STOP, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

PDAM Dance Group digging it out in style

Dancers, Medical Doctors, lawyers, Accountants, Engineers, marketers, Pharmacists, Soldiers, Police, bricklayers, Tailors, and the likes impact life in different ways using the knowledge and skills of their respective areas of calling or profession.

Dancers, among them Gideon Gambo, Ibrahim Mohammad-amin Mohammed, Ediale Oriwoh, Jabir Husseini, Steady Ateli, Hephzibah Christopher and numerous others are productive and resourceful people. They are not ignorant, stupid or senseless simply because they choose to serve humanity plying their trade as creative people.

For very reasonable, meaningful and impact driven purposes, dancers work seriously, untiringly and unflinchingly, exhibiting their knowledge, skills and intelligence in the area of life that allows them to express their feelings, thought and connections via a combination of movements and rhythms that promote their emotional and physical health and well-being in multiple ways that include elevated mood and confidence, high self-esteem and expression, bonding and discipline, improved cardiovascular functioning and muscle tones, strength and endurance.

Through uncommon ability, skill and creativity, mostly conducted in a combination of movements and rhythms that excite, entertain, inform and educate and in some cases provide suggestions and answers to some of the problems people face, the numerous dancers of different generations, age and sex resolve human challenges and impact life significantly. By addressing the needs of people through a combination of movements and rhythms, dancers position people to connect better with problems of life. As story tellers, dancers narrate life events and through this effort repair some damaged souls, destroyed emotions and disappointed minds, touching lives and building people.

Gideon Gambo (Spinoza), Ibrahim Mohammad-amin Mohammed (Shadez), Ediale Oriwoh (Eddy), Jabir Husseini (King Jaja), Steady Ateli and Hephzibah Christopher (Hephzidance) and numerous other dancers need the support of the governments at the various tiers in Nigeria. They also need the support and collaboration of the society, and like the medical Doctors, lawyers, Pharmacists and members of other professions they deserve to be treated kindly and respected.

The creative industry where the listed names and other creative people operate is intelligence driven and niche oriented. The industry has the mechanism to sieve out the indolent, the unskillful and the unreasonable. Active participation, involvement and commitment are regular demands of the creative industry. Dancers are not to be distracted, they need support. The creative industry with the support of the dancers and other content creators, governments and Nigerians generally will transform the economy, take many of the teeming youths off the streets and put food on their table.

Most dancers I know, including the already mentioned are intelligent, disciplined and respectful, hardworking, committed and resilient. They are also not poor and hungry, they are instead supportive of other people in the society, contributing from their own earnings to attract, nurture and present as responsible, responsive and well respected finished products, their likes, especially those whose parents, guidance, relations and the society neglect, discriminate and abandon for no other reason apart from the fact that they chose to be dancers. Of a truth, dancers are not loafers and dance is not a business for the weak and lazy, unintelligent and unfocused.

Gideon Gambo (Spinoza), Ibrahim Mohammad-amin Mohammed (Shadez), Ediale Oriwoh (Eddy), Jabir Husseini (King Jaja), Steady Ateli and Hephzibah Christopher (Hephzidance) and their likes in the dance business face severe challenges because the environment is hostile to them.

It is a fact that most members of other professions whose services dancers consume with relish, respect and honour, appreciate and encourage other people to patronize, most often do not return similar gesture to the dancers and their calling, instead treat them with disdain. Investigations reveal that most dancers are more intelligent, resourceful and productive than some members of those respected professions. As a matter of fact, most people cannot survive what most dancers went through to realize their dream as dancers: the condemnations, discriminations and neglects.

Such ugly treatments which more often than not come from close relations, including the parents, the clergy and members of other professions are energy sapping, irritating and discouraging, disorienting and disarming. Just because a child decides to hone his/her dancing skill and become a dancer, loved ones suddenly begin to speak ill of the child, throwing tantrums and hitting so hard on the emotion and passion without giving a damn about the effect of such on the growing child.

Every right thinking person knows that maltreatment, neglect and discrimination by close ones are very painful, torturous and debilitating, de-powering and destructive, yet people met such to growing children who dare to be dancers. These great minds: the dancers are confronted with such ugly treatments regularly.

The upcoming dancers like their forerunners, Gideon Gambo, Ibrahim Mohammad-amin Mohammed, Ediale Oriwoh, Jabir Husseini, Steady Ateli, Hephzibah Christopher and numerous others who handle effectively the obviously annoying distractions to accomplish their goal as major contributors to the skyrocketing growth of the creative economy in Nigeria, will overcome the odds.

In our subsequent publications you will be reading the inspiring profiles of some dancers to as a matter of fact appreciate that dancing is not a business for the weak and unintelligent.

Thank you for visiting and reading us. Keep following us, reading and commenting, in addition to inviting other people and sharing the link massively.

Nnabugwu Chizoba