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City Press chats to local dancer Tarryn Alberts

Johannesburg - One of South Africa’s most graceful – yet combative – dancers, Tarryn Alberts, is currently training with Nike to prepare herself for a May tour with successful South African group Die Antwoord. It will last for five months and go across Europe and the US. Alberts has worked with them in the past, which she describes as an amazing experience.

“I learnt so much from Ninja and  Yo-landi. They are like mentors,” she told #Trending. “They just take your mind to another level. They’re all about art and they love what they do so much. Travelling with them was amazing for me because I grew as an individual, not only as a dancer. It helped me open my mind and realise the world is so much bigger than we think it is.”

She will perform to massive crowds every night. “Imagine there’s a show every night for months, 90 minutes at a time to crowds of 20 000 to 80 000 at festivals...” she says.

She spends five- to 12-hour days rehearsing for performances, shooting music videos and working on campaigns. “On average, five hours, but if I have a big show, it goes up to eight hours. If I’m double-booked, which I love to do because that means I make more money, then it’s 12 hours. I will dance from nine in the morning to five in the evening and then again from eight until 11 in the evening – that’s just rehearsals every day for two weeks.” This she does to House music, old-school hip-hop and R&B.

“When I start to create a piece, I stop watching TV, I stop listening to the radio. I try to almost go on a fast. I draw inspiration from certain things, like watching kids dance randomly in the street, listening to certain sounds... With dancers, I think we naturally have this ability to see pictures when we hear music. I put all of my fear into the dance and just let it go. It’s like dance therapy,” she said in an interview with thefader.com.

Alberts, who hails from Eldorado Park, started dancing at the age of nine.

“I took dance classes in Newtown at Bassline. By the time I was in high school, I joined a crew. This was just after the movie You Got Served happened and everyone started crews.

“In 2012, I joined a crew called V.I.N.T.A.G.E and we competed on e.tv’s Step Up or Step Out, where we finished second.

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