As a kid I saw stage dancing as something very very inspiring and for that I was so stiff, I appreciated dancers so much. Even though I could not measure up with the best dancers around me like my siblings, I was still able to dance my way out of several occasions, playing the copycat role and only failing to do well when the people around me are bad dancers.
Dancing is a gift and even though people learn today, they don’t learn it from zero grounds. Some start on 20/100 while others start taking their dancing classes at a high level of 70/100. Whichever the case may be, dancers take classes because there is need for them to improve and for others there is need for them to catch up with trends.
Who makes the trends?
Trend suddenly become widely accepted, but the truth is that it always starts somewhere. The creative guys.
Today’s stage dancing is gradually turning to something else and aside the wonderful choreography we see in some events, what individual dancers do on stage gives me concern.
A certain female dancer told me that it was the only thing she could do for people to applaud her saying “No one wants to see a girl dressed in jeans or something that covers the whole of her body. No one wants to see a girl breakdancing on the stage. The world is turning sexy and only sexy dancers are known around here”.
Sexy dancers? I just wonder what fun it is for people to watch the same thing over and over again from probably three different girls who come on stage to display sexy moves and in most cases, some of them pick a random guy and display their moves on him.
I call this erotic dance and I don’t think it shows how talented a dancer is because it is simple what almost every girl could do in the bedroom. These dancers instead of triggering excitement with the display of their talent, they trigger the urge for sex amongst men who instantly imagine having the girl do the same thing on them.
After such events, men hover around any lady they can and many end up with prostitutes in their hotel rooms just to quench the sexual desires these ‘sexy’ dancers have triggered in them.
Many of these dancers are often misunderstood and some have been priced like prostitutes because any man who can do anything for good sex, would be willing to pay any amount to have a girl doing those moves on him.
But why not?
Another female dancer I spoke to told me she doesn’t blame the men because every man would love to have a girl with those skills in his bed.
“I turn them down because I have work ethics; I’m not a prostitute so I can’t go home with a man after performance” She uttered.
Although she agrees that their prices could be tempting at times, she said she would not still do it, accepting that some girls do it.
“There are girls who use it to advertise themselves. They always sleep with the highest bidder, but one thing about them is that they don’t last. When majority of the men must have slept with them, no one even wants to see them on stage again.
The good thing about what I do is that men hunger for me and will never have me”
This is one testimony which may be true, but what happens to those who go home with men after performance? Would this act be called stage dancing or ‘sex advert’ to them?
Male dancers are struggling
The result of this is that solo male dancers are struggling and even when those who can shake whatever they have, do so, one would simply say, “they are displaying gay tendencies”.
Most of these male dancers have done everything possible to change their looks to that of a woman. They start from their hairs to a light workout which will give them a slender feminine shape.
Only group dancers display talent, the rest go on stage shaking their bum bum as if it is the new definition of dancing.
Even though I am exonerating the group dancers, some of them are still bringing the erotic moves and in most cases a mixed group would have a male and female display sexy moves that rhyme with the beat they are dancing.
We always overdo things in the name of trend. Nothing develops here, they just come and go unlike other places where people develop dance steps into something better.
Yesterday, it was garala, makosa, alanta, yahoozee and today we are dancing shoki, yet no one is working out a blend of these steps that would bring colour to our stage dancing. Groups just follow the trend and when there is no trend, they resort to break dancing or the cheerleaders things which choreographers had traditionally been known for.
There is actually nothing anyone will do at the moment because my research shows the consumers [spectators] are happy but if nothing is done to this trend, dancing will surely turn to be something different from body movement to bum bum movement.
People should not just start dancing after being inspired by Hollywood movies. People should dance because they love to. They should dance because it makes them happy. It is the only way the creative parts of their brain can work towards creation and recreation of dance steps.
But if we go like this, there will be a day when our children will see old videos and wonder what people are doing because we have let the gift of dancing to slip away from our hands into extinction.
Chinedu Hardy Nwadike, is a novelist, blogger, newspaper columnist, he writes from Owerri, Imo State. chikinow@yahoo.com 08038704454, BBM 53247BA4
