Felabration to host Afrobeat dance auditions

The Felabration organising committee had announced a call for interested candidates to indicate interest ahead of this year’s edition of the annual event.

Contestants were required to visit the official Felabration website to sign up. The deadline was 20 August, with all entries collated subsequently. According to an official statement by the committee, fewer than 40 participants have been selected for the dance showcase.

“Thirty-seven dancers will be on parade on the day. This audition will throw up the final eight contestants who will lock horns again at the New Afrika Shrine, Ikeja, during this year’s Felabration, on a date that will be announced later.”

Judges at the event include Funke Kuti, award-winning dancer Adedayo Liadi (Ijodee), dance instructor and Crown Troupe founder Segun Adefila, and Felabration founder Yeni Kuti, who is also the creator of the Afrobics Dance Competition.

This is the second edition of the competition, which was created to popularise the Afrobeat dance moves created by the late Afrobeat maestro Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The winners will be rewarded with cash prizes – first prize: 250 000 naira (about $700), second prize: 150 000 naira, and third prize: 50 000 naira.

Speaking about the importance of Afrobeat's peculiar dances to the genre's music, Felabration spokesperson Abdul Okwechime told Music In Africa that "there were occasions Fela had to dance to the beat of his own compositions to make his musicians feel and play the sound the way he wrote it. Afrobeat dance brings out the rhythm of Afrobeat music."