Then Comes The Body

Then Comes The Body is a great short documentary from Jacob Krupnick about a Nigerian man who taught himself how to dance ballet from watching YouTube tutorials, the ballet school he started in Lagos, and the students who are branching out into the rest of the world.

There’s no ballet here in Nigeria. There’s no one to look up to. There are no theaters. There are no productions. There are no ballet schools at all. The only thing you have is yourself and the internet.

From a piece in Dance Magazine:

The founder of Leap of Dance Academy, Daniel Ajala, was inspired to learn ballet after watching the 2001 American film Save the Last Dance. As there weren’t any ballet schools in Nigeria, he taught himself by watching YouTube videos. Determined to provide his community with opportunities he hadn’t had, Ajala established the Academy in 2017 and offers classes for free, explaining that he doesn’t want anyone “to have an excuse for not following your passion.”

Leap of Dance Academy came to worldwide attention in 2020 via a viral video of student Anthony Madu dancing in the rain, which Krupnick watched and resulted in Then Comes The Body. Madu got a scholarship to a ballet school in the UK and there’s a feature length documentary about him that’s available to watch on Disney+.

• Anthony Madu
• dance
• Daniel Ajala
• Jacob Krupnick
• Nigeria
• video