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In Lagos, a Homegrown Ballet Academy Leaps Into the Spotlight

Anthony Mmesoma Madu, left, with fellow students from the Leap of Dance Academy, in Ajangbadi, Ojo.Stephen Tayo for The New York Times
Anthony Mmesoma Madu, left, with fellow students from the Leap of Dance Academy, in Ajangbadi, Ojo.Stephen Tayo for The New York Times
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In Lagos, a Homegrown Ballet Academy Leaps Into the Spotlight

Anthony Mmesoma Madu, left, with fellow students from the Leap of Dance Academy, in Ajangbadi, Ojo.Stephen Tayo for The New York Times
Anthony Mmesoma Madu, left, with fellow students from the Leap of Dance Academy, in Ajangbadi, Ojo.Stephen Tayo for The New York Times

In June, a minute-long video featuring a young ballet student dancing in the rain began circulating on the internet. As the rain falls, forming puddles between the uneven slabs of concrete on which he dances, Anthony Mmesoma Madu, 11, turns pirouette after pirouette.

Though the conditions for such dancing are all wrong — dangerous, even — he twirls on, flying barefoot into an arabesque and landing it. He indulges the camera with a smile, but only for a moment, before assuming a look of fierce determination, lifting his eyes toward the sky, his lithe arms and graceful fingers following closely along.

The wide reach of the video — it has been seen more than 20 million times on social media platforms — has turned a spotlight on the unlikely story of a ballet school in a poor suburb of Lagos, Nigeria: the Leap of Dance Academy.

Founded in 2017, the academy has transformed the lives of its students, affording them a place to dance and to dream. And in the last few months, it has inspired influential people in ballet to lend a hand. Seemingly overnight, a world of opportunity has opened up: for the students, scholarships and invitations to attend prestigious schools and companies overseas; and for the school, sizable donations, which will allow for building a proper space, outfitted with a real dance floor.

For now, the Leap of Dance Academy is housed at the home of its founder, Daniel Owoseni Ajala, in Ajangbadi, Ojo, on the western outskirts of Lagos. Every day after school, Mr. Ajala’s 12 students walk to his apartment, where he pushes aside his furniture and spreads a thin vinyl sheet over the concrete floor for class, throwing open the doors and windows to let in the light.

AAgainst swaths of candy-colored chiffon — intended to make the humble setting a little more festive — students move through their lessons in small groups, leaning against a short, stationary ballet barre and craning their necks to watch Mr. Ajala, or an overseas instructor on Zoom, give corrections.

Much of this is filmed and posted to the school’s Instagram feed, where the students’ joy is evident in each video, their movements precise and praiseworthy — as the comments, hearts and trembling star emojis left by their fans attest.

In the early days of Leap of Dance, many Ajangbadi families were suspicious of ballet. The form’s strict, regimented movements were very different from the more fluid African dances they knew well — as were the skimpy costumes and painful-looking shoes, which, they soon learned, could leave feet cracked, calloused and bruised.

“In the beginning, people kept saying, ‘What are they doing?!’” Mr. Ajala said. “I had to convince them that ballet wasn’t a bad or indecent dance, but actually something that requires a lot of discipline that would have positive effects on the lives of their children outside the classroom. I always say, it’s not only about the dance itself — it’s about the value of dance education.”

When Mr. Ajala, 29, founded Leap of Dance three years ago, he was a self-taught recreational dancer with a dream: to open a ballet school for students who were serious about learning the art form and possibly pursuing it professionally one day. “I wanted, more than anything, to give that opportunity to those younger than myself so they wouldn’t miss their chance like I did,” he said, in a recent Zoom call. “It was too bad that I was as old as I was when I realized I wanted to dance.”

As a child, Mr. Ajala became obsessed with ballet after watching “Save the Last Dance,” the 2001 movie about a lapsed ballet dancer (Julia Stiles) who moves to the South Side of Chicago after her mother dies; she falls in love with a classmate (Sean Patrick Thomas) who shares her passion for dance and helps nurse her dormant dream of becoming a ballerina back to life.

Though he found the love story formulaic and glib, Mr. Ajala said he was captivated by the movement he saw onscreen and, perhaps even more, by the discipline and sacrifice that was evidently required to master it. Ballet appealed to him for another reason, too: It wasn’t widely taught or practiced in Nigeria. “I wanted to be different,” he said. “I loved that ballet is not common here. When you talk about dance in Nigeria, it’s like hitting one-way traffic: Everybody does the same thing, and they all end up in the same place.”

He taught himself what he could by watching lessons and professional companies on YouTube; he also signed up for a few crash courses in ballet at a local dance center. When it came time for college, he studied business administration at Lagos State University at the request of his parents, intending to pursue dance on the side. But after taking his final exams, he decided his calling lay elsewhere: in dance. “I had to explain to my friends and family that sometimes white-collar jobs are not the picture they paint themselves to be,” he said. “They lack heart.”

And so the Leap of Dance Academy was born, its name a nod to the leap of faith Mr. Ajala took in leaving more secure job prospects behind. Turning again to online platforms, he joined an international dance teacher network on Facebook. He posted a note explaining that he was starting a ballet school in Nigeria that would provide free instruction and asked if anyone had used or unwanted dance kits they could send him, since many families in Ajangbadi wouldn’t be able to afford costumes. Soon, he was put in touch with someone from Traveling Tutus, a nonprofit organization in Florida that donates gently used dance wear to students around the world.

The New York Times

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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)

For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by flinging plastic bags stuffed with stinking garbage straight onto the sidewalk.

When the bags inevitably leak or break open, they spill litter into the street, providing smorgasbords for rats. In the winter, the trash mounds get buried in snow and remain frozen in place for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as filthy.

Now, New Yorkers are slowly adjusting to a radically new routine, at least for America's biggest city: Putting their trash in bins. With lids.

Earlier this month, covered bins became a requirement for all residential buildings with fewer than 10 living units. That’s the majority of residential properties. All city businesses had to start using bins earlier this year.

“I know this must sound absurd to anyone listening to this who lives pretty much in any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city's new police commissioner this week. “But it is revolutionary by New York City’s standards because, for 50 years, we have placed all our trash directly on the curbs.”

Residents who've already experienced trash containerization elsewhere agree it's long overdue for New York City to catch up.

“You see plastic bags open with the food just rotting and stinking and then it leaking out over the sidewalk and into the road,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “Just the stink of it builds up, you know, week after week after week.”

New York City's homes, businesses and institutions put about 44 million pounds (20 million kilograms) of waste out on the curb every day, about 24 million pounds (11 million kilograms) of which is collected by the city's sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private garbage carters.

In the early 20th century, New York City required trash to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before widespread plastic bag use, refuse was thrown directly into the bins, making them filthy and grimy.

Then in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, trash cans overflowed. Garbage mounds piled high on sidewalks and spilled into the streets like some dystopian nightmare.

Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a Columbia University dean specializing in public affairs.

“It had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, the sanitation workers preferred the modern advance of lighter and seemingly cleaner sealed plastic bags.”

Plastic kept more odors in, compared to the old metal bins. A worker could grab the neck of a bag and easily fling it into a truck.

But Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has deemed trash bag mounds Public Enemy No. 1 in his well-documented war against the city's notorious rats.

Rats have little problem getting into a plastic bag. Durable bins with closing, locking lids should, in theory, do a better job of keeping them out.

The bin requirement, which took effect Nov. 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: Finding a place for large, wheeled bins in neighborhoods where most buildings don't have yards, alleys or garages. Landlords and homeowners also have to collect the empty bins and bring them back from the curb in the morning — something you didn't have to do with plastic bags.

Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents of her building had to hire someone “at surprisingly high cost” to bring out the bins the night before and bring them back in three times a week.

“I know there are problems with the way this city has collected trash for years,” she said. “But the way this program has been rolled out, it has not taken into account many of the nuances of living in New York City.”

Building superintendents are also grumbling about the added work of bringing bins back from the curb.

“It’s completely rearranged our lives,” says Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of building managers that recently rallied in front of City Hall against the new requirements. “Folks are running around like crazy.”

Eventually, the largest residential buildings — those with more than 31 units — will have their own designated container on the street. New trash trucks built with automated, side-loading arms — another innovation that is already common in many other countries — will then clear them out.

The upgrades should make pickups easier and cleaner, even if it might take longer for trash collectors to make the rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union representing some 7,000 city sanitation workers.

For now, he says, workers are still tossing trash into their trucks manually, which has its own downsides.

“Some places, they’re not even using bags. They're just putting their trash into the bins,” Nespoli said. “It's going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it's our job to pick it up.”

Tisch believes New Yorkers will eventually come around to the new reality.

City officials, for now, are issuing written warnings for non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But come Jan. 2, fines ranging from $50 to $200 will kick in.

“No one wants to live on a dirty block,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a heaping mound of trash and trash juice when they are leaving to go to work or they are walking their kids home from school.”