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
