Poise and prestige: viral clip propels Lagos ballet class to global stage

Eleven-year-old Anthony Madu glides barefoot across an uneven concrete floor, summoning his frame into seamless twirls and conjuring pirouettes, his poise effortless as rain falls into puddles around him.

The 45-second video, shot in June outside the home of his ballet teacher in Ajangbadi, an isolated, end-of-the-road coastal town on the outskirts of Lagos, was intended to help Anthony practise his form.

Instead, the clip – a quietly stunning triumph of will over modest means – went viral, setting off an epic, internet-era fairytale. Celebrity and commercial endorsements, prestigious scholarship offers and pledges for funding have flooded in, transforming the lives of Anthony, his teacher Daniel Ajala and other children at the Leap of Dance Academy. Local perceptions of the academy – which weren’t always positive – have also been upended.

“When you’re doing ballet you can feel like you’re in a different place,” Anthony said on a recent morning at ballet class in the dim light of a school hall in Ajangbadi, as other students set up balancing frames and pinned rainbow-coloured drapes on the walls.

“When I first started it was really painful, my thighs, my legs, my arms. My ‘back walk-over’, I couldn’t do it,” he said, gently arching his back into a curve to demonstrate, “but then it got easier, or I did certain things so it wasn’t so painful.”

The first day after the video was posted on Instagram, an amazed “Mr Daniel” showed the children how far it had reached. “It was really exciting and made me feel joyful,” Anthony said. In the days that followed, their amazement only grew as global attention soared.

In August Anthony gained a full scholarship to an online summer programme at the prestigious Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of American Ballet. In January he begins a five-year scholarship programme in New York. Similar offers have been made for some of the academy’s other children.

What began for Anthony and his classmates as an immersive if demanding leisure activity has spawned lofty dreams. “I want to become a professional dancer. I believe I can achieve it,” he beamed.

The setting of the academy and its modest intentions reinforce the unlikely nature of its remarkable tale.

Ajangbadi sits off the battered Lagos to Badagry expressway, towards Nigeria’s western border with Benin. Gusts from the coastline breeze through the wide open spaces of the sandy, broken roads. Many of the nearby expressways and side roads have buckled under the weight of large trucks that take cargo from water and yogurt factories into the city, leaving Ajangbadi and other more affordable suburban towns like it feeling inaccessible and isolated.

Some of the students clustered around 40-year-old Mary Olawale, applying makeup and glitter on their faces. Olawale moved to Ajangbadi 10 years ago, and began as an assistant at the academy after enrolling her two children. For her children, the academy was an oasis.

“In 2018, I took my daughters here to learn, have something to do,” she said. “But then I came and saw how he [Ajala] was inspiring them, giving them life tools. What he is doing for the children is incredible.”

Ajala started teaching ballet at after-school clubs in inner-city Lagos eight years ago, while studying business administration at university. He said he could have made money setting up a studio in more affluent pockets of the city, capitalising on a well-established and growing demand for ballet. “But I thought about it and I wanted to establish it here, in this neighbourhood, this is where it would matter more,” he said.

He taught ballet to himself at home, watching videos on YouTube, and through social media, joining international dance networks. After leaving university, he unnerved his parents when he told them that he was pursuing dance teaching over a more typical profession. “I knew this was my calling, so I had no doubts at all,” he said.

He envisioned the academy as a place where children could gain a greater sense of what they could be, not necessarily through dance. “I want them to have confidence in themselves and what they can aspire to. It’s about exposure. We’re looking at online references, learning, using a range of resources, I believe that is powerful.”

Outside the lessons, Ajala and the children have encountered stiff resistance in the community. At one point more than 30 children attended classes, but almost two-thirds were withdrawn by their parents. “People were saying ‘ballet is demonic’, that it was corrupting them, that parents shouldn’t allow their kids to go,” Ajala said.

In particular, suspicions were stirred by the sight of boys wearing tights and makeup and participating in what some saw as an effeminate and western art form.

The school hall is also used by a local church, whose pastor began confronting Ajala when they crossed paths. “She would say: ‘Boys shouldn’t be wearing tights’, ‘the ballet is the reason why the church attendance is getting low’ – things like that.”

Warnings by church officials have had greater influence in this remote, cautious community, where the functions and protections of state structures are barely visible. Few people in the community regarded ballet as worthwhile, in contrast to more urban areas, where the cultural capital associated with the art form fuels its appeal.

At one point, a friend advised Ajala to use the time he was investing in the academy to earn money. “I just thought about it seriously but I realised that this was what God wants me to do,” he said.

Since June, perceptions have gradually changed, and there is more of a sense locally of the opportunities the school can offer. The academy has a waiting list of 30 children, and another school where Ajala used to hold classes, which had said it could no longer accommodate him, is “begging for us to come back”.

Before the coronavirus pandemic Ajala held classes three times a week in a school hall. When schools closed he moved lessons to his home, where they took place almost daily. The children trained in bare feet, to preserve their ballet shoes from tearing on his concrete floor.

Every week brings new visitors, some with cameras and filming equipment. The children’s poses are still poised and carefree, but the children themselves are more practised, more at ease in limelight.

“We could have never expected that any of this would happen, to this degree,” Ajala said. “It’s incredible and goes to show that for the students anything they set their mind to is possible.”