UJ crowns best dancer

Date: Sep 18, 2014 | News

​​​Engineering student, Tumelo Letsheko, was crowned winner of the “UJ Can You Dance?” competition following an action-packed final round of the competition on Saturday, 13 September 2014.

An emotional Letsheko expressed his passion for dance during his acceptance speech and acknowledged UJ Arts and Culture for creating spaces and places where UJ students can nurture and develop their natural talent.

“Presented in partnership with The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC), UJ Arts & Culture’s aim with the competition was to excavate and nurture the dance talent of our students,” said producer, Grace Meadows. “Following extensive auditions across all four campuses, 24 hopefuls were selected from over three hundred young people who signed up to audition,” said Letsheko.​​

During the winter recess, the students who made it through round of auditions were put through their paces at a Winter Dance Boot camp facilitated by FATC and 18 were selected for the semi-finals and then the top eight battled it out for bragging rights as “UJ’s Best Dancer.”

All the finalists walked away with a cultural bursary to the value of R2,000. The top three each won premiere gym memberships sponsored, UJ Sport, a sports goody bag courtesy of UJ Arts & Culture and an iPad mini. Tumelo’s first-prize included all of these as well as a professional CV consultation with MojaNation Exchange design agency and a 12 month artist management contract from Talent Etc.

Ashraf Johaardien, Head of UJ Arts has confirmed that plans are in place for the competition to take place annually. There have also been rumours that he is working on “UJ Can You Sing?”.