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.

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Persons: couldn’t, Vusi Mdoyi, Mdoyi Locations: Black, Johannesburg