Dance champ puts positive spin on DanceFest

DANCEFEST helps contestants to deal with pressure under adversity.
This view was expressed by Jarad Leacock, leader of the Blu-Tooth Breakers who won last year’s competition, during the launch of Community DanceFest 2013-2014 at the Ministry of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development yesterday.
“There are ups and downs about winning a competition in that you have to stay consistent, with people asking if you are going to go back next year,” he said about his group’s reign.
“At the end of the day, what is life without pressure? At least the pressure that fans are [putting on] me is to do better, and I would rather have that kind of pressure instead of prison and drugs,” said Leacock.
DanceFest was originally called Indepen-dance, and starting in September will be divided into sections: preliminaries, zone finals and grand finals at Kensington Oval.
Ernesta Drakes, Permanent Secretary of Constituency Empowerment and Community Development in the Ministry of Social Care, substituting for Minister Stephen Blackett, said DanceFest had been an income-generator for people in the technical areas of productions.
A further appeal was made to corporate Barbados to get on board to help ease the cost of production.(JS)