Introducing...

We have recently appointed two apprentices for the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire branch of Boys Dancing activity, so we'd like to introduce one of them, for the time being - Thato Malebye.

Thato is originally from South Africa, but has now lived in the UK for many years. He first came into contact with Boys Dancing as a participant, when a team came to his local youth centre and performed a taster session. Thato remembers being really impressed by the male dancers:

"Up until that point, dance was never really a masculine thing to me. At my school, most people that did dance were girls. So that was the first time I saw guys my age, being masculine, doing incredible stuff. It was a new thing that I hadn’t seen before: normal guys who just did things like I did, like listening to hip hop, into the whole skateboarding thing, playing a bit of guitar, so I was like 'OK... Guys do this! Maybe this is my opportunity to give it a go?'"

And give it a go he certainly did! Thato now trains in ballet, tap, modern jazz and lyrical - and a bit of capoeira! We're really pleased to have him back on board with the project this year as an apprentice. His relationship with Boys Dancing is a long-running one. To find out more about Thato's story, have a look here.