SA dance team brings Jewish talent to championship

Four Jewish dancers are part of the multicultural South African dance team that professional choreographer Debbie Rakusin is taking to the International Dance Organization (IDO) World Championships in Poland, taking place on 25 November.

Rakusin says the fact that the team includes Jewish dancers and herself as the team manager is “unbelievable” and “unheard of”.

“The odd Jewish dancer here and there has won Protea colours, but it’s unusual to have four Jewish people getting Protea colours in South Africa,” she says.

King David Linksfield students Jordan Brill, Sami Levin, Gabriella Salomon, and Addy Joffe all received Proteas colours for dancing last month as they will be representing South Africa at the championships.

“It felt incredibly rewarding receiving Protea colours,” says Salomon, a 14-year-old Grade 8 student, the number one in the country in both jazz dance and contemporary dance for her age group.

Rakusin formed a collaborative team of dancers from different backgrounds and studios through High Performance Dance Education, a programme directed by her to uplift dancers in South Africa.

“This co-lab team competed in two regional competitions and one national competition to qualify for the world championships and be eligible for colours,” she says.

Levin, a 14-year-old Grade 8 student who has received Proteas colours for the third year in a row, says the past year has been full of qualifying competitions. “Each competition helps you improve on your performance. Many hours of training and sacrificing school and other activities contribute to the preparation.”

Brill, a 16-year-old Grade 10 student, says, “I’ve worked so much harder and trained so much more than I did last year in preparation for the IDO World Championships in De Panne, Belgium.”

Salomon, who started dancing at the age of 14, says, “It requires enormous physical strength as well as mental preparation.”

Having put out an advert looking for dancers to join a collaboration group and be exposed to top teachers and choreographers, Rakusin has managed to put together a truly South African team.

Rakusin and the team’s captain, who recently came away with 17 medals from the Hip Hop & Popping Championships in Macedonia, brought in an international choreographer from Serbia in January.

“Who knows what our chances are,” Rakusin says. “The dancers in the international market are incredible. They have been exposed to a lot more. It’s easy for them to travel in Europe, whereas, for us on the tip of Africa, there’s no travel, certainly for the majority of our dancers of colour.”

Winning a title at the championships is the biggest accolade you can get, Rakusin says. “Your country’s anthem gets played. The dancers cry, and go on their hands and knees. It’s incredible how they react.”

Brill, who will be competing in seven dances including three solos in classical ballet, jazz dance, and modern, is no stranger to medals. With a dance training that started when she was two, Brill came home with five medals, including three golds, from the JCC (Jewish Community Center) Maccabi Games in Fort Lauderdale in the United States earlier this year.

Brill and Joffe, a 16-year-old Grade 10 student, have danced with singers such as John Legend and Seal in corporate events.

Joffe, who has been dancing since the age of three, won three golds and one bronze medal at the JCC Maccabi games last year, and will be competing in two group dances at the championships – a jazz dance and a contemporary dance piece. “I’ll also be doing a ballet classical solo and a ballet repertoire solo,” she says.

Joffe’s biggest highlight is “being able to grow, learn, improve, and most importantly, have fun doing what I love the most”.

Levin, who started dancing at the age of six, has attained vice-world champion status for ballet repertoire four times at international competitions such as the Dance World Cup. “I received a scholarship to a summer intensive programme at Steps On Broadway Academy for next year in New York,” she says.

“I’ve travelled internationally to do shows before, not to enter a competition,” Rakusin says, commenting on 45 years in the dancing business. “So receiving colours at my age was incredible.”

She hopes her championship-bound dancers will follow in the footsteps or do even better than previous South African championship dancers such as Tyla-Mae de Wet, who came in the top 10 in the modern and contemporary dance solos junior category, won by Slovenian Maksim Mali, at the 2023 IDO World Championships.