An incredibly South African Hip Hop team from Pretoria have returned to South Africa victorious with awesome podium positions.
The Eunice Marais School of Dance (EMSD) represented the South African Body of Dance, as Team SA, at the IDO world hip hop, Electric Boogie and Break Dance Championships from 19-23 October.
EMSD opened its doors in 1984, as a little studio in the village of Irene (Centurion- Pretoria) Its director Eunice Marais, had just completed her modern dance teachers diploma and had qualified as a school teacher in the same year.
For the first 20 years, the dancing school offered modern and jazz only, and in 2004 Eunice decided to explore the “world of Hip Hop” . EMSD dancers started competing in the World Championships (hosted by the International dance organisation- IDO) in 2005 and during the next 10 years achieved hip hop world champions in the solo, duo, small group, formation and production sections.
The only studio in South Africa (and probably Africa) to have achieved this.
The recent world championships was attended by close on 4000 global dancers representing 30 countries.
The large production team (of 45 dancers) won the World champion title for the 5th consecutive year. Their 8 minute long production was titled: One bar closer to Humanity.
In addition to this achievement, the studio also achieved the following podium positions:
- Hloni Santawane and Dylan Jardim: 1st Place in the adult duo section (out of 93 duo partnerships)
- Bokang Jiyane and Joshua Allan placed 2nd in the junior hip hop duo section (out of 100 duos) They also came 2nd in the Electric Boogie junior section
- Bokang Jiyane: 1st place in the junior solo battles (out of 87 competitors)
- Hloni Santawane placed 3rd in the adult male solo section (out of 79 competitors)
- The formation ‘Redemption’ placed 2nd out of 35 formations
- The small group ‘Sovereignty’ placed 3rd out of 51 groups
- Joshua Allan placed 6th out of 57 dancers in the hip hop solo section.
In January 2018 the first Arts Games (the Olympics for performing Arts) under the umbrella of the International Olympic Committee – will be held in Montreal, Canada. The EMSD dancers are hoping to qualify for the world event.
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