His chosen vocation ridiculed by peers and elders alike, South African teenager Andile Ndlovu remains unwavering in his ambition to become a world-class ballet dancer.
One of a small pool of black, male practitioners of an art considered by many to be the domain of whites and the rich, Ndlovu is doing what he can to popularise ballet in his community.
”Some of my friends have started coming round and support me as a friend. But most still don’t believe it is an art form,” says the young man from Soweto.
In Cape Town to compete in an international ballet competition, Ndlovu’s face was a study of concentration as he leapt and twirled fluently across the stage honing his routine ahead of the knockout stages.
”Dance has changed my life,” he said after practice. ”If I didn’t start dancing, I would probably have become some delinquent or something.”
Ndlovu, whose story has drawn comparisons with the movie Billy Elliot — the 2000 hit about a boy from a rough northern English mining town who beats the odds to become a dancer — said he grew up underprivileged and first started dancing with friends on the streets for lack of a proper venue.
Encouraged by his mother and a school teacher, scholarships, grants and borrowed money enabled him to take up Latin and ballroom dancing at the age of 11.
Spotted in an outreach programme about four years ago when he was 15, he took up ballet and hasn’t looked back.
”It was sometimes difficult,” he recalls. ”Not many people in my community know much about ballet. They are not really exposed to it.
Many believe that if you dance you are gay — it is simply not for boys.”
It was also culturally strange, he said. ”For people in the townships ballet is for white people and the well-off.”
Ndlovu is one of four black dancers competing in the senior section of the South African International Ballet Competition (SAIBC), and one of 11 male participants out of 26.
Famed South African choreographer Martin Schoenberg, who spotted Ndlovu at the outreach programme and initiated him into ballet, said many of his compatriots still believed it to be a ”Eurocentric art form”.
”There are people who are very anti[-ballet]. Some people in politics don’t see ballet as something they wish to promote among the black population. But people on the ground who are exposed to it, love it.”
Schonberg said the number of male, black South African ballet dancers had steadied despite a rise in demand.
”They have more opportunity,” he said. ”Black, male dancers are virtually guaranteed employment in South Africa because there is just so much place for them to perform.
”But the opportunity has not been matched with uptake, mostly because training isn’t readily available. There is not enough training out there for the demand. There aren’t enough grants, there isn’t enough government support.
”Ballet is still pretty elitist.”
A further problem, said Alison Foat, SAIBC promoter and a former ballerina, was that young men in general were becoming less and less interested in the art form as general exposure waned with changing cultural norms.
”They are much more likely to go see Justin Timberlake than Swan Lake.”
SAIBC chief executive Dirk Badenhorst said the competition aimed to expose South African dancers to international methods and trends since only a privileged few could afford to travel abroad.
”The idea was for us to try and bring the rest of the world to South Africa rather than all of us getting on a plane and going to the rest of the world,” he said.
Ndlovu welcomed the exposure.
”I hope one day to go to Europe to learn more,” he said. ”This is going to be my career.” ‒ Sapa-AFP