of the dance, footing, posture and others looking at the specification of each dance,” she said.
She said that the turn up of the dancers was not appealing because lots of the affiliates (schools) did not manage to attend the competition. She was, however, happy with the numbers that attended.
“Lots of schools did not register for the competition due to different challenges they were currently facing,” she said.
Mosarwe noted that lots of dance clubs formed in schools are facing difficulties of lack of transport and income. She encouraged the affiliates to form clubs in their societies so that they can overcome different challenges.
She added that their new initiative is to train different individuals in dance so that they can form clubs in their communities.
“The initiative of training different individuals is going to be a long term plan as it is going to be time-consuming,” she said. Mosarwe said that BODANSA is currently facing financial challenges because the government subvention they receive is not enough to sustain and cover for all the expenses and services of the association.
She appealed to different stakeholders, individuals in different communities to contribute towards the growth of dance sport in the country. She said that they used social media, flyers, posters and different print and electronic media to market the dance competition. The St Mary’s dance club representative, Cordel Utlwang, said that she was happy with the dance competition and the results.
“You reap what you sow and our achievement as the club is part of handwork and determination. As the coordinators of the club we thank the parents for supporting their children’s talents,” she said. Utlwang urged parents to be supportive towards their children’s dreams and talents so that they can groom the dance sport in the country. After a successful dance competition the dancers were awarded certificates accordingly and the winners of the championship level in the Standard and Latin ballroom were given trophies.