Leap of Dance Academy
« One, Two, Three ! Tombé, pas de bourrée, glissade, jeté ! … » Under the guidance of Daniel, their teacher, around twenty boys and girls between 10 and 22 years old tirelessly perform all the movements of classical ballet. We are not here in the cosy comfort of a ballet school in Paris, New York or London, but behind the high walls that frame the courtyard of a modest house in a popular district of Lagos, the sprawling capital of Nigeria. The cement floor is uneven and bumpy. The bars were made locally from metal to withstand the heat and torrential rains which can fall on the students at any time. But nothing, not even the heat and the blazing sun, seems to be able to dampen the enthusiasm of these young dancers who come every day to learn this delicate art. Welcome to the Leap of Dance Academy!
It was in Ojo in 2017 that it all started, in one of these peripheral neighborhoods that residents nicknamed the “trenches”, in reference to the roads lined with immense gutters that are often flooded in the rainy season and which make daily travel very complicated. Daniel Ajala, a young thirty-year-old who has just graduated from Lagos State University, decides to devote himself to his passion for classical dance by creating his own ballet school. After spending days and nights training by watching videos on the internet, he recruited five young people from the neighborhood, overcoming some stubborn prejudices about this dance “from elsewhere”. A figure that word of mouth will soon increase to more than thirty before he decides to scale back to focus on the most motivated students.
For the families of this underprivileged neighborhood where electricity only comes a few hours a week, so far from the luxury of the lagoon islands where all the country’s wealth is concentrated, this school is a blessing. “When I opened this academy, I wanted it to be completely free. Most of the children in the neighborhood come from families with very low incomes who could not afford this luxury,” says Daniel, who has great ambitions for his young dancers. “Ballet is a life lesson that can help them be better people, whether they want to become a professional dancer, a doctor or a lawyer…”. And it’s not Josephine, who came to admire her daughters Goodness and Mercy during a rehearsal, who will say the opposite: “What I like most here is the self-confidence that learning to dance brings to the children. It helps them stand up, speak up and defend themselves!“