It had already happened last June, now a new video leads to emotion. This time it was the great toile Roberto Bolle who posted on his Instagram profile the video of a girl, in Lagos in Nigeria, dancing with boundless grace, on the mud and in the rain. These are the words of Bolle: It leaves you speechless and makes you reflect to see the smile and the joy of dancing of this little girl. We are in Lagos, Nigeria, on the outskirts of one of the poorest cities in the world. Yet this barefoot girl is already dancing with the grace of an etoile. And smiles at the future. And it really leaves this video speechless for the love that shines through the child’s face, despite everything, despite the surrounding environment being so unwelcoming.
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Anthony’s video: from Nigeria to New York
There is a precedent dating back to last June. A young dancer from the Nigerian Professional Ballet School, the Leap of Dance Academy, practices dancing in the rain with bare feet. The video thrilled the web. The background is exactly the same where the girl noticed by Bolle dances too. And that video brought the dancer a lot of luck. Anthony Mmesoma Madu, an 11-year-old Nigerian boy – filmed by passers-by while dancing in the rain, barefoot, performing jumps and pirouettes with innate grace – went viral, attracting the attention of even some characters of the show. Cynthia Harvey, artistic director of ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of Dance in New York, tracked him down and offered him a scholarship to the American Ballet Theater, where he will attend a summer school in 2021. The Hollywood actress of African descent, Viola Davis, (The Doubt, The Help, The Rules of the Perfect Crime) when she saw Anthony dance unable to hold back tears of emotion and shared the video on Twitter writing: “It reminds me of the beauty of my people. We create, we fly, we imagine, we have unbridled passion and love. Despite the terrible obstacles that have been placed in front of us … we can fly! ” Nigerian film producer Fade Ogunro, who runs the talent scout platform Bookings Africa, also offers to pay for all of the boy’s training until graduation, anywhere in the world. But that’s not all. For Anthony, other doors have also opened: last July, in fact, he won the first prize of the South African International Ballet Competition, which includes a scholarship to attend dance classes in the United States.
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Anthony: Great opportunity for me to go to the USA
I was very surprised: I absolutely didn’t think that video would go viral. The best part will be going dancing in the United States, few people here have that opportunity, Anthony Mmesoma Madu told CNN. My passion for dancing was born when, at the age of three, I saw the Barbie cartoon and the 12 dancing princesses. I told my mother that I wanted to dance too. So Anthony began attending a dance academy in Lagos that offers free lessons to children who are unable to pay tuition: from that moment his innate skills emerged. With very little or no resources our children are training to be the best they can be. Children who are ready to dance in any conditions. Imagine what we could achieve if we had more, wrote the dance school, the Leap of Dance Academy, on social media. From the streets of Lagos to the theaters of New York, a story of dedication and passion that has moved the network.
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January 15, 2021 (change January 15, 2021 | 10:43)
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