The young boy couldn’t resist the dance moves he saw being performed around him: the rapid foot taps, the ligament-spraining knee twists, the torso shimmies, all coming together in what some might describe as a sort of urban tap dance.
Growing up in an impoverished Black township near Johannesburg in the 1980s, the boy, Vusi Mdoyi, loved watching his father dance with friends, in a style known as pantsula, in the dirt yards of their staid four-room bungalows.
It was a sprinkle of joy in the dark days of apartheid.
At about 7 years old, Mr. Mdoyi began mimicking the dance form.
By 14, he had created his own dance crew with neighborhood friends.
Persons:
couldn’t, Vusi Mdoyi, Mdoyi
Locations:
Black, Johannesburg