South African hip-hop dancers are twerking their way onto global stages.
Afro-soul, amapiano — and a funky Squid Games routine — netted Team South Africa 30 medals at the Dance World Cup in Burgos, Spain, this week.
“Every time we come to these competitions, we say, we’re coming here for experience. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever think we’d achieve such success,” Mario Gomes, who runs a hip-hop dance academy in Roodepoort, told the Sunday Times.
His dancers participated in 11 categories and took home a €3,000 cheque (R62,800), four dance scholarships to train in Europe for a month and training in South Africa by one of the World Cup adjudicators. They won 13 gold, 12 silver and five bronze medals.
But it was the Mario Gomes academy’s Empire Crew’s performance in the street dance category that won the hearts of the judges. They beat 35 crews from other countries.
“We didn’t have anyone lower than 10th place as an academy,” Gomes said. “It gave us that validation that we are doing something right.”
Academy members cried when their triumph was announced.
“There was disbelief, then we realised we actually beat everyone. We were just full of emotions even in the crowd and the children’s parents. We will never forget it,” Gomes said.
“Usually with Afro-soul and amapiano, a lot people just don’t understand it.”
The competition attracts about 120,000 dancers from across the world, aged between four and 25. They compete in various dance genres, including ballet, jazz, tap and contemporary.
“We don’t get any support from the government so these 70 dancers relied on their parents to pay for their flights and accommodation,” Gomes said.
“That was one of our biggest challenges and costs amounted to R50,000 per dancer. We tried to do some fundraising but two of our dancers fell short.”
Of the 500 dancers who auditioned to go to Spain, 70 were chosen, Gomes said. Dancers also had to take part in the South African qualifiers to compete for the world title.
“When you dance in this competition, you need to show versatility so we did hip-hop, vogue, amapiano, Afro styles and dance hall. We wanted to bring everything possible to make sure we got that win.”
This is not their first win. At the Dance World Cup in Portugal in 2019, the crew took home 20 world titles, Gomes said.
The academy has launched many careers since its inception in 2012. Alumni include Daniel Linker, who travels with Grammy award-winning singer Tyler across the globe as one of her six dancers from South Africa.
“A lot of kids learn dance from YouTube and TikTok, people don’t usually think to join an academy to learn how to do it professionally,” Gomes said.
“When I started the academy, I felt there was such a big need for hip-hop because when people think of dance, they think of ballet, or tap or jazz. I felt there was nothing in Johannesburg that focused on hip-hop. The genre doesn’t put you in a mould, whatever shape or colour you are, so I wanted to take this rainbow nation to the world.
“There are 20 dancers on scholarship. I use the funds for the less-privileged dancers from our local townships just to give them the experience, and use it for the crew kits for competitions,” he said.
“Our biggest thing is to go back home and start training for the next competition, to bring awareness of dance and put our name on the world map so next time we attend the world championships, we will be even bigger and better.”
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