Via Katlehong Dance

Founded in 1992, the Company takes its name from the township of Katlehong in the East Rand (Johannesburg), one of the deprived neighborhoods where the protestant Pantsula culture was born. The Company has received several international awards. In all its shows, the company Via Katlehong Dance defends the Pantsula culture from which it comes.

In the 1960s and 1970s, under the apartheid regime in South Africa, Black rural populations were displaced to the big cities and regrouped in the townships. It is in these ghettos, where unemployment and crime reign, that the Pantsula culture with which all the youth of the townships identify would be born. Like hip hop in the United States and Europe, Pantsula culture is a lifestyle, covering fashion, music, dance, gestural codes and speaking.

And like hip hop, it finds its field of expression in the streets. In the 1990s, as a multi-racial South Africa slowly set in, Via Katlehong Dance continues the protest, fighting for young people in poor neighborhoods through its shows and performances that combine Pantsula dance, tap dance, step and gumboot, a miners' dance based on handstrokes on the thighs and calves. These dances are performed together in a common energy and rhythm.